I used to think 40 was so old. Like genuinely, geriatric-level old. The kind of age that meant something was winding down, something was closing, something was over. And here I am facing it down and thinking — actually believing, in my bones — that it’s about to be the best decade of my life.
I want to tell you about turning 30, because I think it matters to this story.
I turned 30 living in Charlotte, in a cool neighborhood full of fun families, traveling, running a business, raising two little boys, outside constantly, in arguably the best shape I’d been in since before kids. Life was really good. I remember thinking: this is just the launch. The 30s are going to be everything. I leaned in hard.
And there were stretches of the last decade that were genuinely everything. But there were also years that were really, really hard. Years where I got completely lost in the chaos of being a mom of four, of building and closing businesses, of navigating Oscar’s health and Olsen’s diagnoses and surgery and waiting rooms and insurance calls and all the invisible weight that comes with being the person in your family who holds it all together. Years where I looked up and couldn’t find myself anywhere in the picture.
I spent a lot of the last decade trying to be the person I thought everyone else wanted me to be. The relatable mom. The put-together one. The woman who had it figured out. I dressed for other people. I said yes to everything. I took up just enough space to be seen but not enough to be truly known. And somewhere in the middle of all of it I got really tired. And I got really lost. And I got really far from myself.
But 40. 40 is where I get my groove back.
My kids are old enough now that I can focus on me a little. Not instead of them — never instead of them — but alongside them, in a way that the baby and toddler years simply didn’t allow. And I am taking that space and I am filling it with intention.
40 is when I get fit. 40 is when I get strong. 40 is when I get hot — and I mean that in every sense of the word. 40 is when my morning routine happens every single day without negotiation. 40 is when I say no to things that don’t bring me joy and yes to the things that light me up, even when they scare me. 40 is when I go back to the golf course and back to the parts of myself I set down somewhere along the way and forgot to pick back up.
40 is when I make a lot of money and use it to travel and do really cool things and build something that matters. 40 is when I stop waiting to feel ready and just go. 40 is when I am unapologetically, completely, finally myself — the person I actually want to be, not the person I’ve spent years performing for everyone else.
I’ll be honest with you: a few months ago I wasn’t feeling this way. A few months ago I was at my heaviest, my most exhausted, my most disconnected from who I was. I was getting dressed every morning and hating what I saw. I was running on empty and calling it normal. I thought maybe this was just what the second half of your thirties felt like and you just had to survive it.
And then something shifted. Slowly at first — a decision here, a habit there, a podcast that made me cry on a sidewalk, a Sunday afternoon watching the Masters that cracked something back open. And then all at once I could feel it: I was coming back. I am coming back.
So if you’re dreading 40 — if you’re where I was a few months ago, looking at that number like it’s a door closing instead of one opening — I want to say this directly to you: you are wrong about what’s coming. Not cruelly. Just honestly. You are wrong, and I cannot wait for you to find out.
And if you’re already in your 40s and you got lost somewhere in the middle of it — the kids, the career, the health stuff, the weight, the decade of putting everyone else first — and you’re just now starting to find your way back: me too. We’re doing it together. It is not too late. It is not even close to too late.
I thought 40 would be awful. I’m halfway to 80, for crying out loud. But these last few months have me so genuinely, deeply excited that I can barely sit still with it. Not because everything is figured out — it isn’t, not even a little. Oscar’s MRI was Thursday. My closet is currently a disaster zone of past versions of me. My golf swing is somewhere between rusty and completely rebuilt from scratch. My life is very much still in progress.
But that’s exactly it. It’s in progress. I’m in progress. And for the first time in a long time, that feels like the most exciting thing in the world instead of the most exhausting one.
40 is when I get to just be me.
I’ll see you there.