43: The Year I Learned What Matters

I love birthdays.

I love celebrating other people’s birthdays, and I love celebrating my own. I always have.

There is something kind of incredible about having one day every year that celebrates the blessing this world received when you arrived in it. Not because every person needs to do something huge or extraordinary with their life, but because each of us came into this world with the ability to make it a little better simply by being here, loving people, and becoming who we were meant to be.

Becoming a mom has only solidified that for me.

November 6 will always be Brooks’ birthday. Someday, I imagine he’ll think of it mostly as his day. There will be cakes and presents and parties and whatever traditions we create along the way.

But I will always know it as something else, too.

It’s the day my entire life changed.

I look at Brooks and already know he is going to do amazing things with his life. I have no idea what those things will be, and I don’t need them to be impressive by anyone else’s definition. I just know the world is better because he’s in it.

Every November 6, I won’t only be celebrating another year of his life. I’ll remember the moment he entered mine.

I imagine that’s how my parents feel about my birthday, too.

Which makes this birthday feel especially different.

Today, I turn 43.

And if you had told me on my last birthday what 42 would hold, I wouldn’t have believed you.

Not because it was all hard. Some of it was everything I had prayed for. Some of it I chose. Some of it opened doors I had been thinking about for years. Some of it brought people into my life I desperately needed. And some of it I never would have chosen in a million years.

Its the year I became a mom.

I experienced the beautiful, exhausting, complicated transition of postpartum. I found an incredible community of moms. I got to share some of that experience on local television. Brian and I escaped to St. Kitts for some much-needed time as a couple before his deployment. After nearly a decade of thinking about becoming a counselor, I finally decided to pursue a second master’s degree.

There was so much good.

And then there were the parts we didn’t choose.

Brian deployed. A war began the night before he left. Snakes somehow found their way into our house. Our plans for another baby became complicated again.

And then I was diagnosed with cancer.

It has been a year of enormous joy sitting right beside enormous fear.

Maybe that’s what 42 has taught me more than anything.

Life doesn’t separate itself neatly into good seasons and bad ones.

Sometimes they are the same season.

The year I became Brooks’ mom

The biggest thing that happened at 42 is also the best thing that has ever happened to me (besides Brian)!

Brooks.

After six rounds of IVF, countless appointments, injections, procedures, disappointments, waiting, and praying, he arrived in November.

And suddenly there was this little person we had fought so hard to meet.

Motherhood has been everything I hoped it would be and also nothing like I imagined.

There was so much joy. His first smiles. The middle-of-the-night snuggles. Watching his personality appear. The way he laughs at our dogs and those he sees on walks. The way his smile can stop strangers, which is teaching me to be less introverted. Watching Brian become his dad.

There was also postpartum.

I think we sometimes tell the story of having a baby as though the baby arrives and the mother simply steps into her new life.

But there is an entire person being born alongside that baby.

I loved Brooks more than I knew it was possible to love another human while also trying to figure out who I was now. I still can’t believe Brian and I made him and I don’t think that awe will ever go away.

I was exhausted. Hormonal. Learning a body that didn’t feel quite like mine. Learning a marriage that suddenly included a third person whose needs always came first. Learning what it meant to return to work after maternity leave where it was evident we are all replaceable. I learned to move between two versions of myself that were both very much me.

And learning how to leave the house with enough supplies to survive a three-week expedition just to go to Target for an hour.

I eventually had the opportunity to go on our local news station and talk about postpartum, and I was grateful for the chance to talk openly about a season so many women experience but don’t always feel comfortable talking about.

Because the more I experienced postpartum, the more I realized how many women move through these enormous transitions quietly.

One of the greatest gifts of that season was finding other moms. Moms who are a few seasons ahead of me and those who are starting their journey alongside me.

Some were women I had loved for years who, through the wonderful coincidence of timing, happened to have babies around the same time. Suddenly friendships that had already lived through other chapters had this entirely new layer.

Others were completely new friendships that arrived exactly when I needed them.

There is something about texting another mother who is also awake at an unreasonable hour that can make the world feel considerably less lonely.

I didn’t know how much I would need those women.

I do now.

The year our marriage needed a little room, too

Somewhere in the blur of becoming Mom and Dad, Brian and I escaped for a few days to remember Heather and Brian as husband and wife.

We went to St. Kitts at my parent’s encouragement. They kept Brooks who was just under 3 months old so we could have some time for ourselves.

Just us.

It was time away from bottles and schedules and the constant logistics of caring for a baby. Time to sit across from each other at dinner. Time to talk. Time to reconnect before a deployment we knew was coming.

Looking back, I am so grateful we protected that time.

Because not long after, the deployment arrived.

And the night before Brian left, the war began.

We were sitting at dinner on our last night together, our three-month-old home with a babysitter, when suddenly the deployment we had been preparing for felt very different.

I worried about him.

He worried about us.

We learned to parent across thousands of miles and time zones. Brooks grew while Brian watched through a phone screen. I learned how much of our ordinary family life I had taken for granted.

The year I finally said yes to becoming a counselor

This part of the year was not something that happened to me.

It was something I chose, and something I was incredibly excited about.

For nearly ten years, I had debated becoming a counselor.

I already have my Master of Public Health and a career I love in healthcare. Going back to school for a second master’s degree would be a significant commitment. For years, I kept finding reasons why maybe it wasn’t the right time.

Then I went through infertility and IVF.

Then pregnancy.

Then postpartum.

Then returning to work after maternity leave.

And the idea became harder to ignore.

I kept seeing a gap in the counseling space for women navigating these transitions.

Infertility and IVF can affect your identity, your marriage, your friendships, your finances, your career, and the way you imagine your future.

Postpartum can be incredibly complicated even when you desperately wanted and prayed for the baby you are holding.

And returning to work after maternity leave brings another transition that we don’t talk about enough. You’re expected to step back into the professional version of yourself when you aren’t quite the same person who left.

I wanted to help women and families in those spaces.

So after nearly a decade of thinking about it, I finally decided to pursue a second master’s degree, this time in social work, with the goal of eventually becoming a counselor.

I applied.

And I got in.

I was thrilled.

The acceptance came one week after my cancer diagnosis.

Suddenly, the question wasn’t whether I was ready to take on a second master’s degree. It was whether school belonged in a season when I needed to focus on treatment, my family, my health, and getting well.

So I deferred.

And surprisingly, I don’t see that as the dream disappearing.

It’s on hold for a little while.

In fact, I wonder now whether everything that has happened this year may eventually shape that dream in ways I couldn’t have anticipated.

I thought infertility, IVF, postpartum, motherhood, and returning to work would be the experiences I carried into that counseling room someday.

Now I know what it feels like to hear the word cancer at 42.

I know what it feels like to try to preserve fertility before chemotherapy.

I know what it feels like to be both a mom and a patient.

I know what it feels like to need your own mom when you are already someone else’s.

I know what it feels like to have your husband thousands of miles away when you desperately want him home.

And I know what it feels like to have a community step in when your own two hands simply aren’t enough.

Maybe God’s plan for how I eventually use that degree is shifting a little.

Maybe this year is adding something to the story I never would have chosen, but someday I’ll be able to use.

I don’t know yet.

For now, the dream is still there.

It just gets to wait for me.

And then there were the snakes

Yes. Plural.

We had snakes in our house.

Because apparently 42 had a theme, and subtlety was not part of it.

At the time, I mostly viewed this as one more thing I absolutely did not have the bandwidth for.

Later, I started reading about how snakes can symbolize transformation. Shedding an old skin. Renewal. Becoming something new.

Do I know whether the snakes were some profound sign from God or simply reptiles who found an unfortunately accessible entrance into our home?

No.

I remain open to both theological and pest-control explanations.

But transformation certainly feels like an appropriate word for this year.

I don’t think I’m the same woman who turned 42.

And it was the first time this year I realized my community was so needed, especially for the unexpected moments, as I debated burning the house down or finding someone who could wrangle the snakes.

The year I heard the word cancer

This is the part of the year that divides it into the before and after.

I had noticed a little blood late in pregnancy.

Nothing dramatic.

I felt fine.

I wasn’t in pain. I didn’t feel sick.

After Brooks was born, I was in the trenches of newborn life and postpartum, and I wasn’t exactly keeping meticulous records of my bathroom habits.

Eventually, I noticed the blood again.

My primary care doctor sent me to GI. My GI doctor wouldn’t let me put off the colonoscopy.

And on July 28, they found a tumor. It would be several more days before we had answers about the staging, the next steps, the survival rates I was facing. They were days filled with disbelief and fear.

Rectal cancer.

At 42.

Stage 2, threatening the mesorectal fascia making it a little more complicated of a diagnosis.

With a nine-month-old.

With my husband deployed.

There are some moments when your life seems to split into before and after.

That was one of mine.

One moment I was working, being Brooks’ mom, planning another round of IVF and an embryo transfer later in the year, thinking about graduate school, daycare, dinner, and all the completely ordinary things that fill a life.

Then suddenly there were oncologists and surgeons and scans and treatment plans and words I had never expected to need to understand.

There was fear.

There was anger.

There were moments when I was positive and moments when I absolutely was not.

There were many moments I said I was not going to get treatment and lots of walking circles in our backyard crying on the phone with my parents, Brian, and close friends.

There were moments when I wondered how this could possibly be my life.

There were prayers that sounded hopeful and prayers that sounded more like arguments.

There was tremendous relief when my scans showed no evidence that the cancer had spread.

And then there was the decision to fight.

Another IVF retrieval before chemotherapy. A port. Six rounds of chemo. A pump attached to me for 46 hours at a time. A body learning an entirely new definition of tired.

I finished Cycle 1 on this birthday.

And thanks to the Red Cross, Brian is home for two weeks of emergency leave.

So on my 43rd birthday, my husband is here.

My baby is here.

I am here.

Those three sentences mean more to me than they would have a year ago.

The year people showed up

If there is one thing 42 has taught me more clearly than anything else, it is this:

People matter.

Not things.

Not having everything together.

Not whether the house looks the way I want it to. It doesn’t!

Not whether every text gets answered.

Not whether the laundry gets folded immediately. Transparently, my clothes are wrinkled more often than not these days.

Not whether dinner is homemade.

People.

My family.

Our moms stepping into our home and caring for Brooks when I couldn’t do everything myself. I hit the jackpot with my mom and mother-in-law!

My brother sitting beside me for my first chemo.

My dad sending flowers when he couldn’t be there.

Friends bringing meals. People rearranging schedules to help with childcare. Coworkers checking on me. Neighbors showing up and just sitting with me in the good and bad moments. People praying for us who barely know us.

Old friends becoming even dearer.

New friends somehow becoming old-friend important very quickly.

Mom friends who arrived in exactly the season I needed them.

Brian wanting desperately to be home when his military obligations meant he couldn’t be.

And an entire community wrapping itself around our little family when life became too heavy for us to carry alone.

I’ve spent much of my life believing strength meant being capable.

I’m learning that sometimes strength looks like letting people help.

Maybe that is one of the greatest gifts hidden inside this year.

I know now, without question, who and what matters.

The little things are getting littler

I wish I could say cancer has made me completely enlightened and nothing trivial bothers me anymore.

It has not.

I remain fully capable of being annoyed by technology, installing car seats that are a little more complicated than they need to be, traffic, and broken appliances.

Growth has limits.

But some things really have gotten smaller.

The house doesn’t have to be perfect.

Plans can change.

Work can wait sometimes.

A bad hair day is just a bad hair day.

The schedule can fall apart.

We can order dinner.

Brooks can have random items from the fridge for meals as long as there is a protein and a veggie. Avocados count as a food group, right?

I don’t get extra credit for making life harder than it needs to be.

And the things that once felt ordinary have become almost sacred.

Holding Brooks.

Sitting beside Brian.

Dinner with friends.

A normal workday.

Laying next to my mom on the couch.

Laughing in our kitchen.

Walking the dogs.

Putting Brooks to bed.

Making plans that have absolutely nothing to do with doctors.

An ordinary Tuesday.

Especially an ordinary Tuesday.

What 42 taught me

I don’t know that I can wrap a year like this into neat lessons. I’m still living it.

But I know a few things now that I didn’t understand quite as deeply a year ago.

1. You can be grateful and angry at the same time. Faith doesn’t require pretending something doesn’t hurt.

2. Joy doesn’t have to wait until the hard thing is over. There were beautiful days in the middle of infertility. There were beautiful moments postpartum. There have already been beautiful moments during cancer.

3. Plans are important. People are more important.

4. Changing the timeline doesn’t mean giving up the dream. Sometimes something simply needs to wait while you take care of what matters right now.

5. Asking for help isn’t failing at independence. Sometimes it is how a family gets through a hard season.

6. Ordinary life is wildly underrated.

7. Your people are everything. Find them. Keep them. Let them love you.

And maybe most importantly:

8. Life doesn’t begin again when the hard season ends.

It is happening now.

In the waiting.

In the treatments.

In the deployment.

In the deferred plans.

In the baby giggles.

In the friendships.

In the meals dropped on the porch.

In the ridiculous snakes.

In the fear.

In the hope.

In the meanwhile.

So, here’s to 43

If you had asked me a year ago what I wanted 43 to look like, I probably would have simply said, moments with Brian and Brooks.

I don’t have much of a list this year still.

I don’t need 43 to be extraordinary.

I would actually love for it to be wonderfully, beautifully ordinary.

I want my health.

I want Brian home.

I want to watch Brooks become a toddler.

I want family dinners and vacations and birthday cakes and workdays and bedtime routines.

I want to make plans without first checking a treatment calendar.

I want more birthdays.

I want to watch Brooks have more of his.

I want to watch Brian grow older. I want my parents there for more candles and cakes and ordinary celebrations. I want to keep getting the privilege of celebrating the people I love.

And I want to grow older too.

That last one hits differently now.

I’ve always loved birthdays because they celebrate the day someone came into this world.

At 43, I think I understand that blessing a little more deeply.

I’m still here.

I’m still becoming.

And there is so much life I still want to live.

Today, I turn 43.

Tomorrow morning, I go back to chemo.

That’s a strange sentence.

But maybe that is what this whole year has been teaching me.

We don’t always get to choose the chapter we’re in.

We do get to keep living inside it.

And after this year, ordinary sounds pretty extraordinary to me.

With love, in the meanwhile. ❤️