Turning 40: Honouring the Transitions That Made Me
I recently turned 40, and it has made me pause in a way I did not quite expect.
It’s not that I suddenly feel older or because I believe I should have everything figured out by now, but because this age feels like a threshold. A moment to stand still for a breath, look back at the many versions of myself who have carried me here, and gently honour the transitions that have shaped me.
How I celebrated
I celebrated turning 40 in a way that felt both spacious and deeply connective. I went to visit family without the kids, which in itself felt like a rare kind of exhale, a chance to be held as myself for a moment, not only in the role of mother. I had spa dates, dinners, spent time with people I love, went to Byron Bay, rode bikes, swam at the beach and had those simple playground hangs that somehow always bring everyone back into the present moment. I also got a tattoo with a close friend, something that felt fun and also like a marker of this new threshold, a symbol of diving into a new dimension, not leaving behind who I have been, but carrying her with me as I step into something wider, deeper and still unknown.
Behind my website, my work with somatic therapy, embodiment, meditation and motherhood transitions, there is also just me. A woman who has been changed by love, longing, uncertainty, grief, motherhood and the slow, ongoing practice of coming home to herself.
The messy beginnings of becoming
One of the first big transitions I remember is adolescence, and honestly, I still feel a little embarrassed when I look back at parts of that time.
There was so much feeling in me then. So many hormones, big emotions, awkward moments and attempts to belong. I did not feel steady in myself, and I certainly did not have the language to understand what was happening in my body or nervous system.
For a long time, I judged that angry, scared and anxious younger version of me. I cringed at her intensity, her insecurity, the ways she behaved when she was trying to find her place in the world.
Now I see her differently.
She was just in a phase of becoming with a body that was changing, her identity was forming, and her nervous system was trying to find safety and belonging in the only ways it knew how.
There is tenderness in that now and since becoming a mother I guess a kind of mothering toward her. A wish to say, “Of course it felt hard. Of course you were unsteady. You were finding your way.”
Love, belonging and ancestral roots
Meeting my husband was one of the beautiful transitions of my life.
Getting married in Sri Lanka remains one of my most meaningful memories, not only because I was marrying someone I deeply loved, but because I felt held by family, community, place and ancestral roots.
There was something deeply embodied about that time. It was not just an idea of belonging, but a felt sense of it.
I remember feeling connected to him, to our families, to the land, and to something older than myself. That transition had beauty around it. It reminded me that change can feel safer when we are held in love and community.
The long season of uncertainty
And yet not all transitions arrive with beauty and ceremony.
Infertility was one of the long, aching ones. Alongside it came career changes, identity shifts and an extended period of not really knowing who I was or where I was going.
For around 11 or 12 years, I lived in a kind of in-between. Wanting a baby and not knowing if that baby would come. The not wanting a baby and wanting to just move on. Moving into new career paths and not knowing where they would lead. Feeling parts of my old self fall away before I knew what would take their place.
At the time, I would not have called it healing because it felt more like descent.
Life was asking me to sit inside uncertainty, and I did not want to. I wanted answers, direction, clarity and reassurance. Instead, I met grief, longing, fear and a deep unravelling of who I thought I was supposed to be.
Something was happening there though, slowly and quietly.
I began reconnecting with my body. I started listening beneath the noise of striving, pleasing and trying to get life right. Younger parts of me began to surface, parts from childhood and adolescence that needed compassion rather than judgement.
This is part of why I do the work I do now.
Healing, for me, has never been about fixing ourselves into some perfect version. It has been about relationship. Relationship with the body, the nervous system, our younger parts, our stories, our grief, our longings and the present moment as it is.
Beyond wellness, toward relationship
My work first began in the world of health and wellness, but over time I started to feel less connected to the wellness industry model.
So much of that world can quietly suggest that women need to become better, calmer, more productive, more regulated or more healed. It can be just another project, another routine, another version of self-improvement that is deeply embedded in toxic systems that hold us.
That does not feel like the heart of my work.
The women I support are not in need of being better. They are often tired, under-supported, stretched thin, carrying invisible loads and moving through enormous life transitions that affect the body, identity, relationships and nervous system.
What I care about now is honouring their relationship with the body, the nervous system, their children, partners, ancestors, communities and the living world around us.
Somatic therapy, embodiment and mindfulness have taught me that change often begins when we stop trying to force ourselves to be different and start meeting what is already here with honesty, compassion and presence.
Motherhood as an unearthing
Motherhood has been the most unearthing transition of my life. It did not simply add children to my world. It rearranged me and invited all that was and is sitting beneath the surface to rise up.
Love arrived in my body in a way I could never have imagined, and so did exhaustion, sensory overwhelm, tenderness, protectiveness, grief, joy and the deep identity shift of becoming a mother.
There are moments in motherhood where I feel more connected to life than ever before, and moments where I feel stretched beyond what I thought I could hold.
Motherhood is not only a parenting journey. It is an embodied transition. A nervous system transition. An identity transition. A relationship transition.
Mothers need spaces where they are not simply told how to do more or be more patient. They need spaces where they can be met. Where their bodies can exhale. Where they can remember that coming back to themselves is not selfish, but part of how they stay connected to life, to their children and to the truth of who they are.
The ache of ordinary moments
Last night, I was lying beside my son, telling him stories in bed.
His little face was so open and fascinated, listening to every word as though the whole world was unfolding in that moment. My heart felt so full, and at the very same time, it ached.
That is one of the tender truths of motherhood.
The beauty can be so full that it almost breaks you.
You are there, right inside the moment, feeling the warmth of your child beside you, and another part of you knows this exact version of them is already passing.
I wanted to soak it in. Not just remember it later, but feel it in my body while it was happening.
At 40, I want more of that.
More slowing down, noticing, presence with the ordinary moments that are not ordinary at all.
What I want to carry forward
This decade has me asking different questions.
What kind of woman and elder do I want to become?
What do I want my children to feel in my presence? What do I want to model about being human? What kind of work do I want to create for mothers and women moving through their own transitions?
I want my children to know that all feelings are ok and can be felt safely and in a grounded way.
That bodies matter and to learn to listen to theirs with tenderness.
That repair is possible even if it is hard and takes time.
That rest is worthy and something that can feel hard to do in this world.
Finally that belonging should not require abandoning yourself…and to give yourself lots of love and compassion when and if you do.
Looking ahead, I also find myself thinking about perimenopause and the transitions still to come. I do not know when that threshold will arrive or how it will move through me, but I want to meet it with curiosity rather than dread.
My hope is to enter each new season with more listening, more reverence for the body and less pressure to control everything.
A quiet bow to the journey
Perhaps this decade is asking me to keep listening, keep softening, keep creating from love, and keep coming home to myself in the middle of real life.
To my body.
To my children.
To my work.
To the earth.
To the fleeting bedtime stories.
To the woman I have been.
To the woman I am becoming.
And to this life, exactly as it is unfolding.
