39.

It’s a been a hot minute since I have hopped on here. I missed it- truly.

A couple weeks ago I turned 39. But I think I am just processing it the last couple days.

Processing the aliveness I feel. The years and years of work to get to the point of what I can experience today. Which is full, unconditional love of myself.

January almost broke me to be honest. The beginning of the month started with a cold, which made sense, as I recently had processed a deep event in my life and so I knew my body was expelling suppressed emotions and trauma and upgrading in vibration.

Then I experienced a fall on the ice the middle of January that was very intense. I was coming back from skiing with the family and got home, and while holding my youngest son, I slipped on the ice by the steps to our house, all of my body weight and his landing with my mandible/face hitting the steps. Fortunately, my youngest was not injured!

It felt like my life flashed before my eyes those first 15 minutes. Every program I had ever received in my life regarding concussions and head injuries surfaced. The decade of working as a nurse in the hospital with those with brain and head injuries. And in the hours that followed, I realized that everything I have been working towards brought me to this point: How would I interpret this event? How would I treat myself? What stories would I repeat?

If you haven’t read David Hawkin’s work, I cannot recommend it enough. It’s been a cornerstone of healing for me these past few years, alongside Jesus’s teachings. In his books Letting Go and Healing and Recovery, he helps one to understand that the body obeys whatever construct we hold in mind. Whatever programs we choose to believe and repeat to ourself become out biology. This has been further proven with Bruce Lipton’s work, Joe Dispenza’s work, Dr John Sarno’s research and countless other physicians and philosophers.

So I had the opportunity to create my experience and biology. That week was a lot of laying in bed, grounding myself with sensations of intensity all throughout my body and head. Emotions that surfaced. And the week that followed I wound up developing an intense cough and cold, where it felt like my body and capacity was completely depleted.

In the week that followed, I expected myself to bounce back. To be “back to normal,” back to baseline, business as usual. But I wasn’t. And that’s where the true healing work began.

My body has been very tender the past few weeks. I have needed a lot of extra rest, slowness, more support and help from my husband. Cancelled plans, neuro rehab exercises, somatic work and craniosacral support. Working with my inner child, the one who was afraid of something bad happening again and being back to square one.

And then I realized: this is what changed. A year ago, something like this would have collapsed me. I would have been so hard on myself. I would have expected myself to “do more” and “push harder” to heal. My inner critic would be having a platform.

And who I am today, at an “age” and time of 39…it is different.

I can sit with the emotions and sensations. I can do less. I can let attunement and safety and love be my anchors and guides.

I’m reminded that shit happens. Life happens. But everything that has ever happened is a set up for greater healing. For greater relationship with God. For greater relationship with ourselves. The universe is benevolent.

As I watch the Olympics this past week, I am reminded of how adversity always makes us stronger, should we choose. We always get to be the one perceiving the mind and reality, not the other way around. We are the only person who ever gets to judge and decide what our experience is. We either can come into agreement with a contract (ex. diagnoses, labels, changes of identity) OR we can come into agreement with a higher program. A higher contract. One of benevolence. One of love.

Nothing separates us from love and the Christ. Emotions and sensations come and go, but our identity never changes. As a child, we think with our heart until early programs or trauma comes in to infer separation. Separation from the Christ is illusion. Romans 8:38-39 shares “And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love. No power in the sky above or in the earth below—indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Lately, I have been really working on un-programming myself from the program of “aging.” All the things that have been regurgitated to me for decades by society, men, and other women about what to “expect” when I get to my 40s, and as I cross another threshhold of life. Through my studies of other cultures and Native American traditions, it is fascinating to me that aging is experienced completely differently by others in the world because they’ve held a different belief system in mind. To be honest, I have been looking forward to my 40s for several years now, and I just continue to believe my best years are in the now and moving forward. How could they not be? Why believe that time changes anything?

We aren’t moved into our new home yet, and I keep thinking about how everything is unfolding exactly on “time.” If time is just a construct, then I can just enjoy what each day brings, the miracles it holds, and then let everything evolve exactly as it should. So I have been letting God teach me about patience, waiting. About learning how to lean into support during heavier seasons. About letting things be slower. Because truly, what’s the rush?

Carl Jung is known for sharing “Life really does begin at forty. Up until then you are just doing research.” And I think what he really means, on a deeper level, is that time never binds us unless we let it. That everything in our experience is research and learning. If our cells in our body completely regenerate the entire body every seven years, then that means life is always beginning in us. We always can leave the old behind and start fresh. And our body does that for us, whether we realize it or not.

As I sit here with my cup of lukewarm coffee and journal next to me, I think about how my journal is simultaneously filled with things I still want to accomplish in my life, while the next page is filled with what I love in my life right now. And the next page is filled with what’s hard, what hurts, what is stretching me.

And I realize that all can exist in the miracle of my now. In the realm of love. In the generosity and reciprocity that is life. And maybe, that realization has been the greatest birthday gift of all.