TODAY I celebrate my 40th year on this planet.
Truth be told, I haven't been looking forward to this day. I had it in my mind that I would wake up this morning to grey hair, wrinkles, a bad hip and bingo wings that had developed overnight.
To add to the torture, someone bought me a survival guide for women hitting 40 called 'Oh my God, I'm 40!' and my daughter has been dramatically delivering this phrase loudly and incessantly for two weeks, reminding me of impending old age. She also asked me if I was `going to die’, now that I'm old.
So it was no wonder I was approaching the milestone birthday with a certain degree of dread. But at the same time, I feel incredibly proud of making it this far, relatively unscathed. Some of my friends and family were not as lucky and didn't make it to 40.
I was born in the horrors of the Troubles in 1975. The Miami Showband massacre had happened just three weeks before my arrival and every day brought more death and destruction on the streets of Northern Ireland. My father was a history teacher at a local school, and a civil rights activist, and my mother ran her own business. I joined my older brother and sister in a little house in Shantallow full of things my multi-tasking dad had made by hand.
Mum and dad had thought of moving to Australia after my arrival. But they - like many other parents during those times - had such strong ties with family here and with talk of ceasefires, they dared to have a glimmer of hope that things in their home city might get better and stuck it out.
I grew up like everyone else here, scarred by what I saw on the streets every day. Bombings, shootings, riots, raids, checkpoints, armed soldiers, horrific murders in our city and on the news in our living room. Those experiences shaped the person I became.
I was obsessed with the news. In my early 20s I became the one writing it. I worked as a reporter for many years, then as a sub-editor, then a magazine editor, then a news editor, then an online editor, a columnist and a teacher of A-Level journalism. Somewhere in the midst of all this I met my husband and we had four children together. And I also wrote two books in my 'spare time'.
I've had some really good days where I've felt on top of the world and some really awful, dark, gut-wrenching, soul destroying days when I thought the sun would never shine again.
But isn't that what life is all about – enjoying the good times when they come around and mustering the courage to get back up when life knocks you down.
One of the good things about turning 40 for me is the realisation that I have nothing to prove to anyone except myself. I find that liberating.
I suppose I spent most of my 30s trying to be all things to all people. I was a mum, I was working mum, I was an entrepreneur, a mumpreneur. I strived for perfection in all things I did. I pushed myself so hard. It was rather exhausting. I had many successes and just as many failings. But all those struggles, successes, failures, challenges overcome and fears faced over 40 years has made me the person I am today – strong, confident, caring, empathetic, evolved, resilient and fearless.
Another good thing about my advanced years is that I no longer suffer fools gladly or permit people treating me with disrespect. I will not sit quietly if a wrong is being done. I have a voice and I'm not afraid to use it. I can be fierce when I need to be. I am older. I am wiser. I am happy in my own skin. I am proud of who I am.
My 40-year-old self has learnt to say no; no longer cares what people - apart from those closest to me – think and is fearless because I have walked right up to my worst fears, I have embraced them and I have walked on by them.
The 40-year-old me is going back to university. The 40-year-old me is training to be a qualified teacher. The 40-year-old me is going to keep on embracing life and all it's ups and downs. The 40-year-old me is going to appreciate, nay shake every fibre out of this life that I have been blessed with.
Here's to rocking the next 40 years.
