Embracing 40 with Style and Pizazz!

It was birthday week in our household this week – not just one birthday, but two!

Amy officially became a teenager on Wednesday, so on Tuesday evening the rest of the family secretly blew up a pack of a 100 balloons so that Amy would wake to a room full of balloons. We only had a few balloon casualties along the way.   The next morning, hubby and I smuggled approximately 96 balloons into Amy’s room before she woke up.  We covered her bed with as many balloons that would stay on her bed, and then waited in the doorway to her bedroom for her alarm to go off, which didn’t take too long thankfully. Amy really loved waking up to balloons.

A few minutes later, everyone made themselves comfortable on our bed to watch Amy open her presents.

Our family present to Amy this year was a Sunburnt tanglewood electric guitar and amp.   She’s been talking about this guitar for many months, and we have taken her to visit the guitar a number of times at the Mooloolaba Music store, so Amy was excited to find that it now belonged to her, and it was wonderful to see that beautiful smile light up her face when she realised that her love was in her hands.  Over the last few days, we have been enjoying listening to our little rockstar.  We can’t wait to hear what she can do with it over time!  Amy has been learning the acoustic guitar for about 2 years now so there may be a few adaptions for the electric guitar, but I feel that she’ll adapt quickly to her new guitar.

So, the second birthday in our household this week was mine.   I know a woman should never share her age, but I am pretty happy to embrace mine.   Like Drew Barrymore said recently “I feel like I am in the right place for where I am supposed to be in life”.   So here I am at 40, and I feel good about who I am, where I am at in life, and what I am about.  I’ve decided to just embrace 40 and all that it contains.

It seems as though something magical happens when you turn 40.  The best way to describe this magical phenomenon is that you get a real appreciation for life. You suddenly realise how short life really is, and the insecurities we feel in our 20’s and 30’s fall away, and a new fresh confidence rises up from within.  It’s a nice feeling.  I still feel young, so I am going to take on dad’s quote, ‘your only as old as you feel’. Forty is just a number.

Its funny how reaching ‘forty’ provokes such emotion in many women.  A friend of mine said that she cried for two weeks when she turned 40.   She didn’t feel as though she had achieved anything special in her life, so turning forty to her felt like a slap in the face.    I personally prefer to be grateful for all that I have been blessed with rather than the cup half empty.  Sure we all have regrets, but we can’t rewrite history, so we have to accept what is, and make the decision from this day forward to do whatever it is that we want in life, and just accept the past regrets for what they are.  Learning experiences.

My greatest achievement in life is my family, and I don’t think I could actually be any happier than where I am right now.  I have a growing bucket list of experiences I would like to have. I don’t have ‘things’ on my bucket list because I don’t need things – just good relationships and fun memory experiences for myself, but also for our family.

Forty is supposed to be the year of new beginnings, new expectations, new adventures and a time in life when women in particular grasp their worth.  A metaphoric line is drawn between the old and the new, and I think that one of the tell tale signs that a woman is turning forty is her ability to make time for herself.

I think I am going to really enjoy this year.   Bring it on….adventures await.