In my early childhood, birthdays were a grand affair with my mom throwing us parties each year.

When I was in foster care, my birthday wasn’t even acknowledged, let alone celebrated.

As an adult, I had a huge wound around celebrating my birthday.

In my 20s, it started with massively unrealistic and constantly demanding expectations for my partner to make up what I went without for 6 years.

A standard they could obviously never live up to and were punished for.

In my 30s it swung over to hyper-independence. I realized it was my responsibility to plan what I’d like to happen and ask for/ buy myself what I’d like to receive.

Which I did with gusto, but found it hard to receive from people who wanted to love on me.

I tracked closely those who “cared enough about me” to wish me happy birthday.

If anyone who I’d wished happy birthday on their birthday, did not do so in return, I felt unloved (doesn’t matter if I had never met them in person).

If anyone who I held as important missed it, I felt unloved.

I kept count of the people who wished me happy birthday and if it wasn’t MORE than last year, I felt unloved.

So many arbitrary things that I gave meaning to, and made it mean I was unlovable.

My birthday became the judge and jury of how successful or unsuccessful I was at getting and maintaining love.

And I usually failed.

I couldn’t even tell you when that stopped. It happened slowly over time.

I started healing my codependence and that was a long slog. I forgave everyone. For everything.

I forgave myself: for constantly feeling inadequate, for self-punishment, for self-abuse, for self-abandonment.

Over time, I stopped measuring love. I felt whole.

And then something miraculous happened.

I met Oscar.

I’ve composed post after post after post about this man in my head, but everything I could say about him would put him in a tiny little box and completely minimize him.

I couldn’t do him an injustice like that.

To put it simply, he is divine.

Learning to receive the depth of his love (and it is VAST) has taught me to accept myself more deeply than I ever thought I was capable of.

I was able to look around and see how deeply loved I was by everyone else close to me in my life - something I’d never allowed myself to notice. One of my friends told me I was hard to love- not because I’m difficult, but because I simply wouldn’t receive it. And that was frustrating to her 😂. Understandably. 😬

It has created the strangest, most unexpected shift in me.

I no longer care about celebrating my birthday.

Not from a place of rejecting it - from this deeply peaceful place of:

I am enough. It is enough. My life is enough.

I feel celebrated every day. I feel cherished every day. I feel deeply loved and respected every. Damn. Day.

Every day is now my birthday 🍰🥰

Ps. He is private and he does not care to be famous, so you just get the side of his head 😂

💜 Abi