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Dear friends,
I’m turning 40 tomorrow!
I have historically had a weird relationship with my birthday: I want to feel celebrated, but I’m uncomfortable with all eyes on me. (You can imagine how odd it is to post videos of myself on the internet exercising every week!) My birthday is at the end of summer, when everyone leaves the city, and it can get lonely. My social anxiety tends to flare and I overanalyze every interaction (or lack thereof!).
But last year, for 39, I decided to be done with all of that. I planned a fun day with my husband on Governor’s Island and was determined to enjoy it, and did so very much, even though it rained. If those sneaky anxious thoughts crept in, I imagined them floating away like a little cloud. I even let my husband throw me a small party on our patio, something I don’t think I’d done since my 24th birthday.
It was so lovely, and I think it all really helped prep me for 40, because this year, I have nothing but joy and excitement about my birthday! On Sunday, I celebrated with my family by having a PENGUIN ENCOUNTER (!!!) — truly something I’ve dreamed about for years — at the New York Aquarium.
This week, I’m getting a haircut and a facial (this is where I go and it is the bessst; if you make an appointment tell Laurie I sent you!), I’m having a party, and a few dear friends and family members are even flying in from other states to celebrate with me. And while the number feels mostly meaningless, I do love a milestone, and for the past few weeks I’ve been having such a fun time chewing on this post: a roundup of 40 lessons and values I hold dear.
It’s been hard to keep the explanations concise, so I’m going to divide this into two sets of 20 — you’ll get the second part next week, where we’ll get into marriage, career, money, shopping, and more.
In the meantime, thank you all for being such a huge part of why I am feeling so loved and supported these days! Before we get into the list, a gentle reminder of other ways you can help me celebrate:
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Talking about it with your friends and family.
Sharing it with loved ones who might be interested. (Hint: You can just forward the emails!) (Other hint: Moms and aunts love me!)
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Link to it in your own newsletter, if you’re so inclined.
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Finally, if you have a newsletter, podcast, or community that might be interested in hearing from me about building a sustainable relationship with exercise, working out in a body-neutral way, WTF Pilates is for (and not for), how to actually start strength training, or anything else, let’s talk!
On to the OTHER list. The really long one. Stay with me if you can!
START SMALL.
We often feel the need to make up for lost time when we’re trying to start a new health-related behavior. We’re going to overhaul our entire diet! We’re going to never use social media again! We’re going to go from not moving much at all to exercising every single day! Please don’t do this: Pick a bite-sized amount of the behavior you’d like to try, and just try it! See how it feels. Adjust gradually. Then if it’s going well, add a little more.
In an exercise context, keep this in mind when starting a new program too, or even just refreshing your strength training programming: Go slowly, use bodyweight, just do a few reps. Get the hang of things first, kick the tires a little, and then slowly add on when you’re ready. This will save you a great deal of exhaustion and soreness. I still occasionally have to learn this the hard way when I get excited to start a new program, so I’m writing it here partially so that I don’t forget it next time.
Memorize a good warmup.
I went on a funny press trip more than a decade ago: a running-focused trip in the Dominican Republic. I hate running, and I hate exercising in the heat, and let me tell you that running in a hot place like the DR is not for the faint of heart (read: me!). But on that trip, a very nice running coach taught me the World’s Greatest Stretch, which if you read this newsletter you know is the only warmup I really think anyone needs to do most of the time. Memorize it (or a favorite warmup of your choice; sun salutations are a very similar alternative!), and you can do it before a run or walk, before a strength workout, or while you’re awkwardly killing time on your mat waiting for an exercise class to start and don’t want to stare at your phone because you’re there for your mental health, dammit. (Also, you don’t actually have to do a warmup, but it’s nice to have one in case you want to.) You don’t need to get into doing your own exercise programming if you don’t feel like it (that’s part of why I’m here!) but it’s worth it to feel very competent about your warmup.
Make a list of your bare-minimum self-care stuff and lean on it in hard times.
We know, we know, that sleeping, going for a walk, getting outside, connecting with friends, and eating nourishing food make a difference in how we feel. But somehow it’s still so easy to forget those things when we’re going through something difficult. And then, of course, skipping those important actions just compounds how bad the hard stuff feels! Having a written-out list of these things can make a big difference. Bookmarking a good bare-minimum workout helps too.
Deal with your stomach!!
If you constantly have tummy trouble, it isn’t necessarily something you just have to live with. A really great anti-diet dietitian can help, but honestly, you may need additional support from a gastroenterologist, a mental health provider, and even a pelvic floor therapist. It’s worth it. My cranky stomach isn’t happy all the time, but since working with an anti-diet RD a few years ago I feel much better overall, and I know how to handle it when symptoms pop up.
Deal with your pelvic floor!!
Despite so much ~pelvic floor content~, so many of us see pelvic floor dysfunction as just a normal part of aging or having kids and figure we have to live with it. Still others (like me, a few years ago!) don’t realize that our symptoms are even a thing we can address. TIL: My decade(s?)-long tendency to need to pee at least once an hour wasn’t because I had a “small bladder,” it was because I had an overly tight pelvic floor! Getting 1:1 treatment from a pelvic floor therapist — truly just a handful of sessions — changed my life. It might sound silly, but being able to be out in the world, take a long walk, just exist without having to clock where the nearest bathroom is means so much less stress. (And less stress, btw, is also helpful for…pelvic health. It’s all connected!) A great place to start is my friend Cait Van Damm’s newsletter Adventures in Vaginas.
Get to know your little signals that something’s a little off.
I have a weird one: feeling tempted to weigh in on people’s questions in various online forums. I’m not saying this is always, or even usually, the sign of some sort of menty B, and most of us have gotten so much out of strangers’ advice online! It’s lovely to share your knowledge and support sometimes. But for me, I’ve realized that commenting on a stranger’s post in a neighborhood Facebook group or parenting listserv or whatever more than every once in a while means I’m getting too isolated: I work from home, for myself, and if I don’t make a conscious effort to do social things, reach out to friends, and connect with my community, I try to look for it by being “helpful” to strangers online. Recognizing this tendency has made a huge difference in taking care of that lack of connection before it snowballs. (Yours might be unnecessary online shopping, late-night scrolling, overdoing it on eyebrow plucking, or something else entirely.)
Put a smelly item outside.
I don’t understand the alchemy of fresh air and sunshine, but it has de-stunk so many things in my life! I once picked up a suitcase from baggage claim at the airport and discovered that it (and all the contents) smelled overwhelmingly like jet fuel. (They won’t compensate you for this, by the way!) I washed my clothes about 100 times, but wasn’t sure what to do about my suitcase. I put it on my balcony for a few days, and the smell was gone. Same thing with cigarette smoke on a beloved t-shirt; or that time I wore a linen blazer to a tiny restaurant with an open kitchen and zero ventilation — the cooking smells disappeared after one night of hanging on the balcony. Magic!
If you have leftover salmon, don’t bother trying to reheat it.
Eat the leftovers cold, and make a little sauce with mustard, mayo, and pepper (and dill, if you have any). This may be the optimal way to eat salmon, period. That sauce is THE BEST. (Related: It’s really hard to reheat leftover chicken without overcooking it so just go ahead and shred it and make it into chicken salad! For turkey, you’re gonna want to make turkey carnitas. Mmmm.)
Open the good wine, wear the fancy perfume, yes, but also: Use the stuff in your pantry and freezer!
I’m a bit of a hoarder with pantry and freezer items, saving them “just in case.” But all that really leads to is messy shelves and expired food. (The reality is, if I need a backup meal option “just in case” it’s 100% gonna be delivery.) I’ve been trying to get into the habit of scrounging around in the freezer and pantry at least once every few weeks and actually using, say, those pasta sauce leftovers I froze, or those bags of lentils I randomly stocked up on. It really cuts down on waste and makes me feel a little smug.
Watch them from the future.
When parenting feels frustrating and/or you just wish they’d freaking hurry up, imagine you’re actually yourself in 5 or 10 years, suddenly teleported to this moment in time with your child. (Like, I have a 6-year-old, and my heart almost bursts when I think about, when she’s 16, what it would feel like to hop back to this very moment with her.) The nostalgic tenderness is so powerful. You just know that Older You would savor this moment if you had the chance.
Let your kid pick your outfit (or at least your earrings or perfume).
This won’t work with all kids, but it definitely works with my younger one: She absolutely does not want a babysitter, ever (unless it’s my parents), so seeing me start to get dressed up for a night out can immediately trigger a meltdown. Asking for her help picking my outfit or accessories seems to make a big difference and eases the babysitter pushback.
It’s ok to make the unpopular parenting choice.
My kids go to bed early. (My younger kid at 7:15ish, my older at 8:15ish. I know.) We stick to these bedtimes almost always, and they simply cannot hang if we let them stay up late: They have trouble sleeping, tons of wakeups and nightmares and other middle-of-the-night shenanigans, and are absolute monsters the next day. It kind of stinks — our evenings are often a little rushed, if we go out to eat we need to be seated by 5:30 at the latest, we can’t go to drive-in movies or evening baseball games, and we’re often the first to leave group hangs. But it really works for them, and for us. (For one thing, we sleep! For another, we get at least a moment of adult time in our house before we go to bed. Obviously we spend most of it cleaning the kitchen, but occasionally we get to share a cup of tea or a whiskey and watch a TV show that isn’t Bluey.) I sometimes feel the need to apologize for it, but really: Sleep is incredibly important, and this is just how our kids are wired and what works for our family, and that’s the whole story. Someday they’ll stay up late! But this is life for now.
We also don’t really do sleepovers. I’m not saying it’ll never happen, but the risks and fallout (my kids are
not fun when sleep-deprived) don’t really feel worth it right now.You’re still in there.
The intensity of trying to conceive, being pregnant and giving birth and breastfeeding if you go those routes, and taking care of babies and toddlers is A LOT, and it’s a period of time that can go on for ages and ages. (I was there from 2015 through about 2023!) That is real life, and you have to make the most of it while you’re in it, but it’s also all fucking insane and can absolutely skew your sense of reality and who you actually are as a human being. YOU ARE STILL IN THERE SOMEWHERE. Someday you’ll reemerge and think about how bonkers all of that was. You’ll have the brain space to really be interested and interesting and creative again. It’ll be okay. (Related: If you don’t have kids and are worried your friends with little kids have lost their minds, you’re right — but also please trust that they’re still in there and would really appreciate it if you’d stick around to see them reemerge.)
Related: It’s not always this hard.
It’s okay if you don’t especially enjoy the life of a baby-toddler-little kid parent. There is so much in that delicate, difficult period that we try to tell ourselves is super fun!!! but actually it would have been much easier to stay home. It turns out, some of those things do become fun eventually. I’m thinking specifically about travel — traveling with little kids (or even going on “exciting” outings around your own town) just largely sucks, and I strongly suspect that people who say they enjoy it are just trying very very hard to convince themselves. (Maybe your little kids are much more easygoing than mine were.) But once the kids involved are maybe 5 or older? Gosh, it’s a treat. Still more complicated than an adults-only trip, but in many ways even more fun.
I love the wonderful
Catherine Newman on surviving the messy, exhausting early years of parenting and finding the fun on the other side — if you haven’t read Catastrophic Happiness or her other nonfiction books, consider this your sign. I despise linking to Amazon, but you can read the book’s iconic prologue here, and then immediately close that window and go purchase it from Bookshop.
Mark your calendar for your best friend’s travel and other important dates.
Gahh, my memory kind of stinks sometimes! And, I think, when I’m chatting with a friend I’m often so engaged in reading their emotions and enjoying their presence that the actual details of what they’re telling me don’t sink in. I’ve started to make a habit of jotting down in my calendar when important things are happening in my friends’ lives, and especially for my travel-advisor bestie, their upcoming trips. That way I don’t have to constantly ask, “When are you going to Mexico again?!” and I can thoughtfully check in about the big-deal stuff instead of always saying, “Oh yeah, I forgot that was happening!” (Note: This is very much a work in progress, so if you’re my IRL friend and you’re like, “You are kidding yourself, Anna; you are still very annoying about this,” I get it and I’m sorry. But when I make myself do it, I’m always glad I did!)
If your friend writes a book you have to buy it.
A very cool thing about being a professional writer/editor person — and someone who likes to brag about friends — is that I know a lot of people who write books. My rule is, you write a book, I’m buying one, every time. But I’ll be honest with you: I read most of them, but not all. Not every book is for every reader! Like, I’m an absolute freaking chicken about suspense, and one of my best friends is Thee Andrea Bartz, bestselling thriller author (and heroic anti-AI plaintiff and general evangelist). I’m always so nervous when her books come out! And okay, because we are so close, I do actually read every one of them despite my terror; always in daylight and always followed by, like, an episode of Parks and Rec to reset my nervous system. I end up loving them so much, though, and am always so glad I read them — you should, too! But expecting to love or even be interested in every friend’s book is a high bar (especially, I’d imagine, if you’re in academia). Guess what: The main thing your author friend cares about, at least as far as you are concerned, is selling books and having people show up to their shit. If a friend actually reads and has nice things to say about their book, it’s a bonus! So, you write a book? I’m buying it. You have a book event in my city when I’m in town? I’m coming. I will probably, usually, read your book, too!
If you’re like I literally do not know an author personally, note that this does extend to other things, too! If your friend opens a store, even if it isn’t your jam, find a thing you like to buy there and try to buy it regularly! If your friend starts selling her knitting projects at the local farmer’s market, go buy a potholder! (And if you absolutely can’t do either of those friends, at least spread the word about your friend’s store or knitting stand at the market!) If your friend has a newsletter, sign up for a paid subscription! It’s actually kind of a great 40th birthday present to her! Cough cough.
I also strongly believe that we can’t expect people to show up for us if we don’t show up for them. It goes both ways. Not that you should be a good friend only because you want other people to support you, but if that is something that you want, you gotta reciprocate.
Get real about whom in your life you can count on for what.
Okay, so we’re the kind of friends our author pals can rely on to buy their books and show up to their release events. That doesn’t mean every single friend in our life is going to do the same for us (and our books, metaphorical or actual). The worst feeling is having unreasonable expectations about the people in your life and being consistently disappointed. Maybe Sue is a great hang and sends you hilarious memes, but she’s not going to be there for you in the way you want while you wait for your cat’s blood test results: So…just don’t try to talk to her about it. It’s okay! Not all friends check all friendship boxes. Some friendships are very one-way, with you putting in a lot of effort and the other person mostly just receiving it. In some cases, this can be a little toxic; in others, it’s just how it is and we like them anyway so we just kind of deal with it. Not all relationships have to be incredibly fulfilling in every way to be worth tending — but expecting them all to be is a recipe for heartbreak and frustration. (I’m in firm disagreement with a lot of people on social media about stuff like this who would probably say I should have stronger boundaries.)
Buy a bunch of cards anytime you’re in a cute bookstore.
I have books coming out of my ears (see above), but I still love indie bookstores. If I pop into one and really can’t allow myself to purchase a book, I’ll at least buy a handful of cards: Having a stash of great birthday cards, new-baby cards, get well cards, and sympathy cards makes it much easier to celebrate and support your loved ones. When an occasion pops up, you just check your stash and pop a card in the mail, or bring it along to a birthday dinner. (My favorite cards, by the way, are the ones made by my friend Rachel Kroh of Heartell Press. They are so beautiful, and they express connection, celebration, and support with such deeply meaningful but not-at-all cheesy words and images. Keep an eye out for them: You’ll see them in lots of great indie bookstores all over the country, though you can also order them online!)
Grief lasts a long time.
You know this if you’ve lost someone, but we often forget about it when it comes to loved ones experiencing their own grief. We’re very concerned about them in the early days and weeks, and then we unconsciously sort of expect them to get over it. They will, of course, sooner or later come up with ways to cope with day-to-day life and appear fine even with this huge shadow hanging over them, but the shadow is still very much there even if you can’t see it. Check in with your people. Give them opportunities to talk about their loved ones weeks, months, and years down the line. (A question I’ll sometimes use is something like, “How are you doing mom-wise, if you feel like talking about it?”) Grieving a lost pet can be particularly lonely in this regard, so keep this in mind for pet parents, too. And while the truth is that grief is extremely personal, and those experiencing it may inevitably be disappointed by our ineptitude at finding the right words, I still think it’s better to hold space for others’ grief and let them decide not to use it than to try to pretend the grief isn’t there.
Older friends are really great.
Over the past several years, I’ve developed truly wonderful friendships with a handful of women in their 60s, 70s, and 80s. I love these friendships mostly because it’s just like being friends with anyone else, which really helps me remember that we’re all essentially the same, no matter our age; but I also love observing women who’ve been friends with each other for decades and decades. Maybe this is just a New Yorker thing (I can’t imagine septuagenarians in the South, where I grew up, acting quite like this), but these ladies love each other fiercely and also say pretty much exactly what they mean at all times, including when their friend is bugging the shit out of them, which is just wildly refreshing. I think I’m still at an age of tiptoeing and being very careful about how I express things, and it’s fun to think of a future where I’m just a bit out of fucks and put it all out there. Goals!
I’d love to have “intergenerational” friendships in the opposite direction, but I literally don’t know where the 20-somethings are. Find me, youths!
Thanks again for indulging me here, and for being your wonderful selves. Treat yourself to something delicious tomorrow in my honor (or really any day!), and I’ll see you on Sunday for the new WOW — and next Wednesday for part 2 of this list!
xo
Anna
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