I turned 36 last week, which was the first birthday of my thirties that hit hard. Oddly, it hadn’t happened to me in years – not since my existential meltdown of turning 30, when I decided to write off all my dating experiences as one colossal failure and run off to Asia with some deluded basket case of a man who soon proved to be even more detrimental to my sanity. (What can I say? I lived.) My early thirties flew by, marked by a tumultuous one-year relationship, writing a book, meeting Dave, getting bogged down by Covid and soon after getting pregnant – events that didn’t give me time to so much as catch my breath and acknowledge that the earth was actually spinning around the sun and I was getting older. Then, time slowed down a bit, December 2022 rolled around, and suddenly I was on the speedway across the midpoint of my thirties, with the next stop landing me at 36.
Thirty f-ing six. To somebody who loves to narrate her entire life through the jovial, free-spirited prism of youth, it was a sort of brutal realization that I too, am not invincible against time, and am quickly inching closer to the threshold of the big 4-0. While I recognize that the world has recently turned on its head and that legions of women are rewriting what forty looks like in the most incredible way, it’s still hard to shut down the patriarchal little voice that whispers to you that your “stock” plummets in your fourth decade, when you are no longer distracting construction workers with your mere presence. It’s the same voice that tells you that all your professional and personal milestones should be accomplished by then, and that you should be blooming with children and accolades and financial prosperity, and a small entrepreneurial endeavor to boot. Of course, men don’t hear this voice, which is how we get 54-year-old nouveau riche bachelors parading around St. Tropez, thinking they are God’s gift to Senequier. Next year, that’s going to be my energy.
To add insult to injury, this also happens to be the year that popular culture and media decided to inform me that I’m getting older. It appears that, while most of us were locked into our disassociated little Covid survival bubbles, a generational shift was taking place. Suddenly, Gen Z is in the driver’s seat, steering the cultural zeitgeist into an unfamiliar new direction with their TikToks, their TV shows, their trends – which, ironically, are driven by the Y2K resurgence of our youth. Not only is my adopted city of LA flooded with exposed midriffs that take me back to my most triggering years and memories (think Atkins diets and anorexia-peddling tabloid headlines), but it also prompts the realization that the terrible fashion of my heyday has now done its own circle around the sun and has returned to grace a whole new generation of taut twenty-somethings. It is simultaneously entertaining and discombobulating, like a weird time machine in which, just yesterday, I was a Bungalow 8-prancing representative of the generation du jour, and today, I’m a 36-year-old mom who spends the bulk of her time on Zillow. Where did the time go? What happened? Do you feel this way?
While the acknowledgment of this vast space between myself and my younger years feels disarming and, at times, ever-so-slightly depressing, no part of me would want to go back to my twenties. Perhaps, because I still remember its darker moments – the narcissistic guys, the deeply-rooted insecurities, the f*cked up body image – all the stuff that takes so many years to work through and come out of on the other side. At 36, I’m finally happy with how I feel when I wake up as myself each day, I’m proud of my body for the first time, and I’m absolutely thriving in motherhood. So why the freakout and the nerves and the stress over the passage of time, when the present feels so much better than the past?
I think the answer is that I’m simply unsure of where I go from here. As many women who pause to raise small kids may know, the break can often take a deeper toll on you than you anticipate. You continue working part-time, but you also lose some of your contacts, your connection with the “real world” and, dare I say, your relevance. Some women go through the most beautiful of reinventions – a good friend who had a baby four months before me recently switched lanes and opened a Pilates studio in Wine Country, and is currently thriving in her second life. And yet, my own transition hasn’t been as smooth. I don’t have an entrepreneurial endeavor, or a thriving mommy blog, or even a fresh brand of feminism to peddle. Instead, I have a toddler, a family on two coasts, and a giant time management issue that always seems to be blocking me from grounding myself in something bigger than the never-ending checklist of the day-to-day. And yet, I know that I’m not done, because I have the desire, the energy, the hunger to create something that is bigger than me, something that resonates and moves hearts and incites change. I just have no idea what that this may be, which often leaves me feeling frustrated and disheartened, as though I may never be able to assemble the puzzle pieces of my life in a way that leaves me feeling excited, driven and fulfilled.
I came to Miami ten days ago with a mission: I would celebrate my birthday with a big fancy dinner, hand my over daughter to my mom, pluck myself down at my desk, and set my intentions for the foreseeable future. Well, I made the plan and God had a good laugh. By the time we arrived in Florida, my daughter was sick with a hot-off-the-press New York flu, which she consequently passed on to me. My parents, in the meantime, returned from a week-long Costa Rica adventure with a fresh bout of Covid Throw in one busted baby lip for good measure, and my grand plan was suddenly a grand joke.
With no other option available, I surrendered. I cancelled my big shindig and spent my birthday with Dave and Sasha, followed by a takeout sushi dinner with the rest of the germ squad. Oddly enough, it was one of the best birthday I’d had in a long time – because I was too sick to overthink anything, because there was no pressure to get dressed up and socialize and perform, because I was with family, feeling safe and taken care of and loved, because I could just be.
There was so much grace and comfort in the experience that it got me thinking that, maybe, I need to stop fighting my way upstream and surrender in other areas of my life as well. Maybe, people too have seasons – seasons to ground and seasons to bloom, seasons to focus on family and seasons to grow professionally. I had been trying to pack everything into this one season, rather than just focusing on my daughter before she’s off to preschool, dabbling in smaller projects that satisfy me creatively (this newsletter being one of them!), and taking my time with the next step – all of which, I would be remiss not to note, are incredible luxuries. Perhaps, there is no big picture to assemble, and the most important puzzle pieces are right here in front of me. I have my health. I have my family. I have an abundance of time in my hands to make things happen. I also have the most loving place to come back to in the case I fall flat on my face (which I ultimately will) – a place that will always hold space for me and love me, no matter what. I don’t need to choose a direction and make a gung-ho plan for a bionic future. All I need to do is take each day by the horns and keep learning, working, evolving, writing, mothering – all the things I will continue to love for as long as I keep breathing in the air of this big beautiful planet. Maybe, this is my plan for 36.
I just turned 40 and this is the smartest, sexiest, most confident I’ve been and it just keeps getting better. Society blows for telling us our worth is based on how sexually desirable we are. Do not listen. You still get hit on at 40 and beyond and it is still annoying. Growing older is a privilege and it is a wonderful experience. When I hear/read women younger than myself fret about aging I just want to hug them then shake them. You are going to LOVE yourself at 40 and beyond. 💕