4 Decades

Today, I turn 40 years old. More than anything I wanted to make some time today to sit down at my keyboard and write something to commemorate the day and share a little wisdom I’ve learned over the last 40 years.

Leading up to The Big 4-0 I wasn’t sure how I’d feel. I wondered if I’d wax poetic about my lost youth and dread starting my age with a 4 now instead of a 3. But the truth is, now that I’ve arrived at this milestone, when I reflect on the last 4 decades of my life, I’m just so grateful that I’m still here. I didn’t always believe I would make it this far and I’m thankful for each day. I want to hug that little girl who fought so hard to get here and let her know “we made it”.

39 was an incredibly difficult year. After 10 years of begging for affection and to be treated right by an individual who I later found out didn’t respect or even like me, thought my writing was stupid and that me sharing my trauma was ‘attention-seeking’, among other things, I felt silenced and trapped. Then, someone came along who saw my worth and made me feel like myself again. Leaving was terrifying and unfortunately while I was seeking peace and happiness and stability again, this individual was hard at work behind the scenes spreading lies in an attempt to separate me from my support system and psychologically harm me further through attacks on my child.

All this to say I was really battle-tested this year. We are finally okay and healing again, but in the midst of this my little sister passed away in April this year after a brief and courageous battle with breast cancer. For reasons still beyond my understanding, I was left out of her end of life completely. She and I were very close and I miss her every single day. Her death and the confusion surrounding it absolutely destroyed me.

Despite everything, I’m optimistic. I’m stepping into my 40s with so much light and so many dreams, but I also wanted to reflect a little on the journey that brought me here and share some of the things I’ve learned in my 4 decades of life.

The First Decade: Unsteady Foundation

I was born into fire and had to grow up way too fast. My childhood was traumatic and filled with male rage and control. This was where my anxiety started. This was when my PTSD was born. I learned how important books and imagination are for self preservation and my true love of art and writing began. This was the decade I learned creativity was what would lift me out of darkness. It became an obsession and I started collecting and filling up spiral-bound notebooks with poetry once we escaped my dad and were somewhere safe.

I struggled a lot with self worth, with abandonment. I’ve since learned that’s quite common for children who survive childhood abuse to move through life with a sense of worthlessness. It was a constant little reminder plaguing me: “if your own parent could treat you that way, you’re not worth much” and to be honest that feeling never really went away. I still try to over-perform and over-deliver to prove my worth because deep down I want to prove I can be valued and loved.

The Second Decade: Growth and Healing

Adolescence and early adulthood were a messy time, but isn’t that true for everyone? Some of the things I learned in the first ten years of life became more refined in the second. Like art and writing especially. I started to learn that if I wrote about my negative feelings, it made them easier to understand and then they’d get smaller. I have since learned that there is a term for this: “shadow work”. It’s a skill that I refined further as I got older, but I can trace the roots to my early teen years, when I started writing and journaling more seriously. I was able to start healing myself, or as I would call it “figuring out my shit”.

This was also the decade that I got a lot of external validation for my art, which made me start thinking of it as a dream to do professionally. I started sinking all my free time into practicing portraits and sharing my art and writing with a broader audience, including friends and classmates. I learned about the power to heal through art and writing, not just for myself, but for others who are able to relate. Creative expression became more than just a hobby, it felt like it was necessary for survival.

The healing was ugly. This was a decade where self-harm was the worst and as much as the writing and art were helpful getting my mind to where it needed to be, I didn’t always have the tools to do that in a graceful or healthy way. I was self destructive and didn’t want to live, and at one time I even wrote a letter and had a plan to end my life. I’m grateful everyday I didn’t follow through.

The Third Decade: Death & a Reason to Live

I never grew up wanting to be a mom the same way a lot of little girls do, but when I got that positive pregnancy test, everything changed. My body wasn’t just my own anymore, and I quit self-harming immediately. Being a mom became the most important thing to me, and I invested all my time and energy into projecting love and care onto this tiny little human that depended on me. Dave, the father of my sweet child, passed away suddenly a few weeks after we became parents together. We planned to spend our lives together, were very much in love, and his death shattered the beautiful little life we had planned.

There I was, standing on the precipice of our future and staring into the abyss, holding this tiny spark of light. I decided to go back to school, which I was able to do 100% distance learning so I could be at home with my child in the process. This period of time taught me the value of ambition and hard work in order to achieve stability. I got special permission to complete two different 2 year programs simultaneously, and I graduated with distinction. More than anything, I wanted my child to have the stability that I lacked growing up. I’m grateful every day that I was able to be the mom I needed to be at that time.

The Fourth Decade: Dark Night of the Soul and the Dawn that Followed

The last 10 years have taught me that I should trust my intuition. If something doesn’t feel right, it’s not right, and no amount of begging for scraps of attention and affection will convince someone to treat you the way you deserve if that person doesn’t care about or respect you in the first place. I’ve learned that making myself smaller and shrinking to fit someone’s idea of what I should be will only result in me very slowly losing the core parts of myself. I’ve learned that, like a flower, I need to be nourished in order to bloom and my 40s are going to be spent around more people who nourish my roots as much as I nourish theirs.

I’ve learned that when you walk through fire, you’ll lose some people before you get to the other side. Mourn them and move on because those who really care will be waiting for you on the other side and cheering you on. I’ve learned to be unapologetically and authentically me, because I am showing my child by example what it means to radically accept and shine in your own light. I’ve learned I don’t need to apologize for who I am anymore.

I’ve come to believe that some people are on this earth just to live through the dark spots, to experience trauma and rebirth on a cycle, to understand the nature of trauma and fight for your truth. A very wise woman I’ve known most of my life recently told me that my super power is healing with grace from the darkness, coming back stronger, and using my experience as a guiding light to help others. This year, I want to live up to her belief in me and earn those kind words.

Now that I’m able to write without hiding it, you’ll be hearing more from me very soon. Until next time, be kind to each other and I hope you find a reason to smile today.

I’m back baby!