This Is 40

Some reflections on a new decade.

Photo by the smartest person I know, Sanjana Basker

Around my 37th birthday, I started freaking out about turning 40.

It felt like I was in a car with no brakes careening towards the edge of a cliff; like I’d disappear the second my 30s ended. I’d no longer have chances to seem impressive, or to try new things. Job opportunities would dry up. No one would care about what I was doing. I would definitely stop being attractive or sexual in any way. I needed to hurry up and get everything in before that big red date on the calendar or else it would simply never happen. Even as I was in the middle of signing my book deal – something I had dreamed about my entire life – I had a moment where I was like, ‘Oh shit, this book won’t get published before I turn 40.’ As though that somehow diminished this huge achievement!

How I Wrote a Book

I want to be clear that this is not something I ever thought about the women in my life who had already passed that milestone: I had so many examples of sexy, vibrant, cool-as-fuck women who were over 40. It was just…gonna be different when it happened to me. All the things our society says about women? The bullshit about looks or vitality or interest? That would be true for me. I’d cross some horrible bridge into invisibility and that’s where I’d spend the second half of my life, a ghost haunting every room I entered.

Thankfully, I clocked that thinking pretty quickly and got my ass into therapy about it. There were very real considerations to discuss – for example, I am childfree by choice, and I’m happy with that choice, but I know one day very soon, it will stop being a choice and become something I’ve chosen that I can’t change my mind about – but there was also all that fake shit I’d let society (aka patriarchy) plant in my head. Why would I stop being an interesting, fun, kind person just because there was a new number at the front of my age? Why couldn’t the things I knew about those women in my life be true about me?

Therapy did a lot of the work to get me comfortable with turning 40; by the time my 39th rolled around last year, I would tell people, “Yea, I’m almost 40” and it didn’t feel scary or weird. It just felt like a fact about me.

And then something funny started happening late last fall: without trying, without meaning to, without even thinking about it, I started to feel more confident and centered in myself than I ever had before.

It was a switch I’d heard so many older women talk about, and to be honest, I kinda thought it was bullshit. Like, I’d hear a celebrity talk about how much they love being in their 40s, how they stopped caring about what people think about them and how great everything feels, and I was like…okay diva, whatever you say. (Even though the evidence was, frankly, compelling – I mean, watch Anne Hathaway dancing at a Valentino after party without a single fuck about the people and cameras around her, and tell me it’s not sexy as hell.)

But then I started to feel that switch flip for me! I held myself straighter, walked into rooms with my head up, moved through the world with the knowledge I deserved to take up space. I know who I am, and you either get it and want to fuck with it, or you don’t and that’s your loss. I simply do not have the time to worry that whatever I’m doing is annoying or weird or ridiculous. That’s your problem! I’m fabulous!

So I’ve been letting that energy carry me to today, my 40th birthday, and I’ll be honest: It rocks. Don’t get me wrong, the part of me that is like, oh my god time is passing you are getting older you will never get this year back is still generally freaked out. But the part that was like you are going to become the wicked witch from a children’s fairytale at midnight has shut up.

The past several years, I’ve set up a journaling tradition for myself: The day before my birthday, I write about everything I achieved that year. It’s a nice way to remind myself about all the things I did that maybe I forget to give myself credit for.

Yesterday, I did that, but I also recapped my 30s. The thing is, 30 was my scary age, the age where it felt like I had to Have My Shit Together. Like I had to have my life ready to be encased in amber when I turned 30 or something. Then I looked around at all the adults in my life and realized, actually, maybe we never have our shit together. Maybe it’s okay to spend this one wild and precious life experimenting and trying new things and finding new versions of ourselves.

So I did that. I worked my way up the editorial ladder and scored my dream job as editor-in-chief of Fashionista. I traveled the world and sat front row at fashion week. I lived through a global pandemic!!! I got married and quit my job in a two week time span. (That one made my therapist a little nervous.) I ventured out on my own as a freelance writer, not totally aware that this would basically make me a small business owner but doing it anyway. I sat down with some of the biggest celebrities in the world and interviewed them for real money. I pivoted and wrote audio erotica scripts for actors like Andrew Scott and Jamie Campbell Bower. I thought maybe I could be kinda good at acting despite having zero experience and then signed up for acting classes. (Shout out to The Barrow Group, love y’all.) Then I fell in love with it and kept taking acting classes. I wrote a fucking book!!! (Actually, technically, I wrote two books, but…a story for another day.)

I kept my heart open and I met new people and made new friends and found new ways to love people and felt my world expand in ways I didn’t think was still possible. And I also made mistakes and hurt people and worked on the parts of me that are scared or mean or angry and then I made more mistakes and tried to make up for them.

I was so fucking brave, man. And I did all that while kinda doubting myself and fretting over what people would think.

Now I’m imagining doing all that with this new self-possession I’ve discovered. My other journaling tradition is writing out things I want to manifest for my next year on my actual birthday – and I’m not sharing those yet. But if turning 40 is driving off a cliff, I’ve got my foot on the gas pedal and my hand gripping my bestie (hi, Sarah), just like Thelma & Louise. (Speaking of women getting hotter in their 40s: Susan Sarandon, my god.)

Also, frankly? I think I’m the hottest I’ve ever been. Just had to be said.