It's My Birthday

byJColley

358 followers

7 years ago

Today is my birthday; I turned 32.

Looking back on my life so far, I consider the first two decades of my life spent growing up. There were ups and downs, good and bad, and an awful lot of lessons... most learned the hard way.

The next decade of my life was wasted years. I let people, society, fears and self doubts convince me that I was not special, that I needed to stop reaching for more and that I had to learn to embrace a "normal" life and lower my expectations.

I spent a decade actively trying to throw myself into a life that was not at all true to who I am or what I want, and I was miserable. Except I also spent that decade looking for lots of ways to distract myself from the fact I was miserable rather than facing it.

Thankfully, at the age of 30, life came to a point where I had to face reality, take a hard cold look at the choices I had made and the life I had built and deal with it.

Then came the dark year. The year of purging. Losing husband, career, house, friends, belongings. Literally uprooting and moving, leaving it all behind in order to start over and recapture the 'me' that I had somehow abandoned a decade before.

It was hard. Unbelievably hard. Lonely, painful, scary. I had to face my demons and overcome my fears.

Which brought me to the age of 31. I started to rebuild, to recapture, to see the light at the end of the tunnel and to experience true, pure, amazingly powerful moments of absolute happiness.

I would find myself feeling a sense of peace and excitement just doing normal every day activities. Because I had reconnected with myself and was being true to who I am. It was a sense of wonder and joy I had forgotten was possible; that I thought was only experienced by lucky people during rare events. I had completely lost sight of the fact that this could and should be the way life feels.

I spent the last year rebuilding my foundation, reclaiming myself and my joys. Centering myself in who I am and what I want, regardless of others' expectations. And during this time, I found WA.

I don't think that was a coincidence. This decade, my 30's, will be the decade I create the live I was too scared to even dream possible. This is when I will successfully build a life I love every day. At the age of 40 I will look back on this decade as the one spent reclaiming life; the one where I took that bold step away from the pack and blazed my own path toward an amazing, fulfilling, incredible life.

WA is already a big part of that. Finding the way to free myself from a 9-5 grind where I'm giving up too much to someone else. WA will allow me to set my own hours and to do a job I am so unbelievably passionate about, that it will never feel like work.

I look forward to the rest of this decade together. I can't wait to see what we can make of it! It will be the best one yet.