I threw myself a birthday party. I am not a party-throwing kind of person, in fact, I am pretty awful at it. My husband was preparing for a business trip that we both were dreading. Our household was revolving around my two older children\u2019s therapy schedule and my oldest had just been diagnosed with Celiac disease. This wasn\u2019t the ideal time to throw a party.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m an introvert and I was turning 35, and frankly, I wasn\u2019t looking forward to it. I know age is just a number but this particular birthday was different. It seemed like the end of youth, that my life was nearly half over and I wasn\u2019t sure what the heck I was doing with it. I felt as if all my friendships were stagnant or I was the one dragging them down. I couldn\u2019t even decide who to invite. So I just took the risk. I sent text messages and group Facebook messages to moms from my table at MOPS, ladies I worked with on the Leadership Team and a few moms from my homeschool co-op. I worried that not everyone knew each other and that my house wasn\u2019t big enough. I was filled with self-doubt, afraid that maybe no one would even show up because I wasn\u2019t popular enough. Suddenly I felt 13 years old again and wondered if maybe I still didn\u2019t fit it.<\/p>\n
I bought frozen appetizers from Sam\u2019s Club and hoped a couple people would come. They did, in fact, they nearly all came, bringing veggie trays, cheese platters and wine. Some even brought me gifts, little tokens to say that they loved and appreciated me. We ended up just laughing, talking and telling stories late into the night. Everyone got along, and it was probably the most fun I\u2019d had in months.<\/p>\n
It felt indulgent to throw myself a party, especially at a time when our lives were already so harried that one more thing might have felt like a burden rather than a pleasure. But if I\u2019ve learned anything in the last 15 years of being a grownup, it\u2019s that you can\u2019t always wait for other people to celebrate you, sometimes you must do it yourself.<\/p>\n
I wanted a night to mark reaching a milestone with other ladies who understood. Some were older than me, others younger but we all empathize with that strange passage of time that happens when we become moms, that time vortex where we feel the same inside despite the changes spinning around us. We are quick to revel in every aspect of our children\u2019s growth and development, but often forget to acknowlege and celebrate our own.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s healthy to find a way to celebrate you. Maybe you won\u2019t throw a party but you will have coffee with a friend; old, new or both. You finally invest in a decent bra or a new dress to wear on date nights. It\u2019s not about self-indulgence but rather the important recognition that even as our children grow, so do we. Thirty-five isn\u2019t where it ends for me, I believe I\u2019m just beginning, and to risk sounding clich\u00e9, the best is yet to come.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/blog.mops.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/bethany-286x300.jpg\")
Bethany lives in Bethlehem, PA with her husband and three children, where she is Co-coordinator of her local\u00a0MOPS\u00a0group. She blogs at Bethanyvitaro.com, knits compulsively, gardens optimistically and writes in between.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I threw myself a birthday party. I am not a party-throwing kind of person, in fact, I am pretty awful at it. My husband was preparing for a business trip that we both were dreading. Our household was revolving around my two older children\u2019s therapy schedule and my oldest had just been diagnosed with Celiac […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":260,"featured_media":7720,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"0","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_seopress_news_disabled":"","_seopress_video_disabled":"","_seopress_video":[],"_seopress_pro_schemas_manual":[],"_seopress_pro_rich_snippets_disable_all":"","_seopress_pro_rich_snippets_disable":[],"_seopress_pro_schemas":[],"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,102],"tags":[583,322,44,56,1613],"class_list":["post-7718","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fun","category-relationships","tag-birthday","tag-celebration","tag-mops","tag-motherhood","tag-self-indulgent"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7718","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/260"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7718"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7718\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7718"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7718"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7718"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}