Dear Anna,
Today, you turn
40 years old. I am full of so many hopes for you! I’m sure you remember that turning
30 was a difficult thing for you. You mourned for weeks about the passing of so
many years of ‘wasted’ time. You hadn’t accomplished all that you thought you would.
You were scared about feeling the same way at 40 as you did at 30.
Well do you?
Do you own a
house? Did you graduate from WGU and go on to become a teacher? Do you and Jack
both have steady, sturdy jobs that you can build the rest of your life on? Do you
have money in a savings account and not live paycheck to paycheck? Did you have
another child? What child(ren) you do have, have they lived happy, fun-filled, active
lives up to this point? Did you finally figure out what it would take to make you
lose weight and stick with it?
Anna, even if
the answer to any of those questions is “no”, I want you to remember that that is
okay. At 30, you beat yourself up over the loss of time. How silly is that? What
were you hoping to do with it, lasso it up and keep it in a jar in the cupboard?
It doesn’t work that way, kiddo. (And yes, even at 40, you’re still a kiddo). What
ever you HAVE accomplished is exactly good enough.
At 30, you had
a really hard time believing in and accepting that last sentence. Instead, sentences that began with, “I should
have…”, “I didn’t…”, “I was supposed to…” consumed your thoughts on
those long weeks leading up to the big day. (Which you spent in St. Louis
You had a
hard time reminding yourself that, by 30, you did have several accomplishments
under your belt. You were able to say that you had not been without an income since
you were 14 years old. You had met and married a wonderful man, and had worked very
hard at a happy, mutually respectful relationship with him. You carried, gave birth
to, and nurtured a beautiful baby boy, who was (and probably still is) the light
of many peoples’ lives. You maintained friendships with people whom you cared
about and who cared about you.
I’m sure at
40, you have even more great accomplishments that are the markers of time well
spent. My hope is that you did accomplish some of those things on that list
above – mostly that you completed your degree and had another child. But if you
didn’t, I don’t love you any less.
The whole
point of your 30 Meltdown was to help you to remember that no time is truly
wasted. The life you lead is the life you live, and the cliché is true: you only live once. So DO NOT spend another minute
lamenting the shouldas, couldas, and wouldas of the past 10 years. Hopefully,
you learned the lesson way back when you were writing this next sentence…
Every minute
of every day, you choose to live a certain life. Acknowledging the life you
chose in the past is the only way for you to purposefully choose a different
life in the future. The power is in the realization that it is ALWAYS a choice,
and the choice is YOURS.
Choose
wisely.
Unconditional
Love Always,
Anna
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