40 for real (plus 1)

Last week I turned 41. It was a good birthday, a prime number.
For reasons that will be clear in future posts, I decided recently to dust this blog off and re-engage.
I found the draft for the post below from last year.
The message still applies, especially in light of the current pandemic.

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So, today I turn 40.

In the last few weeks leading up to this momentous occasion, I kept thinking about my 30th birthday. That birthday landed on a clinical day while I was in the throes nursing school.
A beloved aunt had died a couple months prior from cancer.

My clinical rotation that semester was on a gynecological oncology floor. I'd been clear with my instructor that because of my aunt's death, I didn't want the palliative cases on that floor- it was just too much for me. She understood.
My patient that day, my birthday, was 40, just 10 years older than me, with a heavy diagnosis that was sitting on her soul (are they ever light, though?).
She was clearly in shock, mourning, depressed, angry and mostly nonverbal. All of these feelings/spaces are understandable.
I went home that night and, before my birthday party, cried for her. She was just 40! So young! So close to my age!

Here I am. 'Just' 40.
Looking back over the last 10 years from that birthday (and before!), and all the life I've experienced in that time, I realize there is no 'just' anything.
I'm not 'just' a mom, or 'just' a nurse practitioner. Or 'just' a movie geek, proud wife to an equally geeky hubby.
I am a gloriously ridiculous complex human. Like you. You are not just a 'just'.

I appreciate more and more the absolute random chaos of this world we experience.
I am struck by the significance of having your chosen people around you to help surf the waves of crazy that we all have to overcome.