Pass the retinol

Well, the little girl celebrating her 10th birthday in this photo - in all her puffy paint decorated t-shirt glory - is turning 40 on Monday. And you know what? I’m feeling pretty good about it - today anyway. And by today I mean at this very moment that I’m writing this.

Birthdays were always a big deal in my home growing up: presents, special meals and lots of extra birthday love. Even for my parent’s birthdays - maybe even especially for my mother’s. She has never feared getting older. Sure no one likes the extra lines on their face or a declining metabolism - and just like any other early 90’s, middle-class home we had a cabinet chock full of SlimFast shakes and Mary Kay skin care. All that aside, to this day both of my parents have embraced life and the inevitability of aging. Even when I was supremely obnoxious and built a bridge out of couch pillows in between our living room and kitchen so that the grown ups had to go ‘over the hill’ while my brother and I could crawl under it.

I told you I was obnoxious.

Of course this birthday is made easier by all the positive changes over the last few months: from adding Strawbaby to our family to selling my book - the future looks pretty good. Not so dissimilar from when I turned 30: I was seven months pregnant with Jackson and, honestly, my altered age demographic paled in comparison with the looming title addition of mother. My 30’s would test me in ways I never could have imagined. In fact, had I been able to correctly imagine my future, I would have been considered pessimistic and morbid - at the very least hormonal. Who knows how my 40’s will turn out, but per a recent blog I’m trying not to worry about that. 

When internally debating the topic of this week’s blog I considered writing about how I’m not bothered by this big milestone birthday because losing Adelaide at such a young age has allowed me to appreciate my own relatively long and full life. That living to 40 and every year after is not guaranteed so we should appreciate the time we have - commercial appeal for youth be damned. This felt fairly cliché though, and I quickly abandoned it. That is, until I tried to type something about how I didn’t need a birthday to recognize my gratitude for this life - and the last half of that sentence got stuck in my fingers. 

I am beyond grateful for the love, friendship, happiness and financial security I have found and fought for. But I’m certainly not grateful for the hardships. In fact, that specific line, “gratitude for this life”, is not something I could have written in full honesty not so long ago. 

In the days, weeks and months following Adelaide’s death I definitely thought that it would be easier to just not be around. Not dead specifically, but certainly not alive. I had determined that Jackson and Miguel would figure out life without me and would ultimately be ok as long as they had each other. Now, before anyone freaks out: never did I make plans to end my own life or consider the means in which to do so. I truly never wanted to take my own life, I just wasn’t grateful to be alive - to have to live with so much pain - I figured not living would simply be easier. Thankfully, somewhere deep within my last remaining rational brain cells, I knew that easier wasn’t the same as better and I began my arduous climb back to gratitude.

So, here I am staring down 40 years lived.

My scars may be deep but my heart is resilient… and admittedly stubborn and maybe still a bit obnoxious. I AM grateful to be turning 40. To have lived and loved and to hopefully continue to do so for more years to come. Inevitably I will collect more scars along the way. There isn’t much I can do about that - I don’t have to be grateful for them, but I do need to accept they are there. The wrinkles on the other hand, I do not accept. So, bring on the retinol and allllllll the serums. Please and thank you.