Birthdays and unexpected gifts.

This week I celebrated my birthday (better).

For as long as I can remember, I have dreaded (probably closer to feared) my birthday, even as a child. There are big expectations placed on birthdays. They’re supposed to be a day carved out to honor you as an individual. Birthdays are when your family and friends reflect back to you your value. But this hasn’t been the case for me.

Before I go further, let me be clear. I am not telling you this for sympathy; on the contrary. I just want to ensure you understand the circumstances that led to my recent and profound breakthrough. Can you hang with me to the end? 

I was born with several birthday disadvantages. 

For starters, any birthday within a week of Christmas is just doomed, unless your parents make a special effort to separate the holiday from your special celebration. 

Add to this that I’m the last of four kids, born to a very middle class family. Money was tight and gifts were limited. 

Add to this that my birthday also fell on my parents’ anniversary. Guess what got the attention in my household?

Let’s throw in too that my birthday is typically the day that schools go back in session from the winter break. No one wants one.more.thing.to.celebrate!!

Finally, add to this list that one of my top love languages is gifts. I give them to show love and expect them to feel loved. 

Hopefully the picture is becoming clear. 

Molly Ringwald’s experience in “Sixteen Candles” has been all too familiar.

There have been many years when my parents frantically scrambled after dinner to find something, (ANYTHING) to wrap in an effort to try and salvage their dignity and pretend they hadn’t actually forgotten. (Of course, again, they had.) The anxiety of how I would handle the let-down began to take on a life of its own through the years, making the situation worse.

My crazy mind made up all sorts of delusions about how, if I were really loved, my birthday would be like others.

But this year was different. I owe a lot to one page in a book.

While cleaning over the holiday, I found a copy of Marianne Williamson’s “A Year of Miracles” and realized the cover had never been cracked open. My inner voice insisted that I begin working with it immediately. So on January 3rd, my birthday, I selected the passage for Day 3 and silently asked for a miracle. Frankly, it was such a profound message I decided it would be the concept to take me through this entire year and one that I’m dedicating this message to today. It read:

“There can be no darkness where I provide the light.”

“Light is to darkness what love is to fear; in the presence of one, the other disappears. All the darkness in my life– the fears, neuroses, dysfunctions, and diseases — are not so much things as the absence of things. They represent not the presence of a problem but rather the absence of the answer. And the answer is love. All fearful manifestations disappear in the presence of love.”

“Today I make a stand against darkness, knowing that love will save me from the painful delusions that occupy my mind. As I surrender my mind to love, and dedicate myself to the Light of True Being, then love will cast out my frears and light will cast out all darkness.”

“It is not the love given to me by others, but only the love that I myself provide, that will save me today from suffering. I call to mind any person from whom I have been withholding love or forgiveness, or a situation from which I have been withholding faith in miracles, and surrender such thoughts for healing.” 

Mic drop moment. 

And I remembered that my love and celebration of my own self is what matters above all. I can choose to bring light into any and all of my circumstances. I teach this stuff after all. 

This is how I plan to spend each of my days in 2022 - bringing light to the darkness in my life, illuminating love where there is a void. Care to join me?