By Paint Her in Color Founder, Laura Spiegel

I turned forty yesterday, and beyond the flowers and meals, this new decade arrived with fittingly little fanfare. The day after my fortieth birthday is a quiet one. The clouds hang low and promise a cold chill for the weekend. My daughter is snoozing after shuffling in with complaints of a sore throat last night. And the scent of pumpkin cinnamon rolls wafts through the house as Halloween makes one final stand.

This seems as good a time as any to reflect on aging. Like so many newly-minted forty-somethings, I sometimes bemoan my body’s slow but steady trudge onward. My hands are red and calloused from the hand washing that every mother of a child with cystic fibrosis knows well. My temples are graying in a way that looks dapper on men but somehow makes me feel unkempt. And I’m the proud owner of a small contraption that zaps the scraggly hairs that appear out of nowhere to decorate my upper lip.

But amidst all this, I celebrate who I have become. I have traveled roads and learned lessons that the twenty or thirty-year-old me could not have begun to imagine.

When I was in my twenties, my goals centered mostly around professional accomplishment. I wore a sixty-hour work week like a badge of honor and subtly judged those who fled the office before nightfall. I yearned for titles and the recognition that came along with them. I slowed only for those two or three weeks of vacation – days marked by sleeping in, devouring books, and counting down to the grind’s return. I look back on that woman with a strange mixture of envy and concern. I want to make her a cup of coffee and wrap her in a blanket and make her see that there is so much more to life. I want to whisper to her that one day, she will be blessed with a love so big, it will make her heart ache.

When I was in my thirties, I had my two children and felt at times full, at times hollow, and at times a strange mixture of both. I loved until I thought I would burst. I learned the cold reality that health could not be taken for granted. One day, I stumbled on a book that asked me to list the moments in my days that filled me with joy. I wrote down “hearing my daughter’s voice” and a nightly ritual called “Running of the Babes.” Do you know this one? It’s where your freshly-bathed young ones streak naked through the house while you clap and sing. It’s either a genius way to wear kiddos out before bedtime or the setting of a very bad precedent…

But as I made this list, I was acutely aware that the best moments of my day were immensely deprioritized in terms of where, how, and with whom I actually spent the bulk of my time. I fretted. I stewed. And I dreamed of a day where I could give more time to my family, be more present to manage my daughter’s health, and have work that better fulfilled me.

Now that I am forty, I feel proud that I jumped off the ladder that works for many, but not for me. I found work that I could do at home on a schedule that worked for my family. And earlier this year, I turned something that I had been passionate about for years into a reality: a web site that offers emotional support to other parents of children with special health care needs. To date, Paint Her in Color has had visitors from 20 different countries and many walks of life. It is still in its infancy. It is still evolving and figuring out what it ultimately needs to be. But when I think that it is already giving parents a feeling that they are not alone - that they can do this - my heart is filled with hope.

Now that I am forty, there are so many things I’d like to say that I’ve become. I would love to say that I’ve learned how to abandon the propensity to worry. I would love to claim that I no longer wake up in the night with “what ifs” marching through my head. I would love to state that I’m more patient with my husband and with my kids. That I make enough time to take care of myself mentally and physically. That when my daughter interrupts this blog to show me her coloring pages, I turn to her patiently instead of sighing at yet another pause.

I’d love to declare victory over all of these things, but I can’t. And maybe that’s okay. Maybe it’s enough to know that these are still things I’m striving toward and that I’ve made some progress along the way. I take my anxiety medication faithfully, and it’s been a big help for me. I’ve learned how to breathe deeply (when I remember to). I write as a form of catharsis and try not to obsess over each and every word I say and thing I do. I remind myself that my daughter’s doctor is the “real doctor” and that instead of trying to diagnose every cough and sore throat, I should turn that work over to her. When I wake at 3 AM, I try to make a list of everything I have to be thankful for, which more often than not, reminds me that my own worries are small in the grand scheme of life.

As the gray hairs multiply, and time marches on, I remind myself that I am lucky. I have the privilege of aging that so many others have lost. I try to push this from my mind when it comes to my own daughter and her peers, but it’s always there somewhere. Waiting to rear its head in the darkness of the night. Banished only by breathing deeply, counting my blessings, and mentally fist bumping the scientists who I know are hard at work to once and for all render this fear irrational.

So there you have it. At forty, I have made mistakes, I have learned, and I have grown. I’m not perfect by a long shot, but I’m here. My husband and children are here. We love one another and have hopes and dreams of what’s to come.

And for today, that is more than enough.

Now…where the heck did I put my keys?