Day 141 – April 13, 2026

April is my birthday month. And I don’t mean that in the cute, passive little “aw, happy birthday to me” way people post when they want attention but also want to seem above wanting attention, which is one of the most exhausting genres of modern femininity.

I mean, it is my birthday. My actual life. My actual day. My actual body, heart, history, softness, chaos, survival, humor, beauty, and all the rest of me sitting here in this one life that has taken some absolutely insane turns and still somehow managed not to kill my sparkle.

That matters to me.

Birthdays get weird as you get older, I think. Not worse. Just weirder. Less about presents and more about the surreal fact of still being here. Still in a body. Still in a story. Still in time. Still carrying every version of yourself that got you here. The hopeful ones, the broken ones, the gorgeous ones, the exhausted ones, the funny ones, the girls who almost gave up, the women who absolutely did not.

And on my birthday I felt all of them standing near me a little.

Not haunting. Just present.

Especially the woman I am now. Because if I’m being honest, there were points in the last year where the future felt abstract. Like something other people got to have while I was busy surviving, reporting, grieving, adapting, rebuilding, and trying not to let my nervous system turn every hallway sound into a constitutional crisis.

And yet. Here I am.

Still soft. Still sharp. Still pretty enough to be underestimated by the wrong people. Still intelligent enough to make that a very bad strategy. Still wanting beautiful things. Still wanting more life. Still absolutely not done.

That feels like a birthday worth noticing.

Not because everything is resolved. Because it isn’t Not because what happened stopped mattering. It hasn’t Not because I’ve become one of those polished women who transforms her suffering into elegant life advice and then drinks rosé on a patio like the body doesn’t remember anything inconvenient.

Please. No.

What makes this birthday beautiful is that it is real. Real joy. Real gratitude. Real laughter. Real women around me who know how to love me without flattening me. Real family. Real proof that life can still contain sleepover energy, girlhood, mischief, tenderness, affection, and warmth even after some truly ugly things tried to move in and redecorate.

That means everything.

Because I think part of what I’m celebrating is not just age, but continuity. The fact that I am still becoming. Still becoming a woman I like. Still becoming more exact, more alive, more myself. Still becoming someone whose existence is not just something that happened to her, but something she is learning to inhabit with intention and style and a sense of humor sharp enough to survive the species.

Roger, of course, observed my birthday with the correct level of reverence, by which I mean he remained completely obsessed with me and acted as though the day’s festivities were fundamentally about his emotional proximity to the guest of honor.

Fair enough. He has standards.

And maybe that’s the mood, actually. Birthday energy not as performance, but as permission. Permission to take up space. Permission to enjoy being alive in this body, in this womanhood, in this life, even if the life is messy and the body has scars and the story still has anger in it.

I am still allowed joy. I am still allowed beauty. I am still allowed celebration. I am still allowed to be loved loudly and sweetly and with real intention.

That feels important.

Actually, no. That feels sacred.

Chaos in one hand. Grace in the other.

And me, birthday girl and all, still here, still hot, still healing, still hilarious, and still becoming someone this world is going to have to get used to.