Musings on turning 40

So I am officially 40 years of age. 

How do I feel? This seems to be a common question on ones birthday. 

How do I answer that? 

Well I guess I start by telling you how I feel today as me someone who has lived 40 years on earth as this particular human. 

With getting older comes life experiences, things to learn from and memories to cherish. There is more time to look back on and there is also more time to reflect on and evaluate. 

The question is how do I feel about my life right now. How much time do I have left. I hope that I am not even half way through life but that is one thing we can never really know. 

Here are a few of things I love about life right now and well, a few things I have personally learnt thus far.

I absolutely love being a mother to my dear Myki, motherhood is the most enriching and all encompassing thing I have experienced to date, it makes me feel truely alive. 

I love exploring my own internal psyche and learning about what it is to be human in this age, it keeps me deep satisfaction and joy to study this and then share and teach my findings. 

I love challenges and being pushed to extremes to be someone new everyday. 

I love drinking champagne and good wine with great company. 

I love long summer days and spending time chatting deeply with liked minded people. 

I love closing my eyes and just breathing. 

I love the freedom we have of travelling to new places and environments when we feel like it, something I will never take for granted. 

I love meeting new people and instantly connecting. 

Somethings I have learned from these last 40 years. 

Everyone is experiencing their own internal challenges, some more aware of it them than others but we are all working through something. Nobody has it all worked out. Be compassionate, yet kept your boundaries tight. With time I have learnt to allow the right energies in at the right time for me and let the others bounce right off. Doesn’t mean I can’t listen and be there it just means I don’t take on any heavy energy I don’t need to, and I can just let people live their own journey at this time. Carrying the weight of the world never served anyone. 

Feeling emotion is painful but necessary for a full and rich life. 

A lot of people are using something in their life to avoid feeling emotion and to be truely vulnerable and reveal their true selves. A lot of people don’t think they are good enough and are trying to be some other version of themselves. For me I used drugs and alcohol. I desperately wanted to be seen, heard and accepted. I wanted to not feel alone and I just wanted to connect. For some reason I did not think who I was good enough to get the attention of the ‘right’ people, the people who if they liked me I would feel good. But drugs and alcohol could give me that personality I longed for. Sure people ‘loved me’ but it was exhausting and fleeting as the real me revealed itself and I found myself escaping out the back door, unable to keep up the ‘Anna’ they had met. 

I can see it now in others in excess drug and alcohol use, in excess anything which has a manic quality, driven from fear and not being good enough. I see that using external things and external achievements as a way of trying to feel good is a call for help a call for self love and for that person to really go inward. Its a scary journey as it can be very lonely as you move away from the environment you have always known, and as humans we love connection so its hard to turn away, but so worth it on the other side. 

I also see others on this journey now and I have learnt that they have to be ready for it and to only offer help if they ask for it. 

I have learnt that to truely be seen and heard and accepted, not for anything that you have, be it a career, looks, money, status or have achieved is priceless and is the greatest gift you can give someone. I now make sure I give someone my full attention when I am with them, this includes interactions with strangers anywhere anytime. 

The ones who do this for you are your greatest friends they are the ones you need to keep close, actually there is no need to try as it will be effortless, no matter what happens in life they will always be there. 

It’s also ok that people don’t ‘think you are amazing’ you do not want to spend you precious time doing things with people that you kind of like anyways or that kind of get you. It doesn’t mean you think less of them or one is better than the other its just different vibes and that’s perfectly ok. It seems madness to 40 year old me now but I spent much of my life doing it. 

I guess the main thing I have learnt is that I am centre of my own universe, I create everything the good and the bad. I get to choose exactly how I feel and true freedom comes with accepting responsibility for everything in my life. Everything outside me is reacting to everything inside me. I am continuing to deepen this to truely get it as with being human comes multiple learnings.

Thank you for reading and thank you for being part of my life, if you are reading this we are connected and for that I am grateful for whatever it is we are co-creating together. Thank you for allowing me to do something I love share and express. 

Much love to you on your journey.

Anna xx