I’m 40… And I Finally Fucking Love My Life.

I used to look back and wonder how much time I'd wasted getting things wrong.

But now I realize those years weren't wasted, because they got me here.

Today, I turn 40. Which feels slightly offensive because I'm pretty sure I was 27 about five minutes ago.

And yet, here we fucking are.

Forty years is a lot of life when you stop and think about it. It's four decades of people, places, decisions, mistakes, heartbreaks, wins, spectacularly questionable choices, dreams that came true, dreams that changed, and versions of yourself you once thought you'd be forever.

Birthdays have a funny way of making you take inventory, but this one feels different.

Maybe because 40 is one of those ages we're supposed to have feelings about.

Maybe because I've lived enough life now to look back at the years I once thought I'd wasted and realize I didn't waste them at all.

I was becoming.

I didn't always know what I was becoming yet.

All the Lives I Lived Before 40…

My teenage years were defined by rebellion and the absolute certainty that adults had no idea what they were talking about.

Obviously, teenage me knew everything.

My early 20s were a different kind of education. I could party until five in the morning, survive on caffeine, questionable judgment, and the audacity of youth, and somehow wake up ready to do it all over again.

Honestly, I don't know how I did it.

There are things your body apparently lets you get away with at 22 that it would now respond to with a formal complaint and three business days of recovery.

But those years gave me stories. They taught me about people, independence, mistakes, consequences, friendship, desire, and the very important lesson that just because something sounds like a fantastic idea at midnight does not mean it will still be one at four in the morning.

Then my late 20s arrived, and somewhere along the way, the girl who had spent so much time rebelling against other people's rules became a woman determined to build a life where she could make her own.

That's when business became part of the story.

I didn't build a business because I dreamed about working all the time.

I built one because I wanted freedom.

From my late 20s into my early 30s, I worked relentlessly. There were years when 60- to 80-hour workweeks were normal, and I didn't spend much time questioning whether that was sustainable because I was too busy building.

I took risks. I figured things out as I went. I learned what worked by trying things, learned what didn't by occasionally fucking things up, and kept going.

What I wanted underneath all of it was surprisingly simple: I wanted to choose how I spent my days.

I didn't want somebody else deciding when I could travel, when I could take time off, how much money I was allowed to make, or what my life was supposed to look like.

Freedom has always mattered to me.

So I built for it.

The irony, of course, is that somewhere in the process of building a business designed to give me freedom, I became incredibly good at working.

Too good, perhaps.

For years, I measured progress partly by how much I could carry. I knew how to solve problems, manage people, handle clients, create systems, make decisions, and keep moving even when I was exhausted.

And for a while, that worked.

Until it didn't.

Some lessons take longer than others.

One of the things I understand at 40 that I didn't understand at 30 is that being capable of carrying everything doesn't mean you should.

That's true in business.

It's true in relationships.

It's true in life.

I spent years learning what deserved my time, what didn't, what only I could do, and what I could finally let somebody else handle.

Those lessons changed the way I run my business.

Today, I work around ten hours a week and still get the job done.

And no, that's not because I've stopped caring about my work or because I've lost my ambition. If anything, I'm more ambitious about where I'm taking Willow Creatives now than I've been in years.

The difference is that I've finally built a business that doesn't need all of me, all the time.

I have systems.

I have a team I trust.

I've learned to delegate instead of insisting that being capable means I need to be personally involved in every moving piece.

I've learned that freedom isn't having nowhere to be and nothing to do.

Freedom is having choices.

And those choices are possible because of everything I learned during the years when I had far less of it.

I don't regret those 60- to 80-hour weeks because they taught me how to build what I have now. But I also don't romanticize them anymore.

I don't want to go back.

Then there were my 30s.

Ooohh, my 30s.

Let's just say life kept me on my toes.

There were beautiful years and brutal ones. There were moments when I felt unstoppable and others when I genuinely had no fucking idea what I was doing.

I built.

I lost.

I loved.

I got my heart broken.

I let go.

I started again.

And somewhere in all of that, I became a mother.

Gypsy is easily one of the most meaningful parts of the life I've built, and watching her become exactly who she is meant to become has changed me in ways I probably won't fully understand until she's much older.

Motherhood also changed my relationship with time.

Time isn't theoretical anymore when you're watching another human being grow in front of you.

You start noticing how quickly years disappear.

You start realizing that “later” isn't an unlimited resource.

You start questioning whether the things consuming your days are worth the pieces of your life you're exchanging for them.

And maybe that's part of why freedom means even more to me now than it did when I first started building my business.

I don't just want the freedom to travel whenever I feel like it.

I want the freedom to be there.

For her.

For myself.

For the people I love.

For the ordinary days that don't look impressive enough to post about but eventually become the life you remember.

My late 30s brought me back to myself.

Not dramatically.

There wasn't one cinematic moment where the clouds parted, the soundtrack swelled, and suddenly I understood everything.

I wish.

It happened slowly.

Through motherhood, heartbreak, healing, traveling, growing, letting go, beginning again more times than I can count, and the occasional what the actual fuck is happening?

I started letting go of people, plans, expectations, and versions of myself I'd already outgrown.

Some people stayed.

Some didn't.

Some relationships lasted decades. Some lasted a season. Some were apparently only meant to provide character development and an excellent story.

And somewhere along the way, I stopped believing every ending meant I'd failed.

Sometimes people belong to a chapter rather than the entire book.

That doesn't make the chapter meaningless.

The same is true of the years I used to think I'd wasted.

I can look back now and see what each version of me was trying to do with what she knew at the time.

The rebellious teenager was learning independence.

The twenty-something partying until sunrise was learning about life and people.

The woman working 80-hour weeks was learning how to build.

The woman who burned out was learning that success without capacity has consequences.

The woman who lost pieces of herself was learning how to find them again.

And the woman turning 40?

She's finally learning that she doesn't need to be fighting for her life to feel alive.

I thought freedom and love might require different versions of me.

This might be one of the biggest surprises of 40.

I've always valued independence so deeply that there were times when I thought being free meant never needing anyone too much.

If I could take care of myself, make my own money, travel alone, solve my own problems, and build the life I wanted without waiting for permission, nobody could take that life away from me.

There is truth in that.

But there's also a difference between independence and believing you have to carry everything alone.

I've spent enough years being fiercely self-reliant to know I can survive on my own.

I don't need to keep proving it.

And I never imagined that at 40 I could feel this much freedom and peace while also feeling so deeply loved.

For a long time, I think some part of me assumed those things had to come separately.

Apparently, they don't.

You can be independent and supported.

Ambitious and peaceful.

Loved without feeling trapped.

Successful without sacrificing every waking hour to prove how badly you want it.

You can want more without being ungrateful for what you already have.

Maybe growing older isn't about becoming less of who you were.

Maybe it's finally learning which parts were always you and which ones were simply survival.

I've watched some of my biggest dreams come true.

I wanted to publish a book.

Last year, I did.

I wanted the freedom to build my life on my own terms, and despite every detour it took to get here, I have that.

I get to watch my daughter grow into the person she's becoming, and I have a front-row seat to one of the best stories of my life.

I have work that still excites me.

I have dreams for Willow that are bigger than what I've already built.

I have people I love and people who love me.

And there is still one dream I'm holding very close to my heart.

I'm keeping that one between God and me for now.

I don't know when it will happen.

But I believe it will.

In God's perfect time.

Always.

Sooo, here I am.

Forty years old.

A little wiser and a lot more peaceful.

Still slightly inappropriate.

Still figuring things out.

Still dreaming.

Still ambitious enough to believe some of my best work hasn't happened yet.

Still learning when to hold on and when to let go.

Still (and forever) a Brooke Davis + Lindsay Lohan girlie.

And very, very grateful to be here.

To everyone who has been part of these first 40 years, whether you've been here for decades, a season, a chapter, or one ridiculously memorable night: thank you.

Some of you stayed.

Some of you were only meant to pass through.

Either way, you helped make this life memorable.

I used to look back and wonder how much time I'd wasted getting things wrong.

Now I think that's the wrong way to look at it.

Those years weren't wasted.

They got me here.

And after four decades of searching for the next thing, chasing freedom, building, rebuilding, loving, losing, learning, and finding my way back to myself, I can finally say something I don't think I've ever been able to say quite like this before:

I love my life.

Not because everything is perfect.

Not because I've stopped wanting more.

But because the life I have now finally feels like mine.

And maybe that's the greatest gift 40 could have given me.

Turns out, 40 is pretty fucking amazing.