Turning 40...Happy Birthday to Me!

No one could have been more surprised by this surprise party than me. When told by my husband that there would not be any kind of diversionary tactics that would have led to my being appropriately dressed for the occasion, my cousin is reported to have responded "She is going to divorce you."

But his devotion to the element of surprise was not to be dissuaded. So...here I am unshowered and completely shocked when friends began arriving at my door. As you can see from the picture, many bottles of wine arrived with the guests and I suppose this quickly softened the shock of being discovered disheveled and completely unprepared. I loved it.

I also love these birthdays that end in zero. There is something about marking a new decade of life that seems to call for a look back at what the past ten years have meant and a look forward towards what the next ten could hold. That kind of reflection generally causes me to turn my focus inward and I had intended for the celebration of my 40th birthday to be a fairly private event with time for some journal writing and quiet moments alone and a little snuggle on the couch with my husband and kids. Alas, life (and my husband!) had other plans and the surprise party was just one of several occasions over the course of more than a week that were filled with friends, family, food and, yes, wine!

I took this turn of events to signal a sort of opening up of my heart and my life to mark the beginning of this new decade as a time that will include bigger events and broader horizons than I had originally imagined. And being thrown into a party looking like I just woke up...well...I had always hoped that by the time I was 40 I really wouldn't care too much about that kind of thing anymore and...well, I cared. But not nearly as much as I would have at 30 which I feel pretty darn great about actually. Happy Birthday to me!

Surging vs. Dwelling

I've been hiding. Hiding from holding myself accountable. To new goals. To endless lists. To my own health counselor. To my health counselor buddies who find me anyways.

Being a self-admitted over-achiever, this hiding out has been a welcome break from my usual approach of throwing my hand up and volunteering to be held accountable for whatever I am planning to be my next big giant goal.


In his blog post "What Consumers Do in a Downtown", Grant McCracken, an anthropologist affiliated with MIT, describes two modalities of consumer behavior. In a surging mentality, the world "teems with new features, new things, new opportunities, new excitement." In a dwelling mentality the consumer is focused not on the future but on the present, we "stop anticipating and start savoring."

So maybe I haven't been hiding so much as dwelling. But it has nothing to do with the economy.

Reality Check

Somewhere around May I got a wake up call that sent me running into my hide-out (aka my home) for a much needed breather and a long session of introspection that has focused largely on my role as a mom.

On Mother's Day week, my children's preschool held a tea for the Moms. My daughter's teacher created a project for the kids to list three things that their mom liked to do. The lists were decorated and posted on a wall and all of us Moms had to "find ourselves" on the wall.

I knew right away that I wasn't the mom who liked to: Eat Cheeseburgers and Swim Underwater. But when I started reading about the moms who liked to "read with me", "pick flowers with me", and "watch me ride my bike", I started getting a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach.

And then I saw it. A beautiful pink sheet covered in silk flowers that I recognized immediately:

My Mom Likes to:

Work

Drink Tea

Eat Granola

And there I was. I wanted to cry. No where on my four year old daughter's list was any mention of what I liked to do that involved her.

But she was amazingly accurate. Our lives had changed last year as I went to school and created a new career. And just when I was starting to feel that the transition was becoming too much for all of us, she felt it too.

In one swift moment, I knew our lives would need to change again. This was not the mom I intended to be. This was not the life I had meant for us to have.

So I have been hiding. At home. With my family. Hiding from all my lists of life goals and personal ambitions while I regroup as a woman and a mom.

It has been beautiful and painful all at once. And I am beginning to see how I am now ready to emerge into the next stage of my life with a new perspective on accountablity and self-care.

And a new vision for what my "unpredictable future" can be.

More soon on what that all means...