It’s a ME day <3

It’s my birthday today. 49 years old…woo hoo! Today’s post will be less about X and more about me…as it should be on our birthdays.

I go through these random moments of wondering if this is really my life, etc..and it can happen at any time, like in the middle of the movies with my daughter the other day. I was trying to concentrate on the plot but my thoughts kept returning to my inner commentary… “Is this really your life?” “Can you really be going through all of this right now and be sitting at the movies with your daughter?” “Maybe I just need to wake myself up?…”

Wake up call…life will never be as it was. That said, it could be same or it could be better. Life is what we make of it, right? “Out of suffering comes transformation”, right?? I follow a great website called The Betrayed Wives Club. Today’s post was about having compassion for yourself and it was a perfect gift for me on my birthday. All of your blogs and posts are a perfect gift to me. I get so many nuggests of wisdom this way and they always seem to come at the exact time for the exact feeling I’m feeling. How do you all do that? (haha!) I know why….It’s because we all go through the same emotions for different reasons every day.

So back to the compassion thing….

I’ve never been given much attention by my husband for my birthday. Well, in his defense it’s so close to Mothers Day he was usually able to group the two days together and run to the store at the last minute. He’d sit me down while he and the kids took the cake and a scented candle out of the grocery bag and stand over me beaming, waiting for me to give him the proverbial pat on the back he needed for a job well done (note of thanks to MIL for that one)….and I did it, because I thought that I should be thankful…I should feel blessed…I’d been given this wonderful life to stay at home and take care of my children. Every year on my birthday I drew more and more inward and I didn’t know why. I told myself that I hated the attention… that I didn’t need praise like he did. I guess I was resentful…or getting there.

Part of my transformation through this blip in my big, wonderful life is to honor my birthday. The day I was born. The day I was blessed to be put on this earth to live my life to the fullest. I guess it’s part of the whole “being grateful” thing I’ve got going. I’m ONLY 49! I’ve got alot of life in me left to live so why not start living it?

First things first…

I made sure my kids knew my birthday was this week …
(whereas in the past I went the entire day without a mention…codependant, anyone?)

I gave said kids a gentle reminder that Mothers Day was coming up…
(they need to understand that this is THEIR day to honor me, not necessarily their Dad’s)

I made plans to go out to lunch with a girlfriend and booked myself a 1.5hr massage…
(you bet I did!)

I will honor this day I was born and my contributions that I’ve made to my life, my family’s lives and this world I live in…

Then I will get in the car and pick up the kids…

and drive to soccer practice…
and drive to yoga…
and help my daughter study for her Chem test…
and curl my other one’s hair for school tomorrow…

– and I’ll cherish every minute of it.