Turning 40 - It’s All About the Journey

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Are You Turning 40 and Looking for a Profound Life Change?

Have a great day!

I turned 40 yesterday.

Last week someone asked me how I felt about turning 40. My first words were, “I don’t like it!”

Then this woman who I knew, Michele, dropped dead. Literally. I guess she wasn’t feeling well, had just had bronchitis and shingles, was having trouble breathing, but still went out for a walk with a friend early in the morning. Michele was really competitive. We played softball together, and she played really hard. So I could see her walking through the shortness of breath, walking through the bronchitis. She got home, took her kids to school, came back home, and literally dropped dead in her kitchen. She had a defective heart valve.

This hit me especially hard because Michele was 39. She died 4 days before my birthday, and I remember telling someone, “Please let me make it to Sunday!”

So I made it to Sunday, but I spent my last day of my 30s at a wake for a woman who never made it to 40. A woman who had 3 kids too, all the same age as mine, a boy and two girls, like me. This woman was well-known and well-loved. The wake was a mob scene. They closed off the street, there were four sessions and the traffic was insane. I had to wait for nearly an hour to get in. God bless my friend Eileen, who was there for me and who drank shots of Grand Marnier with me beforehand to quell our nerves, then drank a bottle of wine with me afterward.

So I’m here to say, 40’s not so bad. I’m alive. My husband started a new consulting that requires him to be out of town most of the week. But hey, he’s working. The kids are great, even if they are fighting like cats and dogs all the time.

So in a total about face, I’m glad to be 40. I’m glad I made it.