I’m turning forty one in a few short months. Forty one!

In my younger years, I assumed the 40s would be the age I fought against…proof that my best years were behind me, and it was all downhill from here.

Now I think it might be the age where I finally arrive. There has been no meltdown. No spiraling in the middle of the night.

Just the unexpected realization that I am not afraid of this chapter. I am actually looking forward to it.

That does not mean the transition has been graceful. It has required a fair amount of reckoning.

There is the early perimenopause while still raising small humans. The wrinkles earned from decades of laughing, crying, and surviving things I once thought might break me. 

A body and mind that is evolving and asking to be met with patience and grace.  The divorce. The sudden, sobering awareness that life is both precious and fleeting. And the brain fog. The kind that sends you to Google for an answer, only to forget what you were searching for and remember it moments later!

But there has also been healing both physically and mentally and joy, oh so much joy!

Watching my daughter grow from a baby to a toddler to a child has been the greatest experience of my life. It has also been hard but the good days outweigh the bad.

I turn 41 in May and it has been (mostly) a wonderful first year of this decade- looking forward, not behind, to so much more this little life I have built has to offer!