You pull what's crowding out the good things and make room for new growth. Happy 40th birthday to me. I'll be honest, my first instinct was to treat it like a countdown.
Forty feels like the year the body starts sending memos. Estrogen quietly packing its bags. The slow arrival of puppy jowls.
A sudden, urgent relationship with protein, to the point that even my coffee has protein in it now, and I have made my peace with that. The questions show up too, usually around 2 a.m. What am I doing with my life?
What do I actually want to do with it? Why am I tired and achy and forgetting words in the middle of a sentence? And the one I can't quite shake: why are men getting more attractive on zero skincare while I run an 11-step routine and negotiate nightly with my jowls and still feel like they’re aging better than me?
We tend to call this stretch of life a midlife crisis. I understand the branding, but crisis isn't the right word for what I'm feeling. It feels more like an awakening.
A quiet rolling-back of everything that once seemed so urgent into something gentler and more deliberate. Turning 40 set me down squarely in the present, and truth-be-told there has been relief in that. Real relief, sitting right next to some real aches and a fog thick enough that I once went looking for the phone I was already holding.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
