I turned 42 and cried my eyeballs out
Hi friend,
Yesterday I turned 42 . . .
And something has shifted that I never saw coming.
I used to be terrified of aging - not the wrinkles (though yeah, that too🥴), but losing the vitality that made me ME. Becoming one of those boring moms. Feeling suffocated by marriage and family life and after-school carpooling. Living a life so “normal” that nothing felt fun or precious anymore.
But here’s what I’ve realized: I was actually afraid of the wrong thing.
Because here’s what really happens as we age…
We put all the pressure for the above onto our children and husbands—as though they could hold the entirety of our purpose and identity for us. I always felt unsettled by the idea that living with, loving and serving them should fulfill me SO DEEPLY that I would never need a part of myself that was . . . mine.
This is what dominant culture would have us believe.
You can hardly say these things out loud.
That your children and your safe house and your husband aren’t enough.
Without running the risk of being seen as ungrateful or out of touch.
But I don’t believe our loved ones are meant to hold the weight of our aliveness.
And I believe when we put that on them, we begin to feel a little, well, dead inside.
Because we are avoiding the juicy, sensuality of our own fucking self.
We have no choice but to escape our bodies and set up permanent shop in our anxious minds.
It is so understandable that we cut ourselves off from our wild feminine.
That we are so over-burdened—mentally, emotionally, physically—at work and at home, that pushing and proving and performing and being productive is the safest choice.
It’s not easy for a modern woman to believe it’s even possible to feed her own soul while also juggling *gestures to all this.
And when life REALLY happens (because. It. Will.) - when kids get sick, parents age, marriages crack, jobs disappear - our sense of aliveness gets stamped out completely. When urgency is threaded through every action we take all day, our bodies try to protect us. Compartmentalizing. Freezing. Feeling less.
This is the aging I should have been afraid of. Not the physical kind. The INNER kind.
When my daughter was at her sickest with PANDAS, that’s the most not-me I’ve ever felt.
I was not in my body most of the time. There was no spaciousness. Hyper-vigilance is an understatement. And one day I woke up and the fire was out, and with it, my spark.
It had taken all of me.
My eros, my pleasure, my connection to myself and my body—there was the faintest pulse.
I was using every tool I had. Showing up in all the ways I knew how.
And it wasn’t close to enough.
As I sat there in the ruins of my motherhood, I knew that to phoenix from these ashes would require so much more than before. Because trauma is like that - it takes too much for too long. I knew repairing the deepest parts of me back to joy, vitality, and trust would take time and many, many reps.
So I made a choice. Not to “bounce back” or “get over it” or any of that bullshit.
I chose to resource myself back to wholeness.
This is why I went to Peru.
This is why I’ve had consistent sessions with a healer (multiple) for years.
This is why I create space on mine and our family’s calendar to just . . . be.
This is why on this year’s birthday, I planned nothing. And in that space of nothing, I let myself feel it all - the grief I always carry around my birthdays, the love from people who showed up to hold it with me. The beauty AND the pain.
Here’s what I’ve discovered on the other side:
We can age with our eros intact.
Not eros as in sexuality (though that too yes please!). Eros as in ALIVENESS. That spark of soulfulness. Cell-deep pleasure, desire, vitality.
Yes, our physical bodies age. No one escapes that. And honestly? I’m more concerned about my physical aging now at 42 than I used to be 😭 (that’s a whole other email).
But you know what feels like a HUGE win? My insides are handled. Which makes the outside stuff feel like… maintenance.
The physical aging is inevitable. But the INNER aging - the deadening, the loneliness, the disconnection, the loss of self? That’s repairable. I always know I can get my spark of joy back no matter how old I am and what life has thrown at me.
This is the work of aging well…
Of holding the tender vulnerability of maidenhood slipping through your fingers, while welcoming the new gifts of the season you’re in.
Of checking in constantly to gauge if you’re giving yourself permission to live while you’re alive or if you’re so distracted looking young and staying busy that the deepest, most you parts of yourself are in a deep, deep sleep.
It’s not all as bad as I thought.
We can repair the wiring of our bodies.
We can reignite our spark of soulfulness.
We can explore how to rekindle our joy
We can realize that pleasure is so much deeper than the buzz of a glass of wine.
Our bodies and souls welcome us home, understanding why we needed to leave in the first place.
So yesterday I turned 42, and I honestly cried my eyeballs out (it’s kind of tradition). But I also had a sober dance party in my living room with my family and felt so deeply present to the miracle of our life. The grief AND the joy. The fear of aging AND the overwhelming abundance. I’m not afraid of losing myself anymore.
Because I’ve learned something the anti-aging, capitlistic, patriarchal culture doesn’t want women to figure out: Our vitality, purpose, value doesn’t have to get squashed as we age. Even when life happens - especially when life happens - we can choose to resource ourselves back to wholeness.
We are not prisoners of our physical appearance.
We can be wildly alive for something truer and more satisfying. The assignment I’ve accepted is not an anti-aging one. It’s to age with my eros intact. To not be so distracted by what they’ve told me to fear, than I miss… me.
I LOVE YOU! CHEERS TO US!!
Gervase
PS: This is the work we’ll be doing together in Tulum in a few weeks - creating the space to resource ourselves back to wholeness, to reignite that spark, to age with our eros intact.
PPS: Thank you to so many of you for the beautiful birthday wishes. I am so so grateful for this community. ❤️