What Is Your Birthday Karma?
With my birthday about one week away, I have been thinking a lot birthdays — how people feel about them and celebrate them or not. I meet many people who tell me that they hate their birthdays, try to forget about or downplay them and I meet others who celebrate them for at least a week! For the first 40 years of my life, I was definitely one of those people who hated my birthday. For me, it was always a source of disappointment, unmet expectations, and hurt feelings as a result of friends and family members who did not show up as I thought they should or how I did for them. Learning about the shadow — the unconscious beliefs that we form as a result of incidents from our youth — I realized that my dread and feeling of sadness and disillusionment around birthdays started at a very young age. As a child, I was told, “Birthdays are just like any other days,” and “You have everything you need. You don’t need birthday presents.” Even the cake got rationed since my father, sister, and I all had birthdays within one week. “Who needs all that cake?”
After years of sabotaging my birthdays, getting pissed off, picking fights, and pushing the people who were closest to me away (just so I could prove how awful birthdays truly were), when I turned 40, I decided to change my birthday karma! It was time to take a real look at all of the shadows and unhealed wounds I had around birthdays, take ownership for how I had actually ruined so many of them, and take responsibility for creating what I wanted or communicate to my loved ones my birthday desires. I had to stop expecting everyone else in my life to be mind-readers. I had to graciously accept what others planned for me instead of critiquing it! I had to open my eyes to all the ways so many tried to make my birthday special and realize that it was I who just couldn’t see past my pain. Taking responsibility for my birthdays and consciously planning them to include the people, places, and activities that make me smile has been an empowering, positive and really fun experience for myself and those closest to me.
This year, one of the people who was closest to me, my dear friend Debbie Ford, will not be here for my birthday. However in the last year of her life, Debbie took to writing “love emails” to her closest friends and family on their birthdays. These “love emails” contained sentence after sentence of all the things she loved about the person. The list was random and varied. In my “love email” from Debbie, some of the things she wrote were things I recognized in myself: “I love the way you are with your children and the extraordinary mother that you are.” Some were things I was embarrassed about and secretly prayed no one ever noticed: “I love the way you mispronounce your words because of your Boston accident.” Some were funny, “I love watching you eat yogurt.” Many brought tears to my eyes since Debbie could always see in people what they could not see in themselves.
I never asked Debbie why she took to writing these birthday “love emails.” What I do know is that she loved writing them and that each time I read my email, it fills me up. I think the answer to why Debbie wrote these “love emails” might be contained in the final chapter of her last book “Courage” when she wrote, “At the end of the journey, we come back to love.” As time became more precious to Debbie, I think she truly realized whether it is giving or receiving, there truly is no underestimating the gift of love!
This year for my birthday and in honor of my beautiful friend Debbie who through her work, generosity, and big heart truly helped me change my birthday karma, I am not only going to take on writing “love emails” to the people closest to me, but I am going to write one to myself, since ultimately all the work we do is about self-love!
Transformational Action Steps
1. Take some time to reflect on your birthday karma. What are your thoughts and feelings about your birthday?
2. Whether your birthday is coming up soon or not, take responsibility for planning something for yourself. This can be a meal, a day, a weekend. (If you can, stretch and plan something that you usually allow others to plan and then complain about.)
3. Pick out four to six people to write birthday “love emails” to this year and put them in your calendar so you will remember to do it! Don’t forget to include yourself!
4. Imagine that taking responsibility for your birthday is just the beginning. Look around the areas of your life and see where and how you may be giving away your power by not taking responsibility and take an action this week to take your power back and create what you most desire.
With love,
Kelley
