Apologies in advance – this will be a rambling post with minimal fashion content.
I am turning 40 in August. I’ll be spending the next 7 months, give or take, sorting out my many mixed feelings about this. I would like to be able to say that they don’t exist, that this milestone is no big deal to me, that it isn’t even a milestone. But that would be a lie. I am trying to be better about confronting my self-lies, and also about sitting with difficult emotions instead of pushing them away and pretending they don’t exist. And even resisting the urge to “fix” them, which is my always my first instinct. That, too, feels like a kind of denial.
Reading Pema Chodron’s Start Where You Are was the nudge I needed to try a new approach: to get comfortable just sitting with the “ickiness” – feelings or thoughts that are challenging. That contradict who I believe (or want) myself to be. I want to better understand what lies at their root. It’s not always self-evident. I want to sit with them, without judgment, until I get to a point where I can release them, without judgment. That is the goal, anyway.
Not all my feelings around turning 40 and this season of life fall into the “icky” category. In this case, it’s the very fact that my feelings are quite contradictory and all over the place that creates the challenge; trying to reconcile them feels like an unmoveable burden. In fairness, this is not an unusual state of affairs for someone who is a 4W3 type; inner conflict and contradiction is our nature and I’ve learned to cope with a certain amount of it as part of my “standard operating procedure”. At certain times, however, it starts to weigh too heavily and when it does, it’s usually a sign that self-work is required.
As I do the work, I am going to focus on a mantra which has given me solace before: what you don’t have, you don’t need it now.
Yes, that is a U2 lyric. Fight me.
It’s a good grounding mantra for someone who is as incredibly privileged as I am, but inclined to focus on what could be better (externally and within). Along with practicing intentional gratitude, reminding myself that I have (and am) everything I need for this moment in time is reassuring. My BFF posted this on her IG stories last week, and it resonated in much the same way:
Around this time of year, I like to set a “theme” to guide my overall mindset for the months ahead. I don’t remember my exact word for 2019, but it was something around the idea of preparation and build-up. I felt like 39 was going to be the calm before the … well, not so much the storm, but an important new phase of my life. It was a quiet year of gathering strength. And yet: I don’t feel ready. I felt more ready this time last year, to be honest. Today, I feel soft and squishy, like a bug whose rock has been unexpectedly turned over. And I feel stuck in that vulnerable spot. And rather than try to build some false sense of forward momentum, I am going to just stop and sit here for a while.
Maybe that needs to be my word for 2020: here.
It is what it is. Here. Now.
Heavy, but I love this post!
The part about sitting with the “icky” is the hardest and I’m working on that too.
(I used the months leading up to turning 50 to do 50 random acts of kindness…it gave that birthday a very different flavour. )
That is a very cool thing to do and I can see how it would be perspective-changing.
In exactly the same boat – we share birthdays – and I was taken aback by all the feelings I am experiencing about turning 40. I thought I didn’t care but all of a sudden, I am feeling a lot of self doubt. About whether I am actually adulting or faking it? About whether I need to be even more ambitious professionally – I am doing very well but should I be reaching higher and farther? About whether I have the wisdom to be a parent? But you are right – only thing I can do is focus on the present moment. Here and now. That’s a good mantra.
Yeah, I think what’s taken me aback the most is how unexpected my conflicted feelings are. I thought I was more than ok with turning 40 – last year, I was looking forward to it. Now … so many questions. Some are similar to yours. I don’t want to call it a crisis of confidence or identity but there is an aspect of that to it.
I commend you on your vulnerability and introspection, and I am not trying to paper over that process, and I look forward to hearing your thoughts over the coming months.
That’s the disclaimer to my real comment, coming from way over here on the other side: being in your 40s is the best. The absolute best. You’ll love it.
I have been looking forward to this decade in recent years and that’s part of the reason why I’m struggling with this struggle. Like, I feel like there should be no struggle – you know? But I am hopeful that as I work through things in my own mind, I will be able to settle in and fully enjoy the new decade. I plan on it!
I often notice ways in which I (and many of us, I suppose) am burdened by our cultural myths about what “adult” “parent” “mother” are or mean. It’s a relief to me to step back from those myths and see myself as a person who was born and is living across a lifetime. There’s enough within that – love, mortality, health, growth, etc etc.
thank you always for your blogging
That is such an amazing way to look at it. I think a lot of my inner conflict stems from narratives running in my own mind that don’t align with what I feel at an intuitive/gut level. I am trying to find a way to clear the “noise”.
I just wanted to say thanks for this post. I needed to read your friend’s post today just as much as you needed it. 🙂
I hope it helped 🙂