Reading time: 4 min
Table of Contents
Key Takeaways
- Inner constancy — Decades change your body and biography, but the core self rarely shifts.
- The weight of living — Hormones, grief, uncertainty, life’s tumult accumulate — learning to see them as a gift is the work.
- Shedding the optimization myth — At 44, a good day is simple: meaningful work, vegetables, a hug, thirty minutes of genuine enjoyment.
I turn 44 on Friday. The kind of birthday that arrives without fanfare, carrying only the quiet weight of having lived.
The Conversation That Came True
When I was sixteen, my mother and I argued about something I have long forgotten — but I remember the line she threw at me: “I don’t feel any different on the inside than I did when I was younger.” I rolled my eyes. The kind of certainty only a teenager can muster. How could she live four decades and still feel like her?
Now I know. You don’t feel different. You carry more.
The Relentless Reframing
Aging sneaks up. You spend so many years being the youngest in the room that you nearly miss the moment when that status evaporates. The actors on screen — younger. My daughter’s teachers — younger. The mothers in my playgroup, the attorneys at my volunteer post, even the elected officials I work with — all younger. Only at church, where I am easily the youngest adult, do I feel fresh.
I have to remind myself, especially on Instagram, that the influencers hawking cosmetic treatments and miracle cures are mostly thirty-ish. An age that feels like yesterday and also a million years — five careers, two cities, and a family ago.
I remember thirty. My metabolism hummed. Perimenopause hadn’t come for my hair, skin, waistline, or brain. I hadn’t chased a toddler through a pandemic or lived through two Trump administrations, war with Iran, and the unleashing of AI. I hadn’t nearly died bringing my daughter into the world — an experience that feels more like the discovery of gravity than a life event.
The End of Optimization
At thirty, I believed I was one workout, one skin cream, one protein shake, one new notebook away from my best self. Optimization was always around the next corner.
At forty-four, I am just trying to get from wake-up to bedtime in one piece. Maybe do some work I’m proud of. Eat a few fruits and vegetables. Hug my child a lot. Get thirty minutes of real enjoyment. That would be a great day.
What Lives Underneath
I do feel mostly the same on the inside, but I feel her underneath it all. Under the hormones that skitter like atoms in a centrifuge. Under the grief. Under the tumult and uncertainty. Under the life — the choices I made and the ones I didn’t.
Some days I wish I could take it all off, like a heavy pack dropped at the end of a long hike. But that isn’t how it works. The best you can do is learn to see the weight of living as a gift — one denied to many — and not as a burden.
So here’s to 44. May she be glorious.
This is why you’re drowning in busy work (NYT, gift link)
Rothy’s Friends & Family Sale — I decided to try these sandals.
“How I Learned to Love Solo Travel” (Conde Nast Traveler)
Workers who do a “Sunday Reset” earn more money (Fast Company)
Lemon Arugula Pasta Salad — a perfect summer lunch (Pinterest)
Freeze your Equifax “work number” if you’re job hunting (Instagram)
The best TV show for kids — an exhaustive search (WaPo, gift link)
Women are “quiet quitting” their marriages rather than divorcing (The Cut)
Rethinking how we fund international aid (The Guardian)