I turned 28 today.
Birthdays are a weird thing for a lot of people, but especially women.
Every year, getting older means losing parts of your privilege.
Now more than ever, we are compared to impossible standards of perfect skin, hair, and attitude presented to us in society’s eyes as worthy.
(Freya India, writer of the Substack newsletter GIRLS, has a great commentary on the effects of young AI-generated girlfriends and the effects we are dealing with now)
It’s a gross concept, but it’s true. Beauty, youth, and the date on your birth certificate grant you or keep you from societal niceties.
We are told that we have a ticking time bomb on our bodies and if we don’t retrieve the right offer for a suitor, reputation, and job title by a certain age, we’re screwed.
We’ve run out of time. And you can’t gain time, you can only lose it.
Just like in the Barbie (2023) movie, cellulite (a very normal, natural bodily attribute of aging women) is to be feared and avoided at all costs.
But what happens when you avoid time?
You avoid life.
I was thinking last week about how much I love celebrating others on the day they were brought into this world. Mostly because I love a party. It’s normal to give the person in your life who is celebrating with extra gifts, food and love.
And then I thought about… as much as I love adding special things on birthdays, isn’t it equally if not MORE important to celebrate the things that we lose?
The tainted ideas?
The growing out of our past skins?
The things we’ve let go of and overcame in the past year?
The longer we are in this world, the more insight, beauty and relationships we can attain. The more we learn, the more love, the more we live is something I am far more interested in than the fear of aging and the opportunities we are supposed to chase.
Last year on my birthday I moved across the world.
In order to gain weight, insight and culture… (And Lord knows I did) but I’m more grateful for the things I lost rather than gained.
For my birthday this year, I wanted to share with you a list I compiled of the things I lost.
The ideas unattached to.
The limiting beliefs I unbelieved.
Amongst other things, here’s 27 things I un-learned :
1. Childhood friends are forever
2. Carbs make you fat
3. Travel fixes pain
4. Jesus only listens on your knees
5. Gender roles
6. Structure provides satisfaction
7. Earned rest
8. Your parents are bulletproof
9. Anorexia lol
10. All men are the same
11. Healing is linear
12. Paris is romantic
13. Red wine > white
14. “Niceness”
15. The ‘miracle’ morning routine
16. Rushing
17. “You’re running out of time”
18. Martyr-ism (all women do it)
19. Conflict is bad
20. Scheduled fun
21. Vertical relationships
22. Rejection
23. Pleasure = sin
24. Depression is cool
25. Attaching to outcomes
26. Ice in my cup
27. Keeping secrets from myself
Have you un-learned any of these?
Would you add any societal, religious, or cultural limiting beliefs you’ve lost over the years?
Maybe we shouldn’t be scared of the experiences, wisdom and lines on our faces.
Perhaps the crow’s feet by our eyes will give us wings.
Love and light,
JJ