Karissa is 40!

At the end of November, I celebrated my 40th birthday. It’s both a momentous occasion and also just another day of the week. It’s a birthday that people seem to expect you to have a lot of feelings about and I guess I do but I also am not quite sure how I feel. The year I turned 30, Peter and I bought our first home and became parents so it felt like I was hitting the markers I was supposed to. I was successful at being a 30-year-old by outside standards and I was clearly entering a new stage of my life. 40 doesn’t feel like it has those landmarks and I feel less sure of what this new decade is.

At 40, I’ll have been an adult for over half of my life and it’s easy to look back now and to divide my adulthood into stages or eras. I turned 20 partway through my third year of university and my roommate and I joked about saying farewell to my childhood by doing a series of low stakes but slightly dangerous things that primarily involved using a microwave unsafely. Shortly before my 22nd birthday, I met the man who would become my husband. I think of my 20s as a time of figuring out what adulthood would look like for me individually and for us as a married couple. We were 24 when we married and Peter wasn’t yet finished school. We moved to a new city and then moved again. We travelled and had adventures and worked to save money and had times when we lived as simply and cheaply as possible because money was tight. We started jobs, left them, started new ones. We had 4 different addresses in our first 3 years of marriage.

Although I got pregnant for the first time at 28, I think of my 30s as being the decade of childbearing and childrearing. I was pregnant 4 times between 2014 and 2017. Two miscarriages, two live births. I was unexpectedly diagnosed with a congenital defect in my uterus. My firstborn was diagnosed in utero with heart and kidney problems, followed by a miraculous all-clear in the first week of her life. I had major abdominal surgery and was sent home with a newborn. I had a devastating second trimester miscarriage. I struggled with the fear of another pregnancy and then got to have the amazing experience of a very textbook natural birth. From February 2014 until October 2019, I was basically either pregnant or breastfeeding.

At the beginning of 2020, we celebrated Pearl’s 5th birthday and I was looking forward to a new stage of parenting without pregnancy or nursing. I had weaned Rose after her 2nd birthday and my body could be my own again. I registered Pearl for kindergarten. We made spring break plans. We all know how spring of 2020 turned out. I was halfway through my 30s and the whole world changed. Instead of the world getting larger for me as a mom, it got much, much smaller. I certainly cannot complain about covid lockdowns for our family because we were very fortunate and very protected. But I also can’t dismiss the anxiety and fear that I felt through those early months and beyond. I dropped my eldest child off at school in September 2020 for the first time and never set foot in the building for months. I coaxed my young children into wearing masks and tried to explain why they couldn’t play with their friends or see their grandparents. Peter and I walked through the heartbreaking decision to leave a church we had been part of for a decade. I still tear up when I think of the rainy November night we took Pearl for her first covid vaccination. That period changed a lot of things for us and for our world.

I live in a community with a lot of elderly people. It’s a popular retirement spot. When Peter and I moved to the Sunshine Coast in our 20s and the average resident was in their 60s, we joked that we would just have to age into the demographic. We struggled a little to find our community in those early years and so it’s a joy to look around now and witness the life we’ve built here in this town. I can go almost anywhere and run into people I know. I have good friends I can reach out to in good times and hard. My kids are surrounded by people who love them. Part of this is, yes, aging into the demographic of 30-something parents. Some of it is the increase of young families who moved here post-2020. A lot of it is work we’ve put into building our community and I’m proud of that.

I think that my experience of miscarriage and perhaps of living through pandemic times profoundly changed my attitude towards aging. I’ve never been the parent who wanted to keep my kids at a certain stage. I’ve loved watching them grow and change and age. In my mind, there are two very clear choices: we get older or we die. And right now, I want to get older. Walking through the experience of a pregnancy that ends without a baby has made me so, so grateful for everyday I get to spend with my children. I would never want to freeze time with them because it would mean none of us our growing up. Yes, I can get lost scrolling through old photos on my phone and exclaiming how cute my kids were (I mean, look at them!) but when I do so I’m also keenly aware that in a year or two, I’ll likely look back at this precise time and miss them when they were ages 8 and 10.

I try to bring this attitude to my own aging. I have a few grey hairs now and lines on my face. Sometimes my body aches in unfamiliar twinges. I’m fortunate to be healthy and active and physically fit. I’m not 20 anymore and I’ll never again look the way I did then. I’m in my 40s and I look like I’m in my 40s and what a gift that is!

As I come to the end of my 30s, there aren’t the clear landmarks that I aimed for in my 20s. I’m lucky to have so many of the things I once dreamed of – my husband, my 2 kids, our home. I think I used to wonder more if I needed bigger ambitions, if it was okay to be so happy with my suburban life, if that made me boring. But one of the great things I’m learning about being a woman in her 40s is that the outside voices become more muted.

I don’t really care if other people think my life is boring or simple or basic. I love it and I’m grateful for it even when it’s driving me crazy. Now, at the beginning of this new decade, I feel more comfortable in my skin than ever before. Some of this is simply life experience – knowing clothing styles and colours that look best on me, for example – but I lot of it is self-confidence that only age can bring. It’s being loved so well and so thoroughly by my husband for more than 15 years. It’s watching my body answer for what I demand of it – be it running a 10km race or birthing a baby – and learning to be gentle and forgiving of my body and what it cannot do.

So, here’s to a new decade and all the adventures that I have not yet lived. I’m looking forward to experiencing them all!