My 40th birthday is here. While age is just a number there is something big, something momentous about 40. It feels like a big deal. And leading up to the day, it didn’t make me feel fabulous. It made me feel old.
I’ve been thinking for a year how I wanted to celebrate it. I wanted to feel special and to do it up big. But I also wanted to hide away and just skip over it all together. This has made planning hard for my friends and family who have taken on the task of putting together celebrations for me. I love them for trying so hard (and succeeding!) at making me happy.
My husband helped me celebrate my 40th birthday with an elegant dinner party.
My friends pulled off a spa day at the Mandarin Oriental Atlanta to help celebrate my 40th birthday too.
When I really think about what makes me the happiest through my 40 years, it’s giving back. And that’s why I am asking you to help me celebrate my 40th birthday by donating to the Sandals Foundation to help the hurricane victims in Haiti and the Bahamas. Maybe instead of feeling “old” I can feel useful.
While I’m fretting about getting old, people in the Caribbean are doing whatever they can to make it to the next day. While I’m bemoaning another birthday, there are people who are trying to figure out shelter for their children. While I am focused on feeling so special on my 40th birthday, there are people who feel forgotten and ignored. So to help me feel special, I would love it if you helped them feel special.
I spent some time with the people from the Sandals Foundation in Negril, Jamaica last month and found them to be authentically devoted to their work. I was able to go on a Reading Road trip to a local school and see the effects of their work up close. My biggest takeaway from that trip is that we are really more the same than we are different.
Moms everywhere want the best schools for their children.
They want healthy food and clean water and opportunity.
They want their kids to feel loved, to feel special, to feel like they matter in this great big world. This is everything I want as well…for my kids as well as for myself.
Will you help me celebrate my 40th birthday by donating? I’m asking all my family and friends and blog readers, asking the parents at the preschool and in the PTA, asking friends at church and at the gym and in the neighborhood and from high school, college, and post-college, pre-kids jobs…basically EVERYONE I know to donate. Just to make it fun, please donate an amount with a 40 in it. Maybe $40 or $14.00 or $140 or $4.00. Whatever you can give, please do. Do it to help celebrate my 40th birthday, but more importantly do it to let the people of the Caribbean know they are not forgotten.
Please drop a comment here when you donate so I can properly thank you for it!
Full disclosure:
For all of the bloggers who attended the Social Media on the Sand conference, the one who gets the most money donated to the Sandals Foundation will win a 5 night stay for 2 at a Jamaican Sandals Resort. There are some bloggers with millions of followers so I’m under no illusion that I would win this contest. Of course I’d LOVE to win and get back to my happy place in Jamaica, but that is honestly not my reason for this post. Just wanted to be up front.
