{"id":7979,"date":"2025-02-22T16:39:02","date_gmt":"2025-02-22T21:39:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.silvercentury.org\/?p=7979"},"modified":"2025-02-22T16:39:27","modified_gmt":"2025-02-22T21:39:27","slug":"reflecting-on-milestone-birthdays","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/2025\/02\/reflecting-on-milestone-birthdays\/","title":{"rendered":"Reflecting on Milestone Birthdays"},"content":{"rendered":"

My friend dreaded turning 60 on a recent weekend, but to her surprise, her husband and their young adult daughters threw a party with \u201cTeam Michelle\u201d T-shirts and a lot of fanfare. She hadn\u2019t let on that this was the Big 6-0, or I\u2019d have tried to acknowledge it with some of our mutual friends.<\/p>\n

Of course, it made me think of my milestone birthdays. At 21, I was celebrating with my drinking buddies in our favorite watering hole, despite having been a customer there with my fake ID for quite some time. As I turned 30, I experienced a time of deep reflection and knew I was sick and tired of being sick and tired. I took stock of my life and knew I had to give up drinking (and the lifestyle that accompanied it) to fulfill my potential that people always talked about. I made new, healthier friends, started a successful small business and embraced community service meaningfully.<\/p>\n

I met and married my husband, and at my 40th birthday party, I surprised family and friends with the news that we were expecting our first child. Shortly before my 50th birthday, I lost my husband to complications of heart disease and diabetes. I had two little girls and a mountain of medical debt. It was not the time to celebrate.<\/p>\n

Because 50 had gone unacknowledged, I especially wanted to celebrate turning 60. My siblings feted me with a Brazilian steakhouse dinner, which was a dream come true for this carnivore. I started thinking about turning 65 and considered throwing myself a party with friends and family that birthday, but when the time came, life got in the way, and it didn\u2019t happen.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll turn 70 in a couple of years. As in previous milestone years, I’ll no doubt take stock and reassess and reinvent if need be. My children were my whole raison d\u2019etre, and I wouldn\u2019t change that, but now they have successfully fledged, with lives of their own, and my days are somehow still full and rewarding. I feel fortunate for my excellent health, solid relationships, chances to improve myself and the opportunity to contribute to my family and community. So bring it on, 70\u2014you don\u2019t scare me!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My friend dreaded turning 60 on a recent weekend, but to her surprise, her husband and their young adult daughters threw a party with \u201cTeam Michelle\u201d T-shirts and a lot of fanfare. She hadn\u2019t let on that this was the…<\/span><\/p>\n

Read more Reflecting on Milestone Birthdays<\/span> ›<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":7980,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_FSMCFIC_featured_image_caption":"","_FSMCFIC_featured_image_nocaption":"","_FSMCFIC_featured_image_hide":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[79,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7979","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","category-voices-views"],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":"","source_text":"","source_url":""},"wps_subtitle":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7979","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7979"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7979\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7982,"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7979\/revisions\/7982"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7980"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7979"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7979"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/78.142.243.82\/~silvercentury\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7979"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}