Birthday month..
August 1.
Kinda big deal. If you are not already nodding in ‘ah-ha’ - it is my BIRTHDAY month. I LOVE my birthday month. Like REALLY LOVE my birthday month - I almost named each kid ‘Augusta’ type of love. I would say I always have, but that would be flat-out lying and I try to reserve fibs for more opportunistic ventures.
I did go through a several years of my birthday simply feeling like a CHORE… or an apology - a trite celebration that all persons involved quietly willed deliverance from. A birthday can feel so very lonely - either a testament of regimented, contrived relationships or the lack of intimate connection at all.
Fast forward a few years, & rewind several from now…
I broke up with the ‘outsourced’ birthday.
It is MY birthday. Seriously… what does it have to do with anyone else? I AM literally the party.
So every year I give myself a gift - the presence of my birthday, free of expectations and the boring, ritualistic bemoaning of age.
My stomach may still twist and pinch like a resistant snake when the obligated ‘Happy Birthday’ is sung by weary relations (and soars when matched with jubilation)… but THAT is no longer my birthday…
These days the celebration largely takes place in my HEAD.
With reverence and awe, I I revel at the magnetic pull that grounds my feet to the earth and think ‘has it really been another year’?
With intention and anticipaton, my heart stares straight ahead with unapologetic wonder and lets the stillness settle in - no feeble regrets for my ‘age’. Only the building giddiness is left to be invited to live this long.
With 46 looming, I have outlived much of humanity and so many women (seriously, SO MANY) I admire had only just begun at this turn in life. The future is ALWAYS evolving and it is still mine as long as I am breathing.
BEST of all, I feel like the sky is delicately PAINTING a crown on my head with the litheness of a master - no doubt it has done it before! Not a halo… even though it feels LIGHT and possibly transcendent when I am fully relishing in it. A birthday brings the EARTH and SKY into a full circle… again… sometimes with us and sometimes without.
If that isn’t grounding, I don’t know what is…
And I get to CELEBRATE. Gee whiz.
And justify ridiculous, celebratory decisions all MONTH long.
I am till working on the stinking goose pattern in stolen moments and maybe starting to resent it, a smattering of photo sessions, and getting gross with renovations while doing all the summer things!
Let the August love begin!