40 Lessons for my 40th Birthday (Part 1 of 4)

Darlene is celebrating the end of her 3rd decade sharing 40 lessons along the way.

I’ve never much cared about age as a number, but I’ve always loved birthdays.

I suspect that’s because I always thought judging someone’s worth, interest, or quality based off age is dumb. Age tells us so little about a person’s life. Their experiences, joys & adventures, and the meaning-making they find along the way.

Birthdays, for me, are about celebration. The number is almost irrelevant. The birthday being a container for connecting with the essence of that person in the world and expressing all the gratitude and love I can for their presence in my life.

All well and good…
Except this year I’m a woman turning 40.

My 30th birthday felt like a party ~ and party we did.

This year, turning 40 feels like a reckoning. An answer to the callings and tectonic shifts of the last decade of my life. In the last decade I’ve moved 6 times, got divorced, had a detour to Thailand, went to grad school, started a business, bought 2 properties (sold that first one in the divorce), married a second time, had 4 miscarriages, started multiple social media channels - you get the idea.

Where has it gotten me?

That brings me to this list…

To share my 40th birthday I’ve compiled a list of 40 lessons from this decade.
While I don’t wish I’d learned them sooner (I think all lessons come in their time) I want to hold them close to me as I enter this next phase of life: middle-age.

Today: the first 10 lessons & snippets of story behind them.
Stay tuned over the next few days, culminating on my 40th birthday. 🥳

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40 Lessons for 40 Years (1 - 10)

In no particular order.

1. Strong emotions won't break you

In 2018, 3 months after deciding to end a 12 year marriage, I went to Thailand to study yoga and collect myself. As part of that curriculum we studied how emotions can anchor themselves in the body (at the time a fringe concept that’s now made its way more mainstream).

During an emotional processing class my eyes started leaking. Then trickling. And then it was like a dam broke inside me. For 90 minutes I sobbed uncontrollably on a concrete floor, being comforted by a teaching assistant. I produced boxes and boxes of snot-filled tissues as all of the pain and baggage and frustration I’d carried for 3 decades burst forth from my nervous system.

Afterwards, I was exhausted - and more myself than I had ever been in my life.

Our emotions are information. The strongest emotions are the most important messages; but we’re taught to minimize them. When you feel you’re losing your mind, you’re losing the extraneous nonsense that keeps you from being fully you.

2. Listening is a super power

When I was a kid I never shut up. My uncle would promise me $5 if I could be quiet for 5 minutes… I’d regularly make it 90 seconds.

Learning to listen, not just to wait for another person to stop talking so I could respond, has been one of the most powerful skills of my life.

As a coach. Friend. Daughter. Wife. Podcast host. Teacher.

In a world where attention has become a monetized resource, giving yours is an invaluable gift. Listening is the currency of your attention and awareness.

3. Friends who love you, love you most at your weirdest

Most of my life I have known I was a total weirdo. I think differently than most people around me; often in ways that feel intimidating to others. I ask questions that make other people uncomfortable, which some people find repellant.

I spent much of my 20s trying to be less weird so people would like me.
Two things taught me that my weirdness is lovable: grad school and the pandemic.

Going to grad school I found a room full of other people who think differently and are asking big questions. In that room curiosity, inquiry, joy, and connection were celebrated and shared. I’d been searching my entire life for a room like that. Then, the pandemic removed me from the life I’d built where I was still conforming, trying to pass as “Not-a-total-weirdo”. In the absence of that pressure I got to be fully myself ~ and the friends that stayed were those who loved and celebrated that authenticity.

Your real friends love you more when you take the mask off. Those who react poorly when you’re fully authentic are in love with the mask. When your mask is off they worry what will happen if they dare to remove their own.

4. Your true passions find you while you're doing the work of living

Clients, friends, and students will sometimes ask me about purpose - how they find it, cultivate it, and sustain it. My greatest moments of calling have happened when I look for answers for myself. The most significant of the past decade happened while reading Martin Seligman’s Flourish, in which he describes the Masters in Applied Positive Psychology program at UPenn. In his book, Seligman says the #1 thing admissions to the program looks for is a sense that every student has been called there. Reading it the first time, I felt electricity move through my whole body with the thought “I’m supposed to go to that program!” As sure as I know my own name, I knew it. Even now, recalling that feeling I get choked up.

I wasn’t reading that book looking for calling. I was reading it to learn more about Positive Psychology and build long term wellbeing, even in my divorce.

Purpose finds you while you pursue your interests. Keep curious. Keep showing up. Keep giving your gifts to your world in ways that feel meaningful and purpose will reveal itself again and again.

5. Loving someone fully sometimes means breaking their heart and your own

It seems to make people uncomfortable when I share that I still do, and likely always will, love my ex-husband. He’s a genuinely good person who deserves an incredible life full of love, joy, humor, and fun. Upon realizing I could not be the one to give that life to him, nor him to me, it was time to set us both free. It’s the hardest thing I’ve done in my life so far.

Loving someone fully means doing what’s best for them, even if it hurts you both.
That includes loving yourself, too.

6. The bravest things are the scariest

When I look back on the challenges and achievements of the last decade the things that scared me the most - ending my marriage, going to Thailand, grad school, confessing how I felt to my current husband - they had the big rewards & they took the most internal work.

Bravery is not the absence of fear. In fact, fear is a necessary ingredient to being brave. Without fear there’s nothing to overcome.

7. You have to be honest with yourself first

The last 5 years have been an unraveling of sorts. On the surface what’s unraveled was the tension in my body and the false beliefs and ideas that were keeping me stuck. Underneath was the willingness to be honest with myself about how I felt emotionally, what it meant in my life, and what I was actually capable of.

You can’t be honest with your partners, friends, family, and the world if you haven’t fully admitted to yourself what’s really going on. It starts inside.

8. Love is unconditional, commitment is not

Of everything I learned the last 10 years, this was probably the most impactful on boundaries, communication, and the nuts & bolts structure of life.

In a romanticized version of unconditional love we fall for a puzzle piece that completes ours and things click. We ride off into the sunset, ne’re to be wanting again.

In reality, it’s so much more complicated. Committed love takes time, skill, compromise, and an accounting of so many hidden costs. Getting clear on the non-negotiables, first in myself and then with others, freed me to be authentic in my relationships and build moments that actually work for me and my needs.

In a world where commitment has so many consequences financially, socially, emotionally, and physically it’s okay to have non-negotiables. Get clear on what they are and communicate them with authenticity.

9. Body acceptance is more powerful than artificial body positivity

The body positivity movement has preached self love and affirmations and all that jazz, but so many of their axioms have felt hollow to me. False positivity gave me the sense that I was doing it wrong.

Shouldn’t I be loving on my back fat?
Praising my giant, awkward feet?
Celebrating when I split the inseam on my pants? (It’s the pants’ fault after all, right?!)

In reality, letting myself admit there were parts of me I don’t like allowed me to love the totality of me. My body has given me many, many gifts; along with an abundance of challenges.

Starting with acceptance freed me to admit the parts I didn’t fully like, which grew into more authentic self love.

10. Not everyone will get your weird. Not everyone is supposed to

When I was a kid I was picked on a lot. An awkward nerd who was poor, too loud, and routinely missed social cues, I was a perfect target for a lot of crap. As a young adult I wanted desperately to be accepted. To be popular. To be cool. I spent a lot of energy trying to get people to get me so that I’d be included.

See #3 above ~ finding belonging with people who actually get and like me set me free. And #7 ~ being honest with myself about how exhausting it was to pretend like that.

With self-acceptance and authentic belonging has come a sense of peace I wouldn’t trade. I don’t feel like I have to perform a version of myself for others, anymore.

There will be people who get your beliefs and your message, who align with your direction. Let them carry you forward in your life. Leave the rest to their own path.

Stay tuned…

Tomorrow: 11 - 20
Tuesday: 21 - 30
Wednesday (my actual birthday): 31 - 40

Then we’ll return to regularly scheduled content the rest of the month of December.