MAMACADABRA

Nearly a month ago I turned 45.  If you’ve read this blog in the past, you know that for the most part I really enjoy getting older.  Obviously there are downsides – I am now in the next age range when completing forms and it’s not awesome.  It’s easier to get injured.  Harder to lose weight.  Botox feels more and more necessary.  My knee makes noises when I walk up and down stairs.  You get the idea.  But the increase in wisdom, self-awareness, and a better understanding of people and the world – it balances the rest out.

When my birthday came, I’d mentally recovered from the insurrection.  Biden was in office.  Things were looking up.  I felt, dare I say, optimistic.  I started thinking about what I wanted my 45^th year on this earth to look like.  How did I want this year to feel?  How would my world be different or the same on my 46^th birthday?  For much of the month of March, I asked myself these questions each morning when I wrote, and a picture started to form…

I want my 45^th year to be my most…

The phrase kept coming up in different ways.  I want it to be my most active year yet.  I want it to be the most love and joy-filled.  The most courageous of all of my years.  The most financial stability, the most healthy, the most honesty, the most success, the most solid marriage, the most independent and strong daughters, the most dreams come true, the most laughter, the most time outside, the most wind in my face, the most taking advantage of the many blessings we have, the most mindfulness, the most service to others, the most confidence that all of my people are in exactly the place they are meant to be.

The more I wrote about it, the more the idea settled in my bones.  This is not the year for fear or ego.  This is the year for everything else to take flight.

And to be clear, I don’t mean it’s the year for me to do more, work harder, or try to be more things.  I’m not sitting around lamenting about how I need to be more. That’s not my gig. Instead, it’s time to let go of fear, ignore external nonsense I can’t control, and let the really great things I already have and that I already am fall into place.

Letting go of fear is not child’s play.  It’s serious business.  We started skiing as a family this year – the first time since high school I went downhill skiing regularly throughout the winter.  I am really not interested in getting hurt.  Not one bit.  So I’m scared of speed and I’m scared to fall. But each time we went, I tried to do just a little better, to stop properly at the bottom of the hill, and to not go down the entire hill with my skis in a V because I’m so scared of hurting myself.  We went to Lutsen in February and I tried to be more aggressive with my skiing.  I fell four times (FOUR. TIMES.) but I got better.  Because, apparently, when you don’t let fear rule the day things like that happen. I mean, who knew?!

This is the year I look fear in the face – and I’m happy to admit to being scared – but it doesn’t get to win anymore.  I’m over it.  I want the most…    

I want to jam pack this year (and hopefully every subsequent year I get to spend on this earth) with the most joy and love and stability and peace and harmony and abundance and activity and courage as I possibly can.  It feels like the best way to celebrate my life, God, the Universe, and the phenomenal humans with whom I get to spend my days.