I’ve never been a fan of my birthday. An August baby, I often found most of my classmates on family holidays around then and it’s possible I carried the disappointment from those early years into adulthood. My birthdays never seemed to “measure up” to all the expectations I had drawn up in my head but couldn’t express, afraid to be labeled “greedy”, “selfish”, or “materialistic”. So I kept those expectations quietly to myself while secretly stewing resentment and disappointment.

I used to hate my birthday. But now, I have embraced birthdays, like new years, as a ritual of sorts, a chance to look back and reflect and a time to prepare for what’s to come. With a clear demarcation of a beginning and end, birthdays serve as a marker of sorts.

As moms, we tend to focus more on our children’s birthdays and we naturally do this on our children’s birthdays- think about their development, milestones but why not do that on ours as well? It’s now become an annual tradition leading up to my birthday, to reflect on the past year and jot down things I’m grateful for, as many as the age I’m turning! So this year, I wrote down 38 things (!!!)

And especially this year, something changed. It may be that this entire year has been one long lesson in “managing expectations” (something that maybe just comes with the territory of having three kids) or maybe that having had three kids has fundamentally changed me from within. But I also shook off any shame of asking for things this year: when my husband asked me how I wanted to spend my birthday, what I wanted, what I wanted to eat, I specifically laid out my wishes, advocated for my needs and it was the best birthday yet:)

Just some thoughts on birthdays, gratitude and self-advocacy.

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