Thirty-Nine So Far

I've been 39 for just about a month now, and it already feels like a lot longer than that. So much has happened this past month, including:

• My first wedding anniversary with my husband

• Visiting my family in my home state of Utah

• Camping with my son during a heatwave

• Watching my husband continue building his career in different and exciting new ways

• My career growth

• Preparing to move my oldest to college

• And also preparing for a new puppy
  

My oldest child with our new puppy.

Oftentimes, these things don't encapsulate the emotions that go with them. My emotions have been all over the place because growth and change, even if it is good growth and change, are not easy.

My children's father has moved to an apartment in the city, and I have a lot of fear for my soon to be 13 year old son as he embarks on 50/50 time in the city vs. the suburbs. He's nervous too. As we sat together on our last night in Utah, watching the stars in my cousin's backyard, he began to get tears in his eyes and said to me, "I won't get to see the stars in the new apartment", and I knew in that moment, not only was he sad to leave the people who are our favorite people, but he's also scared of the change he has to deal with this week. Our lives have changed so much in the last 4 years as we all figure out how to settle down in new homes, new schools, and with new people to call family.

Our lives have been nothing but change. I wanted to pinpoint a specific event and say "since 2017..." but for him, it's been his entire life.

Change, growth, and scary things all the time and forever. It's something I'm working on writing about, not just in the 39 book, but in my book about support, too.

I'm honestly not sure when it's all going to settle down. I would hope that at least here in this home, I can give him a kind of stability I've never been able to before.

What I thought the 39 book would be is shifting, and I suppose that's the point.

It's been a big learning month.

The day before my 39th birthday, I sat with my oracle cards, asking myself questions about what I'll be learning in the coming year. That's very "woo-woo," but I'm also learning about myself what I might believe in when it comes to spirituality, and what I use to guide myself and my decisions.

The themes of "bridges" and "pilgrimage" came up along with the idea of burning everything to the ground, to rebuild, which I have definitely done.

With those themes, I'm leaning into the idea of bridging who I want to be with who I was, and also allowing myself to be curious about who I could be, and exploring the possibilities, while also rebuilding the life that fell apart. Essentially, it's not as if I died and am rebirthed, but I've always been me throughout my life but with different people and experiences. It's ok to bring parts of myself along for the journey, or revisit parts of myself that I used to enjoy, rather than thinking I need to be a whole new person when I turn 40.

I'm kind of thinking that "CHANGE" is the name of the game.

Like my son, I've never really known anything else. What does true stability look like? I'm not really sure. Maybe the stability is within ourselves.

This book might be more "woo-woo" than I realized. The joy is in the journey, so too is the pain, heartache, growth, lessons learned the hard way, and the beauty of discovering more about yourself.