I always feel so blessed on my birthday, and for many reasons. First, I have so much love around me on my birthday. From text messages with twenty different emoji’s or posts on my Facebook, my birthday is definitely a day where it is all about me. My family and my friends make sure, that on this particular day out of 364 other days, I feel loved and am treated like a Queen. What a gift that is in itself! Second, my boyfriend always takes the time to shower me with meaningful gifts and again remind me how special I am to him and our fur babies at home. And the third reason I feel so blessed on April 15th, is because I know how lucky I am to see myself age another year and blow out the candles on another Funfetti cake (yes, my Sister-in-Law makes the best!) They always say, you don’t know how much something means to you, until it is almost gone and unfortunately, there was a time in my life, when I wasn’t sure if I would ever celebrate my birthday on April 15th, ever again. A time where candles could have been tears of mourning and a time where all of these feelings of being loved and feeling special, could have been distinct memories. So to me, my birthday is a pretty big deal. It is a day where I celebrate beating the odds and a day where I proved that miracles do happen. 

Soooooo… yeah, things just got pretty heavy, but for me that is why my birthday means so much to me now. I can’t even begin to count the number of eye rolls I have witnessed or the “please don’t remind me” comments, people almost always say when you wish them “Happy Birthday!” People look at birthdays as a ticking time bomb, counting down the years, days, and hours they think they have left on this Earth. And don’t shake your head thinking you don’t participate in these eye rolls. Even if you try to have a positive spin on your birthday, the reality is, we all get older. But the realty for me  how I look at things differently now, when I cam so close to never having a birthday again.

April 15th is a day that I jump for joy and celebrate having all of my family and friends around me. I celebrate the people that were by my side everyday during my recovery and I celebrate the new people that have entered my life, changing it for the better. I celebrate and reflect on the last year of my life and I think, “Hey, I am here. I am happy. I am loved and I am healthy.” To me, my birthday’s have become MY DAY. A day where it is all about me and nothing else. I deserve to have April 15th be my special day. I deserve to feel like I am Khaelessi, the Mother of Doodles and I deserve to be reminded how incredible I am as a daughter, a sister, an aunt, a girlfriend, and a friend. I deserve it all!

I look at April 15th as my New Year. Yeah, everyone celebrates New Year’s Day on January 1st, but why? The way I understand it is, come April 15th a new year begins for me, and as I am typing this post, I am running through all the things I wanted to do once turning 30. Thirty is a big year. For a lot of women who turn 30, that emotional breakdown sets in if they haven’t married, purchased a home, or even had children yet. And I cannot figure out why?! Why is 30 the magical number, that you have to have your shit together, with a husband, children and a minivan? Why isn’t it 32? Or 37? Or even 18? Why as a society do we characterize how someone’s life should be at 30? Listen, if you are 30 or past 30 or even younger than 30 and have your shit together and did the whole marriage, home, children deal… then great, kudos. Here is a pat on the back, a gold star sticker for your success. I am not trying to knock you, because maybe that worked for you and you wouldn’t change one thing in your current life. Or maybe in 2 years, you will be sitting at home heating up a Lean Cuisine, while your husband is asleep on the couch and you still need to pick kid 1 up from soccer in 30 minutes, take kid 2 to piano, and bathe and feed kid 3. Just in that moment you might start regretting that you rushed through such an awesome time period in your life, your thirties

But for me, as I turn 31, with no kids, no husband, and DEFINETLY NOT a minivan sitting in my driveway, I understand and recognize that I have such a blessed life, were it would be foolish not to celebrate all that I do have. My twenties were highs and lows and a lot of second guessing myself or finding myself thinking I was invisible to everything that we as twenty year olds think we can escape. I made a ton of mistakes in my twenties and I still live with those consequences, but I move forward recognizing the lessons I learned. My thirties though have been the bomb dot com. I am comfortable in my decisions, I know when to keep my mouth such (correction: I am learning when to keep my mouth shut), and I know that 31 is just going to be a year of celebration for all that I have been through, all that I have survived, all that I have learned, and all that I plan to dominate and succeed in my coming future xo