The day I turn 40, the first thought I think upon waking is a very clearly articulated, Thank you. My gingham covers are swaddled around me; the leaky grey morning light of Santa Barbara's May is eking around the corners of the bedroom curtains; I am in the same washed out waffle knit sleep pants and tank I keep returning to; the house is quiet; I am alone. At 40, I wake up alone. Whatever this all is, this exact moment, thank you.

To this last year of my life, thank you. Thank you for such incredible transformation and growth. Thank you for being over.

I keep thinking of the stretch before I turned 30. It was filled with the fervent beginnings of new love with Nic— long distance letters and longing. Passion and projection. Radical devotion and self-abandonment. It was devouring each others' faces on public transportation and Muir Beach hikes in search of heart-shaped rocks. It was belabored runs along the Embarcadero followed by farmers' market pluots and pastrami sandwiches from Wise Sons. It was wistful eye gazing and road trip adventures and so, so many arguments, such an incredible exchange of volume.

On the day I turned thirty, one of my best friends threw me an elaborate party. She had coordinated so many people I loved to contribute and create truly one of the most beautiful tributes to another person possible. It was filled with floral aprons and manual typewriters, cupcakes and kegs of locally brewed beer, music and celebration. I wore a strappy dress covered in colorful giraffes. I pinned my hair back to one side and watched as my friends got drunk and hammered out love notes to me on index cards that were then filed away in a vintage recipe box. I felt so loved. I felt like I had arrived, newly in love at the beginning of a new decade of life.

Thank you thirties, for all of your beauty, for the birth of my children, for your sage and brutal teachings.

In contrast, two weeks before I turn 40, I receive news that Nic and I are at last legally divorced. Despite spending two years prior to that in separation, despite pushing for that bit of closure for so long, the reality of it fills me only with grief. I listen to Ray LaMontagne's "All the Wild Horses" on repeat for an hour, unloading my tears into the rug as my forehead presses down, down into the looped fabric below me, my body in child's pose.

I've been coming to this position again and again. Returning to reverence, to some sort or prayer, prostrating myself before the universe. Recently, after such a wasteland of emotion, I learned to cry again. Not the tears of a touching movie or news of a loved one's death, but the everyday tears of disappointment or fear, hurt or grief. The tears of being so wonderfully human and all the ways in which, painfully or joyfully, I encounter the world with so much raw feeling. I remembered how to cry and then I began to sob daily, emptying this reservoir of rigor that I've been upholding for four decades now. I stopped trying to understand why exactly and just felt grateful for the lightening of the load.

May no man's touch ever tame you

May no man's reign ever chain you

I am becoming untamed. I am releasing my shackles. I am saying, Fuck this shit to the lies I’ve been fed about being a woman, a mother, a human, about my body, my role in society, my limitations. Extracting myself from the lies about education, our food systems, the government, medicine, health and wellness, religion. For the first time in my life, I'm experimenting with what it feels like to allow myself to be justifiably angry at times. Thank you, Beth, for waking up enough to blaze your own path, for undertaking such liberating and excruciating work.

For the last year, since removing my IUD, each month before my period, I experience this high vibration feeling. It feels like a high-pitched squealing, a tautness that's just waiting for some sort of release. Usually for at least two to three days, it feels like the world is ending, like nothing could ever be right, like I am frustration and grief and discontent embodied. I am a rabid dog, a machine of rage. I want to eat bloody meat and be loud and hurt people around me. My anger is terrifying, unfamiliar, unacceptable.

And then I'll bleed and instead of holding my energy, the weight of the entire world, up above my heart, it flows through and out of me, a sweet liberation.

The time prior to the transition to this new decade has felt like the Groundhogs day version of that frenetic energy. It is a never ending loop, a constant quiver. I have felt, quite honestly, like I'm going crazy. I can almost feel the tension between who I've been and who I want to allow myself to become, that frantic line between the old neural pathways and a totally new way of being. My ego is dying and thrashing for dear life to survive.

Thank you, body and mind, for trying so hard to protect me. It’s okay to let go now.

I keep looking for the next thing to do, as if there's some undisclosed road map to growth. Lately, so much of my communication looks like calling my healer in desperation, pleading, Tell me what to do, knowing full well, he will never do such a thing. His voice always full of humor and compassion, he slows me down and asks me to listen to my own guidance. I always know the answer, even when I don't like it.

I always know.

Michael was the first person in my entire life to make space for me to hear my own voice, to assure me that I already contained all the wisdom in the world. He never offers advice; he just offers the most gentle, loving space, one in which my usual severity and fear can relax enough to practice seeing clearly. Every time I grasp for answers, for the right thing to do next, he says repeatedly what I now, finally, understand: It's not something to do; it's a way of being with yourself. Be, don't do.

That has become the salient message in my life as I embark upon my next year on this planet. Be, don't do. Be, don't do. Be, don't do.

Be wild, be weird, be big. Be you. It's not what you do; it's how you do it. It's not a list to complete; it's a way of being in the world.

As a gift to myself for my fortieth birthday, I take three days to go camping in the desert alone. When I arrive, I set up my tent and shade shelter. I make a little kitchen and add some wildflowers and chunks of quartz to decorate the table. Ravenous, I sautee veggies and rice with bacon and add a fried egg. I eat quietly in the blazing heat, taking in the beauty of the mountains and the curling sheets of sediment in the dry riverbed that are peppered with yucca and brittlebush.

And then I sob.

Because I'm uncomfortable. Because I want to feel happy. Because I think, this is what I wanted so now I'm supposed to be happy.

Except in this instance, happy is just another thing to do. I want to do happy. To act it out. To check it off my list. To prove it, to say I've done it, to achieve it.

I suspect at least phantoms of this instinct will exist in my life for a long, long time. Except now I notice. Now I see that judgment and expectation come up and I can say, oh hello.

So I let myself cry. Hello, you are disappointed that you got what you want and it still feels uncomfortable and now you are crying.

Thank you tears, thank you body, thank you inherent wisdom.

After I allowed myself those tears, my trip was happy. I read three full books, took barefoot ambles to the base of these glorious mountains, made a nature wheel, cooked beautiful meals, made some truly shitty attempts at whittling, collected rocks, almost never wore clothes, and napped. Oh I napped. One morning, I laid like a rotisserie chicken in the sun for almost two hours, making a quarter turn every fifteen minutes or so, just gliding in and out of consciousness. No music, no reading, no conversation with myself. I just let the heaviness seep out of me into the earth. I said thank you.

Thank you, desert. Thank you for your teachings of solitude, extremism, resilience.

Throughout the trip, I repeatedly stepped over a latex glove that had dropped out of my first aid kit. It was on the ground with its middle finger up. The first time I saw it, I laughed out loud, the sound of my voice almost startling me from my own murmuring silence. I loved that offensive glove so much I decided not to move it until I left, and despite so much wind, every time it landed in a new spot, that middle finger stayed up. It felt like a humorous little message from the universe that said, Fuck off, it's not that serious.

Each time I laughed, audibly.

Thank you humor for keeping me afloat during times of tumult.

It’s not that serious.

*You do not have to be good*
*You do not have to walk on your knees*
*for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.*
*You only have to let the soft animal of your body*
*love what it loves.*

What do I love? What am I here to do?

Everything I read says to circle back to childhood. The secrets to your desires, your purpose, your joy is in the games you played, the things you imagined. I am so clear on the fact that I work with children in part to tune in to this creativity and joy in myself. That inner child is so alive and vibrant within me; she's just rattling around in the prison of calcified expectations.

I know just who she is and what she loves. She loves to sing, to dance, to be big. She loves to love. She loves to read. She loves to be alone and then with people and then alone.

So the way forward looks like this.

I will sing and dance and be big. I will love. I will read. I will be alone and then with people and then alone.

I found some dance classes that aren't classes at all, but just opportunities to move my body in community without the alcohol or unwanted touching. I found spaces in which to chant and sing, to open up my throat and be heard. I don't want to perform. I don't want to do. I want to express, not impress. I want the deluge of life force that is me to flow freely through my body. I want to allow myself my fullest expression without concern for how it looks, what anyone thinks, if it's good enough, if it's right. I do not have to be good. I want to be with people and love them with my whole emphatic heart and then I want to be alone and recharge and read and listen to myself.

I am trending away from asking external guides— even those that are healthy— to tell me where to go next. I am turning inward. I am finding joy. I am creating clarity. I am opening up. I am healing. I am grateful.

Thank you inner child for showing me the way. Thank you for your certainty and clarity. Thank you for your unbridled joy.

I feel quite clear that on the other side of all of his endless introspection is something much greater, more interconnected. That my true liberation lies in releasing myself from the constraints of internal conflict and recognizing my place in a much broader community, within the cosmos, within all of time, within nature. I am most clear when I'm outside, listening to birds, toes in the dirt.

Within forest school, I am gifted a container for my own healing. Each day I visit the woods, remember what it's like to be a child, to sing, read, laugh, move, play. I drink up sunlight and the companionship of those who value me most as my most authentic self. I am stripped bare. It is the ultimate being and not doing. I did not make that school. I do not own it. It was truly an expression of divinity; it came from a moment of alignment, so crystalline I can recall the exact place and time everything clicked into place. It is both my purpose and my healing combined.

And I am grateful. I am healing through my work, I am healing through my tears, I am healing through my discomfort and my undoing and my humor and my whole big tumbling heart. I am healing and I am so grateful.

I woke up 40 and I said thank you. Out of so many words, they are the only ones that matter. They are the prayer I awoke with, the prayer I will continue to make, they are my freedom, my connection, my source. For every messy bit that’s been and all that is to come, for this decade, for my voice, for my integral part in this beautiful web of life, for all there is to become and know, for the chance to just be this lifetime, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.