55 & Celebrating
Do you dread your birthday? Dread it?? Hide from it??
It’s YOUR day. (well and your Moms too-she had a little part in it. ) I’ve always loved being celebrated.
Who doesn’t??
What changed for me wasn’t whether I celebrate, but learning to stop expecting others to do it for me!
Learning to celebrate myself didn’t come from reaching a milestone or proving anything. It came from deciding that my life, my body, and my story are worth honoring—and from years of coaching women who slowly realized that DEEP health asks you to examine the habits, behaviors, and stories you’ve been living inside, not just the symptoms you want to fix.
You know, there’s a cost to holding everything together for everyone else. Celebrating everyone else and not yourself… I didn’t know what it would be at the time.
But I DO know exactly when it started.
It was the day my mother died.
November 2005. TWENTY YEARS AGO!
We had moved to Dothan that July. My now exhusband and I had two boys—three and five. He was starting his medical practice, and I had miscarried in September. I was twelve weeks along, and I was heartbroken. I wanted that third baby so badly. I was POSITIVE she was going to be my girl. But I didn’t grieve. Only 3-4 people even knew. I don’t think I even slowed my pace much.
Just focus on gratitude, right?? 🙄
And then my Mom died and I quit sleeping. I rekindled my lovely relationship to smoking and I cried a lot.
Alone. In a new town.
I didn’t want anyone to see me sad. I didn’t want to BOTHER anyone with my heavy emotions. That would make them sad, right?? -and that’s not what we are supposed to do with our emotions. (at least that’s what I thought) and the very person I would have gone to with all my tears and sadness was gone.
Like gone forever…and it felt terrible and OF COURSE I didn’t know how to communicate my needs. I didn’t want to go to therapy because who wants to dredge up old childhood sh*t.
Not me. I’ll pass on that.
So I took the antidepressant. (NO BODY even did blood work on me even to see if some progesterone might have helped my sleep (it would have), or if estrogen maybe could have calmed my frazzled nerves (it would have) but No.
We just didn’t know. No one talked about hormones back then unless they were being condescending. “OH, shes just hormonal.”
So yeah, I lost my Mom and went into an early perimenopause then…at age 32. So young, that I couldn’t even acknowledge my hurts.
CRAZY.
I started running because I heard someone once say running was like therapy, and so I ran. And ran…
I loved running. I even coached cross country. I ran half marathons. I ran 5-Ks It made my brain feel good. It kept my cortisol jacked up so I had TONS of wired and tired energy. Then come home from a long run and smoke. 🤣
Seriously-Im not making that up. It makes me laugh now. But I did it and of course it only added to my shame. I didn’t know what else to do with all the dang sadness. I just wanted to numb it out.
You can’t heal what you won’t feel.
My therapist loves to tell me, “unprocessed trauma comes out sideways”, and I totally agree. In the most unexpected ways the things that we run from in childhood, the alcoholic dad, the sexual abuse from an Uncle…all those emotions come out as anger. Because anger protects our sadness. It shields us from vulnerable feelings like hurt, fear, shame or disappointment. You know a super angry person?? There is a lot of sadness beneath their anger…
I didn’t want to be angry so I tried to do anything and everything I could to mask it which only made it worse. I couldn’t express it because it made no sense. I was married for over 20 years and we could not discuss my childhood hurts. The answer was always…just don’t think about it. (It DOESN’T work that way)
It was too much.
Too heavy and so I kept it swept under the rug until the pile began to show. Eventually, the weight became visible. What I had kept buried for years finally surfaced, and when it did, it was enough to tip the scale.
Who knew you could be grateful for so much pain and sadness???
I AM grateful I got a chance to exercise my demons. I resisted labels like trauma, or CPTSD and ADHD, I didnt think they applied to me…thats for people who have real issues right? I saw how easily shame could turn a diagnosis into an identity—and how quickly identity can become a reason to stop believing change is possible, they just believe the medical industry, take a pill and believe that there is nothing they can do. Labels can make people victims and I wasn’t going to be a victim. But allowing myself to explore labels helped to let go of the past. To make peace with my grief, loneliness, those feeling of being abandoned by the people that I loved so much. That takes strength.
Peace for me doesn’t look all calm all day everyday. Peace means I speak my truth without shame or fear that it’s going to make someone FEEL uncomfortable. It means I get to let go of the past and all their hurts and I allow myself to FEEL forgiveness.
I allow myself to cry when I need a good cry without feeling shame.
I was tired of feeling embarrassed or quietly ashamed of where I came from and what had happened to me—and because carrying all of that was costing me my health.
The weight showed up as exhaustion, reactivity, poor sleep, and a nervous system that never fully powered down. I never slowed down, or felt truly rested and people PRAISE that… 'Look how Strong she is.” We praise productivity even at the cost of our own mental and physical health.
I wanted to understand my body: the signals it sent, the patterns it repeated, the triggers and the moments my brain tried to fall back into old neural pathways that once kept me safe but kept me stuck.
Learning how to regulate myself without the need for other peoples constant validation has changed how I showed up in my life and in my work.
It gave me steadier energy, clearer thinking, and the capacity to build a business without burning myself out. As Gabor Maté (renowned physician, author, and speaker known for his work on trauma, stress, addiction, and childhood development) says, “Trauma isn’t what happens to you; it’s what happens inside you as a result of what happened to you.”
When you start paying attention to what’s happening inside—rather than blaming others or cutting people out to avoid your discomfort—you get to take responsibility for your own responses in a way that actually supports your health. Builds confidence. Promotes change from within.
What is your body asking for right now? Where are you exhausted, reactive, or numb? And what might change if you stopped trying to fix everyone around you and focus on your own needs.
Uncomfortable huh?
I want you to feel uncomfortable. I want you to be able to sit with your emotions and question why you feel that way, because honestly your body can’t carry it around anymore. It’s just too dang heavy after menopause. It’s time to let go. Celebrate where you are.
You are not going to heal your past hurts by yourself. Our egos just won’t allow that. Our subconscious does not want you to dig your hurts up by the roots. Our minds fear the disruption and perceived danger of confronting past hurts
It took me a long time to understand that healing required more than simply going to church or being told to pray harder. I heard “just keep praying” more times than I can count, and while faith mattered to me, it didn’t teach me how to quiet my mind, sit with my emotions, or listen beneath the noise. There was a part of me that thought my ONLY purpose was to give.
What I came to see is that God is not distant or external—God is present within us.
The Spirit speaks quietly, (trauma is LOUD quick to react) and if your body is constantly running around, flooded with a million things to do or exhausted, focusing on EVERYONE else it’s dang near impossible to hear.
But the body knows. It keeps the score.
Learning body awareness and mindfulness didn’t replace my faith—it deepened it. It taught me how to be still enough to listen, honest enough to look inward without turning away, and grounded enough not to let other people’s expectations dictate how I was “supposed” to feel or how long healing was supposed to take.
No one knows your story like you. No one knows what it’s like to be you or the situation that you are in. You get to learn to communicate that. You may think its not necessary but your just kidding yourself.
It’s costing you more than a good nights sleep. It’s costing you your authenticity. Your creativity. Your ability to be empathetic and to forgive.
It’s important I teach my boys how to grieve, what it looks to NOT run from your emotions and feel safe to be by yourself. To learn how to start over when things don’t go as planned. I want them to understand it’s not their responsibility to fix me or my emotions. I want that for them and their future wives. To know that people are allowed to have their emotions and their only job is to witness. Not fix.
Wisdom comes with age.
It’s usually the ones that love us the most that are the MOST uncomfortable with us changing. But it gives people the opportunity to practice peace, understanding and unconditional love, continuing to play it small in HOPES that someone will change FOR you…only leads to resentment. You can not base your life story on what you want others to think of you! (Not even your kids!)
For me, 2026 is about clarity, excitement and joy.
I am celebrating! I am turning 55 this year and I am taking myself on a trip of a lifetime!
I CAN’T NOT wait. My Mom and I never got to travel anywhere together. In fact, my Mom never left the country. She didn’t see how amazing her grandchildren grew up to be and she didn’t get to see that her daughter was finally able to make peace with her past.
This trip is for her.😘
And it’s for the version of me who once believed she had to make everyone happy to be loved!
If this has been the hardest year you’ve walked through, keep going.
There are blessings to be had if you stay curious.
Choose your word.
Whatever it is, it doesn’t need to make sense to anyone else.
You are not alone.
And you are not behind.
You're not too old, too fat, too skinny and DEFINETLY NOT TOO MUCH.
Do the thing you are going to regret not doing. Stop waiting for permission or someone to rescue you, or to make you feel important, or to celebrate your life. That is YOURS to figure out.
You get to do that for yourself. You always have had that power.
And if you’re still in the middle of it—still figuring it out, still walking through a really hard season…—keep going.
Your story isn’t finished, and there is someone out there who needs to hear what you have to say.
I would love to hear from you. 😘
Much Love,
