Perhaps the new normal even changes frequently. Life is different. It’s terrifying; it's anxiety-provoking. But it’s also beautiful. Precious moments and memories await you. It will be wonderful, it will be hard, but it will also be rewarding.

While 40 is considered the midpoint of your life, we all know that you don’t make it that far without a little help. I wanted to celebrate forty in style, but I also wanted to acknowledge forty people that made a positive impact in my life. I wanted to use my birthday as an opportunity to thank them for helping me become the person I am.

I’ve been writing this letter to my birth mom in bits and pieces throughout the years—words trailing when inspiration flows like a staggering stream. I’ll admit, the words feel like mismatched puzzle pieces without a reference picture. How do I convey the assurance I ache to give a woman I’ll probably never meet?

If you were to step into my childhood bedroom, you’d find countless half-written plays about long-lost sisters and numerous diary entries detailing my family vacations. Writing always came naturally to me. It is how I deconstructed new concepts and ideas.

For the first week I did not receive a single letter, so I was getting a little worried. What if no one wrote? But then, this week, everything changed. 1 letter on Monday, another on Tuesday, 6 on Wednesday, 11 on Thursday and 22 on Friday!

For pretty much the entirety of January 2020, I really didn’t feel like myself. I was crying every few days. I was having a hard time sleeping. Everything in my life felt boring, mundane, and generally unsatisfying.

Basically, I was stuck.

It may be finding joy in life’s minuscule, mundane moments. It may be up and moving your life halfway across the world. It may be parenting as best you can, through temper tantrums and toddlers taking their first steps. But don’t fall for the lure of Everyone Else’s Extraordinary.

I can’t fix social media. I can’t fix the comment rage.

All I feel I can do is sit and stare at my phone, paralyzed by the incessant reality of a world too big for me.

Firstly and most importantly, you are doing just fine. Honestly, you are doing better than fine. You are crushing it.

We’ve forgotten that oftentimes togetherness is what most heals us. 

I have come to believe that a healthy sense of curiosity is not only essential for developing a love of learning in children but is also essential for developing a healthy interest in and compassion for our fellow humankind.

When I’m having a hard time, she usually says, “It will be okay in the end, Sarah.”

You have turned hospitality into an art form. Everyone is welcome in your home. Even a door to door salesman with questionable motives is welcomed in, offered a cup of steaming hot tea, perhaps some dried fruit and chocolate treats, friendly conversation, and a moment to rest before heading back out.