How to Embrace Big Birthdays
Photo by Danil Nevsk
By Doree Shafrir
For many people, there’s real anxiety around “milestone” birthdays. They can be uncomfortable reminders about how our lives haven’t quite turned out as planned, or how we haven’t achieved everything we feel like we should have. (I should know, I wrote an entire book about it.) When I turned 40, my novel Startup had just come out, and it seemed silly to have a book party followed by a big 40th birthday party a couple of weeks later, so I combined the two and had a party at a bar. It was fun, but I have looked back and felt a little regretful that I didn’t do something more memorable — an international trip? a nose ring? some kind of multi-day retreat? — to mark the transition to this new decade.
And so I was curious how other women were celebrating their next chapters. I spoke to several, and came away feeling very inspired about planning my next big one. Maybe they’ll inspire you, too.
Some choose to commemorate the occasion permanently. Veronica Mistry, who turned 40 on New Year’s Eve, decided to get a tattoo of a motherhood symbol. “My husband just started a new full-time job, we moved back to Australia two years ago, and we are making a trip back to the U.S. next year. I thought, ‘instead of celebrating with a big to-do, what do I want for myself?’” The tattoo depicts a version of the Celtic motherhood symbol and Mistry’s favorite flower, the gardenia.
“I don’t feel worried about turning 40, I’m content with who I am, but I feel like I’m in the ‘mother with two young kids’ haze. My 40s will be a reinvention of sorts,” Mistry told me. “The person that I am becoming after motherhood and what I want the next stages to look like in my life and what I do with my time.” Mistry said she has also reached out to an artist she loves to commission a painting that depicts her “carefree and in my 20s back in New York.”
For many of the women I spoke to, a milestone birthday meant taking stock, reflecting on the previous decades, and celebrating the person they’ve become. Heather Matula, a 50-year-old who works in talent development at a tech company, and her extended family — sister, brother-in-law, brother, and sister-in-law — do a surprise trip for their milestone birthdays. “The birthday person doesn’t know where they’re going,” she said. “When we first did it, at 30, people didn’t even know they were going on a trip. Now, you wake up and it’s like, throw some clothes on, we’re going to the airport! Somebody else has packed for you!” She added, “I’m the first one of the whole group to turn 50. When we were young, 50 sounded old. Like, how can I be 50?”
Another running theme among the women I spoke with seems to be the feeling that for these milestone birthdays, they are doing what feels right to them — and they’re finally in a place where they have the time, means, and will to do it. Take Alexis Wiggins, a Houston teacher who’s a few years away from her 50th, but already planning it. “The summer following my 50th, I plan to walk the Camino de Santiago, a pilgrimage through northwest Spain. It starts all the way in French Basque Country and ends in Santiago de Compostela in Galicia, Spain. I plan to do a section of it for about eight days.” Wiggins’ husband is from Spain and the couple lived in Madrid for five years, “so it was always in the background as one of those things people do.” But life — kids, work, traveling to see family in other countries — got in the way. Plus, Wiggins said, her husband has no interest in doing the Camino. “He always says he’ll drive and meet me for tapas each afternoon in the villages along my route. When I was in my 20s or 30s, I wouldn’t have dreamed of doing the trip myself. Now I can imagine walking all alone for days through the Spanish countryside as a gift.”
Wiggins said she’s looking forward to her 50s. “My plans are to throw myself into my career in ways I couldn’t in my 30s and 40s as a mom of two. I have thoroughly enjoyed motherhood — it has been the greatest joy of my life — but it’s hard work.” She added, “When my parents were in their 50s, they seemed ancient, but it honestly feels like times and perspectives have changed. My grandmother is 98 and still going strong. I feel like I’m just getting started.”
For some, milestone birthdays are also an opportunity to make big life changes. Jennifer Estaris celebrated her 40th birthday in January 2017 by taking her then-four-year-old daughter and several friends to the inaugural Women’s March. “Normally I meet with friends for a fancy dinner, but in this changed climate, it seemed both decadent and impractical with a four-year-old in tow. I was transitioning to being more active in my activism, rather than hiding behind the scenes in fear,” she told me. “I thought my 40th was going to be a downer, full of serious people doing serious things.” Instead, the March “was the spark of hope that I desperately needed at that time” — and it inspired a complete life change.
Soon after the Women’s March, Estaris — who works in the video game industry — and her family moved to Copenhagen. It was around the same time that the United Nations formed Playing for the Planet, an alliance of game studios taking action to support the global environmental agenda. Estaris, who now lives in London, sits on the advisory council. “I give talks about climate activism in the game industry, and I’m part of Extinction Rebellion and other organizations,” she said. “My child’s also been taking action. I aim for a march a month.”
And she has big plans for her 50th: this time, she wants to organize a climate action.
It’s still a few years away but now I, too, am formulating plans for my 50th. I want to go into my next decade with intention and hope and a sense of fulfillment. Like Heather Matula, I want to be surrounded by my closest friends and family; like Jennifer Estaris, I want it to feel meaningful in a way beyond myself; like Alexis Wiggins, I want it to be some kind of physical achievement. Maybe I’ll even take inspiration from Veronica Mistry and get my first tattoo — at 50. The possibilities feel endless — and that’s the energy I want to bring into my 50s.