Lady born in 1976 wearing a vintage 1976 tshirt leaning against a vintage green pickup truck

Today is my fiftieth birthday. And I’ll be honest…I’ve been gearing up for this birthday for quite some time. For the last ten years, I have not enjoyed my birthday. Every year it just felt like I was heading towards some kind of doomsday. I would wake up in the morning and just feel…sad. If I think about certain implications too hard, it’s pretty nerve-wracking being this age. Perimenopause has hit hard over the last few years, my kids are growing up way too fast, more and more of my friends are struggling with big health issues, and my parents are not getting any younger! I can vividly remember things that happened forty years ago, which doesn’t seem that far away! But in forty more years, if I live that long, I will be ninety. NINETY. THAT sounds old.

Yes, my skin isn’t as resilient as it used to be, I'm noticing more gray hair, I can’t read things close up without my glasses, I’m achy and creaky when I wake up in the morning, I can’t sit comfortably on the floor like I used to, and that fluff around my middle section won’t go away (thanks, perimenopause).

But at the same time, I just don’t feel as old as fifty sounds! When I was a teenager, fifty was grandma-age. Ladies like the Golden Girls or Angela Lansbury in Murder She Wrote. But I’m fifty and still have an elementary and middle schooler I’m raising! I’m nowhere close to being a grandma (or a Golden Girl), and I have a LOT more life to live! I’m so grateful to be one of those people who is apparently aging well. Everyone always seems shocked when I tell them how old I actually am. But it’s true—my birth certificate says I was born in 1976! I was a bicentennial baby. So I guess I’m officially “vintage” now.

I looked up some of the celebrities who are turning fifty this year: Reese Witherspoon, Candace Cameron Bure, Melissa Joan Hart, Alicia Silverstone, Ryan Reynolds, Anna Faris, Freddie Prinze, Jr., Rashida Jones, and Payton Manning are just a few. I’d say that’s a pretty great list of people to share a birthday year with! They all seem to be living their best lives, so why not join them?

Yes, I am retiring this year. At fifty. BECAUSE I CAN. Not because I need to! I have spent 28 years as a public school teacher, and as much as I love teaching and children, I’m ready to close this chapter of my life and step fully into the next. I didn’t get to stay home with my own children when they were little, but that’s about to change. I’m so blessed to have a second career that will allow me the flexibility to set my own schedule, prioritize my children now that they’re close to their teenage years (when, let’s be honest, they probably need more supervision and involvement than when they were little), and take better care of myself. I finally get to build my days around what matters most. Teaching shaped me into a well-rounded adult; photography lets me fly. I get to spend some of the best days of people’s lives with them, help them feel confident and beautiful, and document milestones and memories that they will cherish for a lifetime. Who could ask for a better career than that!?

Just because I’m hitting fifty doesn’t mean I’m going to have a mid-life crisis or go all “breaking bad.” I have a bucket list a mile long. I want to write a book (or at least finish the one I started over a decade ago), be the friend and neighbor who brings meals to the new mamas or families going through cancer treatment, actually send birthday cards in the mail (something I haven’t done in far too long), and clean, I mean REALLY clean, my house. I want to be able to take lunch to my teacher-friends who will still be in the trenches, go on walks around my neighborhood in the mornings with all the dog-walkers, participate in the weekday morning Bible studies with the ladies at my church, and volunteer for the PTO, book fairs, field trips, and field days at my children’s schools. I want to record more YouTube tutorials for my photography channel and mentor other new photographers. I want to be able to do all my editing while my kids are at school so that I am fully present when they are home.

So to me, fifty isn’t something I’m dreading. To me, fifty feels like freedom.

Fifty, Fierce, and Free