Over the weekend I turned 40! Contrary to the expected dismayed “How can I be 40?!” reactions that women of this certain age often have, I can honestly say I am THRILLED to be 40.
Comparing my 40 year old self to my 30 year old self, yes, I am a little older, but I’m also a lot wiser, thank goodness. I’ve learned a lot about what really matters and what doesn’t matter so much. My past experience with life-threatening disease has taught me to greatly appreciate milestones, because the simple fact is that I’m fortunate to be here to reach them. And I will never again take that for granted. I am excited and looking forward to learning more and to doing the work required in order to hopefully stay healthy over this next decade and onwards.
My focus over the last decade has been learning as much as I can about physical health, and now in this new decade I’m looking forward to working on learning more about mental and emotional health as well. Overall well-being combines many different factors, and as a sufferer of chronic anxiety I know first-hand that our emotional health goes hand in hand with our physical health, and it cannot be ignored.
One thing I already know for sure is that gratitude is so important and is a vital key to overall wellness. This morning I was reminded to take a step back and count my many blessings.
I received the tragic news today that a mom from my daughter’s Girl Scout troop passed away last night after years of battling cancer. She was around my age with three children. It’s so incredibly awful to think about another beautiful and important life cut so short. It’s devastating to think about the forever impact her death will have on her young family.
It breaks my heart, but much more so it makes me so very angry. She didn’t deserve this. Her family doesn’t deserve this. One more life stolen by sickness and disease.
It reminds me why I’m doing this blog. If I can in some small way encourage changes that help prevent this from happening to just one mom, one family, it will be more than worth it. We’ve all endured too much suffering from losing loved ones to cancer, heart attacks, obesity, etc. We have to stand up and say no more, no more will we take this sitting down.
Let’s do the work to educate ourselves and make the changes in our lives that will get us/keep us healthy and will keep us here for our families and friends. Then let’s keep working to get others on board.
PLEASE make taking care of your health, including positive changes to your diet and your lifestyle habits, an absolute priority, starting RIGHT NOW. While none of us can ever guarantee that this won’t happen to us, there is still much that we can do to stack the odds in our favor that we won’t get sick, and if even we do, that we will survive it. It is so worth the effort. It is so worth the work. YOU are worth it, and your family needs you here.
Today's terrible news is yet another reminder to me to always be grateful. I am grateful for my many blessings, my life, my family, my dear friends, my health, for second chances, for so much more. I am grateful for all that I’ve learned, all that I am learning, and all that I have yet to learn.
I am extremely grateful to be 40 years old and counting.
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