Thoughts On My 60th Birthday

A moment of gratitude for life, for book coaching, and for YOU!

With Rob, a few weeks ago.

Today is my 60th birthday — and don’t worry: I didn’t write this post today. I am currently enjoying time (and probably a gluten-free treat!) with my husband, our daughters, their partners, and our precious grandbaby, Lucy, who just turned seven months old.

I have been telling people for months that I’m about to turn 60. It seems like some kind of miracle to be alive, to be well, to be thriving in my marriage and my family, my friendships and my business. I’m proud of how I have spent my life and who I have become.

Why do I call it a miracle? It’s a miracle any of us are here, for one thing.

But for another, I had breast cancer when I was 35 years old and our girls were three and six years old. I don’t think I was ever truly in danger of dying — the cancer was caught early and I elected to do aggressive treatments — but the whole reason I found it was because a dear high school friend of mine did die (a story I wrote about in my memoir, The Victoria’s Secret Catalog Never Stops Coming and Other Lessons I Learned From Breast Cancer.) So there were some days and weeks when it felt like I might die young, and that clarity inspires gratitude for every day and every year.

I also think I have a natural tendency towards gratitude. Inside my mind, there are all kinds of disasters happening all the time — dread diseases and car accidents, plane crashes and plagues — but the world keeps spinning, and the sun keeps coming up, and I keep waking up each morning, so it always feels like there is something to be grateful for.

I started Author Accelerator 10 years ago, which is one of the reasons I loved my ‘50s. I was constantly learning, taking on challenges, and putting all my experience and muscle behind something I believed in. So many of my friends were growing bitter with the careers they had pursued that, in the end, they couldn’t wait to get out of.

I believe in Author Accelerator because I have seen our certification program empower so many (mostly but not all!) women, who are out there changing the way that writers are nurtured and changing the value people place on that critical creative work.

I have been listening to the new season of Julie Louis-Dreyfus’s podcast, Wiser, where Julia, who is about my age, interviews iconic women who are in their ‘70s, ‘80s, and ‘90s — people like Jane Fonda, Carol Burnett, Billie Jean King, Isabelle Ayende, and Anne Lamott. In each episode, we hear how these women navigate the world and their changing minds, bodies, and emotions. It’s a great show.

So many of the women Julia interviews still work. Carol Burnett, who is in her ‘90s, talks about how excited she is for a new project, and Billie Jean King, who is 80, says “I’m not finished!” — and this makes me want to stand up and cheer.

I’m working on changing my relationship to my work — on not gripping it quite so tightly and not identifying with it so completely (thanks to the teachings of my client and friend Dr. Diana Hill) — but I can’t foresee a time when I’m not engaged in making things, creating things, and sharing things.

I have a small poster near my desk that says, “I make stuff because I get sad if I don’t.” I bought it in Austin, Texas many years ago when I saw it in the window of an artist’s collective.

It captures so much of why I work and why I want to keep working. Making things — books, courses, communities, and partnerships — brings me so much joy.

I want to share these thoughts with all of you today because I know so many of you are engaged in building businesses and making things, too.

I just wanted to take this moment to share my gratitude for my life and for all of you, who care about this particular thing that I care so much about, too.

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