The Youngest You'll Ever Be

My birthday is coming up and I have been celebrating it all week long and really feeling blessed and full of gratitude that I get to age another year, that I get to learn more lessons, I get to create more beauty, and I get to share it with the world. What a blessing! 

I came across a post on Threads and someone quoted "This is the youngest you'll ever be..." and that really struck me. I never really feel any age to be honest, I don't ever feel like I am defined by my age, but society likes to define us, especially as women. But the words, the youngest you'll ever be. It made me feel both a little sad and full of hope. Sad and wistful that I will never be as young as I was 5 minutes ago, hopeful because I have free will and can choose to make the most and best of my time here, however long that is. 

So, this week, I have been celebrating my birthday in ways that really bring me joy and nourish me. Slowing down to make breakfast, taking time in the middle of the day to get lunch with my husband, drawing a long bath with rose infused oil and luxuriating after spending hours harvesting lavender from my garden to dry in bundles, treating myself to lovely new foundational garments that make me feel feminine and touches on my sensuality. 

It's little things. Nothing big, nothing grand. Little acts of kindness and beauty for myself to celebrate another trip around the sun. To celebrate making it here, to this point where I am now. To celebrate my youth, perhaps the passing of my youth and strolling into middle age adulthood. Gently, grounded, grateful.

My birthday is not for another few days, so I have been thinking of a couple other things I really would like to do that celebrates that I am L-I-V-I-N-G. I am alive! That my ducks are in order so if I so choose, I can go bathe in the sunshine by the river while eating berries and not have to worry about things. Isn't that a beautiful thing? Isn't that just absolutely lovely? Some people define LIVING differently. For me, it's feeling peaceful. For me truly living is looking forward to things I get to do in the future while being present in the here and now. For me living is quality time with friends, quality time with my partner, cuddles with my senior aged dog. For me living is loving my life and accepting the consequences of the choices I have made to get here. For me living is realizing what I can and cannot change and not feeling burdened to heal the world or fix the world. I am small and insignificant in the grand scheme of things. Living is healing myself first, healing my spiritual and mental home, before I ask others to heal themselves.

Today the weather is rather gloomy, it's humid and grey outside. Not the best combination, but so what? That won't stop me from finding some small way to celebrate my birthday! Maybe I'll go to the rose garden. Maybe I'll go to the cemetery and bring flowers to put on graves of women who died very young. I used to do this once a year, I stopped because...life got too busy. 

Maybe the whole point of this post is that I have been reminded as of late that my life is what I make of it. To stand still once in a while and take a look and see if I feel good about my life, if I am actually AWAKE living my life, or am I sleepily just trudging along. I feel so many of us are. Just trudging along. I never want to be trudging. I'm not going to say "my life isn't perfect" because perfection does not exist and also subjective. What I will say and know to be true, is in this moment, I am content and feeling peaceful. 

Cover Image: Jan van Kessel, 'Study of Insects, Flowers, and Shells', c. 1659