Celebrating 40

For my fortieth birthday last month my friend Kerry helped me throw a wonderful pool party at her house. I wanted to celebrate because I'd finally gotten to a place of real happiness and a strong sense of self. I wanted to celebrate the wonderful friendships in my life and my love of Los Angeles. I wanted to party.

Well, it turns out I'm a Gen-X trend: Among Generation X women, age 40 is party time (USA Today). Honestly, I don't really identify too strongly with the women in this article because they mostly have kids. I enjoy this response from Dodai Stewart on Jezebel at little more: Is Turning 40 Something to Celebrate? She's turning forty next year, and I recognize a lot of the internal conflicts she's feeling as she approaches the big 4-0, particularly the ones about societal pressures and expectations.

What tickles me most about the USA Today article is that my mother turned 50 the year a major magazine cover story was "Baby Boomers Turn 50," and now "Gen-X Turns 40" articles are hitting as I turn 40. Gen-X, I love you guys! Children of our generations, my mother and I.

As for forty, I guess when I was much younger I thought I'd be approaching forty the way I approached that wedding that didn't happen - Determined to lose ten pounds and reach goals set for me by society. Instead, I found myself thinking about when Demi Moore turned forty and there were all those stories about the work she had done at that time so she could continue to be smokin' hot. I look at myself, and I just think, Why? My body isn't old the way I thought it would be. I realize that I am aging, but I'm certainly not aged.

Approaching forty, I wasn't in that make-sure-I'm-rockin-before-40 place at all. I was just living the best ways I know how and enjoying my life. I post this picture not to say, Look how hot I am at forty! (as if), but instead to say, Look how normal, how relaxed, how casually fine. I have gray hair. I'm not super thin or buff. I don't hide my wrinkles or my age. I'm just me at forty, living life, finding happiness, working towards my goals, valuing the good things, and releasing the rest as best I can.

Peace.

Comments

[Siel]

So happy I could celebrate your 40th with you! Also, I want photo credit! :)