What Have You Done With Your Life - Musings by a Birthday Girl

Birthdays are a great time for markers and milestones.  A perfect time to reflect, ponder and question (you know, in between the week or month long celebrations... depending on how you do those...) but I digress.

Anyway, today as I did my morning stretch routine (because I'm old like that and need to keep my spine in line), I was thinking about what I value in life.   And it occurred to me that after almost half a decade... I finally value me.

I was so pushed, so passionate, so crazy driven in my 20's and into my 30's - always struggling for approval, control and safety, but I am finally coming to understand the value of simplicity.

We are force fed this mentality that we should have a massive audience, a large platform, a voice that ricochets across the nation with power and conviction, and yet we have not learned to stop, breathe, be grateful and simply LOVE moment by moment.

I don't want to be great, I want to be KIND.  If I am able to affect my husband and my cat daily with love and patience and inspire them to feel safe and peaceful, I will consider that a win. 

If I influence more than my amazing "family of friends" and someone benefits from my breathing and being alive, then I have won. 

If my influence expands to reach and touch and motivate a larger sphere of people, great, but today and every day I intend to start with me, at home, in the small little life I am building.

Real change starts small.  I'm gonna start with me.  Happy Birthday to me and to all of us.  We're here... and if we are working towards health and happiness, then we have a real cause to celebrate!

Smiles, Shanna

*  Photo by the incomparable Aaron Hogan of Eye Wander Photo.  IG:  @eyewanderphoto