I Didn’t Always Care About My Birthday. Now I Do.

A quiet kind of gratitude. 🤍

I didn’t always care about my birthday.

But that’s not entirely true.

Something shifted.

When I moved into my 40s… and especially after Derek passed away… birthdays stopped feeling like just another day.

They became more intentional.

More… present.

Less about celebration. More about awareness.

And now, turning 49…

feels different again.

This is the last year of my 40s.

And there’s something about that

that I can’t quite explain,

but I can feel.

My mom didn’t make it to 49.

And something about that changes how you hold time.

Not in a loud way.

Not in a dramatic way.

Just… quietly.

You start to feel it differently.

What it means to still be here.

What it means to get older.

It stops being something you resist.

And starts being something you’re grateful for.

I used to think joy had to be earned.

That I needed to get to a certain place first.

Have more clarity.

More stability.

More control.

Now I know…

it’s much simpler than that.

It’s going to get the ice cream.

It’s saying yes to the trip.

It’s doing the thing that lights you up, even if it doesn’t make sense to anyone else.

Not later.

Now.

There’s a version of life that looks good on paper.

And then there’s the version that feels like something you actually lived.

For a long time, I was building the first one.

Now I care about the second.

Not the resume.

The feeling.

The moments that don’t need to be explained, justified, or turned into something productive.

Just lived.

No one is going to give you permission to live the life you want.

Not your job.

Not your circumstances.

Not the “right timing.”

And the truth is…

you don’t need permission for people to like you either.

That one took me a while.

I used to believe everyone was my friend.

My grandmother used to say, “not everyone is your friend,” and I didn’t believe her.

I thought, of course they are.

Of course they love me.

But life has a way of softening that belief.

People change.

They move.

Some leave.

Some don’t leave, but they shift.

They don’t fall off the board completely… they just move to a different place in your life.

And you learn something you didn’t know before.

You don’t need to hold onto everyone.

You don’t need everyone to understand you.

You don’t need to make yourself smaller so you’re easier to keep.

You just need to be honest about what feels right for you.

You don’t realize how precious time is when you assume you have a lot of it.

You wait.

You delay.

You tell yourself you’ll get to it when things settle down.

And then one day…

you stop waiting.

Not because everything is perfect.

But because you understand something deeper:

there may not be a better time.

I don’t need a big celebration this year.

I don’t need anything loud.

I just want to be somewhere that feels like me.

Good food.

Ocean air.

A slower pace.

Something that reminds me…

I’m here.