Today, I am officially forty years old. Remember when that meant “over the hill”? This makes me laugh. Because forty definitely doesn’t feel like over the hill. Of course, I have had my moments!

Still, birthdays can bring up so much. The human side of life – age related things like health, regrets, and the inner desire to do our best with the time we have left. Sadness but also joy. There’s a letting go that happens before we embark on a new year.

I’ve always believed that age is just a number. Even as a child, I never felt my age. I was the youngest in my family, surrounded by older siblings, and people often called me an old soul.

Growing up, I struggled to connect with people my own age. It wasn’t only about age—it was about shared interests, depth, and personality. I loved listening to older people tell stories. I found comfort in their perspective. I wasn’t always into what my peers were into and felt like I’d rather observe, consider and analyze it. Ironically, I feel younger now than I did at twenty. Obviously, it’s not because I am not aging, but because I’ve stopped carrying so much of what once weighed me down.

I know myself better now.
I trust myself more.
I make choices that feel aligned instead of expected.
I understand how to care for my body, my mind, and my emotional well-being in ways I never did before.

Honestly, if anything, I feel that I am aging backwards.

I have spent a significant amount of time dedicated to understanding myself and healing — doing the inner searching bit and the lessons have been surprisingly consistent.

Trust yourself.
Accept life as it is.
Feel your emotions instead of repressing them.
Come back to the present moment.
Remember that life is often more than meets the eye.

And my favorite: Spend time doing the things you love.

Because they do something for your health—physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual and that is the best gift.

Grief and Gratitude
I’ve also learned that grief is part of the process. It isn’t only reserved for disasters. Grief exists inside beautiful moments, too.

In fact, I think the deepest grief often lives alongside the deepest love. The more I fully acknowledge and appreciate what I have — family, friends, home, creativity, intuition, health—I am also aware that nothing lasts forever. That awareness can ache and I have resisted it for many years.

I wonder if that’s why so many people struggle to name what’s good or focus on the bad in their lives. Maybe, gratitude feels vulnerable because it brings up the possibility of loss and that it might be taken from us? We get attached to our memories even if they hurt and that attachment leads to suffering.

Yet, life is always bigger than one thing or the other. It is both:

Love and grief.
Joy and loss.
Hope and uncertainty.

They’re braided together, and at forty, I no longer want to separate them. I know that’ll make me suffer. Instead, I wonder what I can create from them?

Do I hide what I feel?
Do I express it or share it?
Do I blame life, for being life?
Or do I be with it and allow it to make me gentler, wiser, and more alive?

Compassion and Creativity
When I look back at my younger self—the one who felt so much older than she was—I see someone carrying a lot of fear.

That fear led to resistance. It became the need to push harder, prove more, and put up a fight. I don’t judge her for that, she was doing the best she could with what she knew at the time. In fact, I have a lot of compassion for her. Another gift of aging is that compassion I feel towards myself.

I now know that:

Constantly pushing eventually becomes burnout.
Living in resistance eventually becomes exhaustion.

And…

Life isn’t asking me to fight it. It’s inviting me to take the beautiful, complicated mess of it all and create something AMAZING.

And I intend to do exactly that, by:

Creative Outlets.
Laughing loudly.

Loving deeply.
Trusting myself.
Receiving what’s here.

Here’s to forty. And here’s to living a healthy and joy filled life.

With love and light,
Orly