Twenty-Nine Trips Around the Sun

I’m 29 years old today!!!!

I feel wiser…but not much older. Do I need Botox? A hip replacement? Here comes my Saturn Return! God the hangovers approaching 30 are making me feel 60 years old.

I’m looking forward to a weekend-long celebration up in Vermont and dinner tonight with so many of my favorite people. I love this little life I’ve created.

If you've followed me for any amount of time, you know I tend to write about the things that make me feel most alive.

The ski days. The beach days. Sunshine. Travel. My family. My friends. My work. Those random, perfect moments where I find myself thinking, wow, THIS is what living is all about.

And I still believe that.

But 28 taught me something I hadn't fully understood before.

Maybe the people, places, and experiences I love have simply been reflecting the part of me that has always been optimistic, hopeful, and in love with life.

This is apparently the groundbreaking revelation I was destined to have after almost three decades on Earth, so bear with me.

First, a little jaunt down memory lane through year 28…

What a year.

I started my own private practice—something I didn't think I'd build for years—and continued doing work at my pediatric job that I still feel incredibly grateful for.

I traveled farther than ever before—from Hawaii to Breckenridge (twice!), Charleston, New York, and Florida—zip-lining, pretending to enjoy hiking, surviving exactly one double black diamond trail, and taking the longest flight of my life. (Tally up how many smut books I read while spending 12 hours in the air!)

I invested in myself through personal training, lifted heavier than I thought I could, and discovered strength I didn't know I had. Thank you to Maddie Biron for always pushing me!

I spent countless bluebird weekends skiing in New Hampshire and many in Vermont with the people who make Killington feel like my second home.

And after six years out of the saddle, I climbed back on a horse. Something I thought was gone forever wasn't gone at all. Taking lessons again has healed parts of me I didn't even realize needed healing. What a gift.

28 wasn't all wins.

I guess it's true what they say—you'll go through the same lesson a million times until you finally learn it.

This year challenged me to ask why I keep looking outside of myself for something I've had all along.

I tend to search for proof that I'm lovable. That I'm enough. That I matter. In other people. In accomplishments. In the next trip. In the next version of myself. Even in alcohol.

Somewhere along the way, I started giving all these things wayyyyy too much credit. I thought they were the sole reason I felt so alive.

I'm not talking about surface-level happiness. I'm talking about that feeling. The one where your stomach hurts from laughing over something stupid with someone you love. Where you're standing at the top of a ski run on a bluebird day. Where you're watching the sun set over the Pacific for the first time. Where you're sitting around your birthday dinner table thinking, this is what living is all about.

Maybe they were never creating that feeling at all.

Maybe they were simply giving the part of me that loves life somewhere to come alive.

They are not the sun.

I am.

And I want to remember that.

I don't want to shrink the childlike wonder in me. The part of me that still gets ridiculously excited about a ski day, laughs over my own snap story, goes on the adventure, gets back on the horse, and believes the best memories are still ahead.

I want to protect that curiosity. That excitement. That light. The willingness to try (and fail), be honest, love people fully, and keep showing up.

I want to welcome 29 excited about what's next.

Excited about possibility.

Excited about building a life that feels expansive instead of confined.

Here's to 29 trips around the sun.

To protecting my light instead of searching for it elsewhere.

To trusting myself a little more.

To never shrinking the parts of me that make life feel big.

Happy Birthday to me 🤍