Well, here it is....the big day. I am turning 40 years old today. Like I mentioned in my last entry, I am not feeling overly emotional about this birthday. When I started talking about my birthday this month, lots of people asked me how I was feeling about turning 40. Was I upset? Was I going to have a hard time with it? Was I sad? Am I where I thought I would be?

When I get thinking about these questions, I think - no, I am not upset about it. No, I don't think I am really having a hard time about with it. Certainly not sad about it. Am I where I thought I would be? Yes and No. The main goal I wanted to complete before I turned 40 was to get my masters degree. Check. That's done. When I set that goal, interestingly enough, I was in my early 30s, drinking like a fish. So, had you told me that at age 40 I would be a Substance Abuse Counselor and have a masters degree in addictions counseling.....I would have laughed in your face. Or maybe not. Maybe I would have felt a little more hopeful than I did at that time. 

The question I get most frequently about turning 40 is "what about kids?" At times, I get irritated with this question because I get the sense that some are insinuating that since I don't have kids that I somehow failed. Or that without children, my life could never ever be complete. Did I want kids? Yup, sure did. Five of them in fact back in the day. When I got married, he did not want kids. Never. Ever. End of discussion. I went into that marriage with the assumption that I would never have kids. The few times I brought it up, I was told that I would be a horrible mother. Although that sounds harsh, he lived with my daily drinking and all that came with it. He was right, I would have been a horrible mother at that time. 

As my life moved on from the divorce, I thought that there might be hope and time for a family. The next long-term relationship I had was for 5 years. He had 2 children from his previous marriage and I never met them. I did not want to meet them unless we were 100% serious and looking at marriage ourselves. I did not want to be in and out of children's lives. Not to mention, I knew myself well enough that I would stay in a relationship that I was unhappy with because it would hard to say goodbye to the children. Well, at the few points in our relationship that we became more serious, it just never moved forward. We could never get our priorities to align. 2 years into our relationship is when I got sober. He never really understood my drinking and really didn't understand how hard recovery was. I dove into the recovery community and once my life became more solid in recovery, I started looking at school. I felt like I kept going and growing and moving forward while he was stuck and complaining about everything. 

Since that relationship has ended, I have had no significant relationships. I have attempted to date which has been so difficult. I thought at a few different points that if I was serious about having children, I would have to really get serious about getting into a relationship. I could really never pull it together to work on a relationship. I like my life. I work a lot.  I am super busy with tons of other activities. I do what I want, on my time. The older I get, the more resistant I have become to change my lifestyle. I have also had a very difficult time with finding people who are honest. What a lot of people call "social drinking" is really not. People lie on profiles and many are so freshly divorced that they have clearly not moved on. It's difficult for me to hear only about the other person's former spouse for an entire evening. That has happened on several occasions and I feel like I am there to be a therapist more than a date. 

I wrote a blog entry a while back called "The Childless Mother". I did not post a link to it like I normally do. In it, I talked a lot about how I feel like I am still a mother despite not having children. Moving my career in this direction has afforded me the opportunity to be a mother - to nurture and care for other people. In my nursing years, I worked in long-term care, specifically in hospice and in Alzheimer's care. I cared for people who were often forgotten or very ill. I used my compassion and care to make sure there was a caring hand always close. When I moved to transplant, I felt like I lost a little bit of my connection with the direct care. Although I get to do amazing and cool things, I do this all over the phone and it doesn't have the same effect for me. 

As I moved over into the counseling field, I was back to more direct care. Being offered the opportunity in the jails has been by far the best experience for me. I do feel like a mother in that place. Most of my clients are young. They have experienced trauma. They are at an interesting crossroads in their lives and I have the honor of playing a small role in looking at doing something different. Everything is very raw, unadulterated and real. It's exhausting. But, I imagine it is a similar kind of tired that parents feel after a long day with their kids knowing that everyone has made it through the day. We all worked hard to make the special people in our lives a little better. Anyone that I come in contact with in this position is special for me. Wherever they may be in their journey, I have the opportunity to learn from them and they have the opportunity to learn something from me. 

My other special job that I truly love is being an aunt. I love those two little kiddos so much. Seeing their picture every morning as I grab my lunch makes me smile. I think of the goofy things they have said over the years. I love taking them places so that we can create memories. Obviously, the State Fair being one of the bigger joys for me. I will always love those kiddos and use whatever material instincts I have with them. 

So, today I turned 40. I brought in 40 with lots of fun with friends and will continue the celebration with family this weekend. Forty doesn't feel very different to be really honest. What I can tell you though is that at 30, I never thought I would be sober. I didn't even think it was possible or that I could do it. Today, I have the following stats:

SOBER: 08/09/2010 - 8:45am
Years:6
Days:2,361
Hours:56,678
Minutes:3,400,692

Am I where I thought I would be? No, because I didn't think that I would be sober. I have never been more grateful to be totally wrong!

So, thank you for all those who stopped by via FB, Twitter, LinkedIn, email, text and calls to wish me a Happy Birthday. I feel the love!!!

​Julie

I got such a great message at 3 recent church services: "Address the Mess". We all have messes; I have yet to meet a perfect human being. Once I heard this topic for the next series at church at Christmas time, I really wanted to go. My current messes are pretty minimal compared to the messes of 6-10 years ago. 10 years ago, I think I started to really believe that I had a problem with alcohol. I was just too scared to consider what would need to change in order to get away. 

As I come up on my 40th birthday soon, I think back to my 30th birthday. I had a epic meltdown. I was so depressed with where my life was at that point. A few weeks after my 30th birthday, I asked my now ex-husband to move out and also asked for a divorce. So, at the time of my birthday, that's about where my life was at. I was drunk all the time, I hated where I was living, I was hating my marriage. My job was OK although I was not doing a really great job. I was working a ton of hours, more than I should have been. I was constantly stressed out about how I was going to afford to living on my own. Stress, stress, stress, mess, mess, mess. 

As I get to my 40th birthday, I realize one of the main things that keeps me from having a meltdown about it is my expectations. At 30, I thought I should have been looking at having children. I should have been sober and not struggling. I should have been happy. I should have, should have, should have. I had all these expectations about what I thought my life should be. I didn't want to admit that things weren't going well. Somehow my problems really meant that was I failure. Well, I am way over that now. The fact of the matter is....I am where I am. And, that's just fine. Is my life perfect? No. Do I still have messes? Sure. Are there things I still want? Sure. The difference now is that I know and understand the concept of acceptance. I can accept that life is not perfect. I accept that for everything I feel like I am missing, I have at least 10 things that are awesome in exchange. I spend more time now looking at the things in my life that are going right instead of wasting my energy on looking at things that are wrong. 

I just loved the message of this series. Taking our messes and making a message. When I first decided to go and become a drug and alcohol counselor, I felt this fire inside of me that I could take this story of mine and do something with it. That all the suffering I experienced under the grips of addiction would really serve a purpose and maybe help someone. Listening to this series over the past couple of weeks has awoken that sense in me again. I went to a local technical college this week to talk about my careers in nursing and counseling. There were two kids in the front that were laying down and nodding off. I take no offense to this, the average age in the room was 15. I started talking about the fact that I was in recovery and a little bit about my story. I encouraged them to ask questions which they did. When I was done with the presentation, I thought back to the days before I first went to detox. I was sitting alone in my bedroom, crying, wondering if death was the only way out of the hell I had been experiencing. I thought about going to the ER the next day with my Mom, blowing a 0.26 and being totally coherent with shocked medical personnel around me saying "this isn't right.". I remembered passing out in detox and waking up to find out I might have had a seizure related to detoxing from alcohol. Life was beyond a mess. I was really ashamed of my mess. I didn't want to talk about my mess.  All these years later, I am standing in front of teens (who I am terrified of by the way) and throwing out intimate details of the worse period of my life. And loving every minute of it. Messes in Messages. 

Eventually, as I started letting go of my shame and judgement, I realized that this whole addiction piece of my life was part of my greater story. The best way for me to release my shame is to talk about my story and use it for good. It took me some time to gain the confidence and be vulnerable. I had to admit to the things that were not glamorous. I had to be willing to accept responsibility for all of my actions, not just some. I had to be willing to admit in a very public way that I am not perfect. Very not perfect. As I learned to accept that maybe this life of hell had a purpose, it became less and less difficult to throw myself out there. Now, at 40, I feel like me. I am happy with me. I feel like I am the person that I was always meant to be. When I thought of what my life should have been at 30, I never would have imagine that this is where my life would be at 40. My messes got me here today. It wasn't an easy journey for all those years, but I can sit comfortably at 40 feeling about my journey and my place right now. 

I think as I move forward, I will continue to push myself to the next level. I am applying to be a board member for the local chapter of the American Foundation of Suicide Prevention (AFPS). I have no idea if I will get it; however, I would rather reach out right now and not get than wonder in the future if I should have tried. I am looking forward to seeing where my messes bring me next. I have a good feeling about it.....

​Julie