Transcend Your Limitations: Celebrate Yourself.
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It’s been 324 Full Moons and 58 lunar eclipses since the Full Moon and lunar eclipse that I was born during 25 years ago. I was the first living, breathing daughter of my parents, and fourth of what would later be eight children. I came out with my umbilical cord wrapped around my neck. They say it’s because I did so many somersaults in my momma’s stomach.
I say, I tossed and turned so much because I was anxious to walk in the woods and learn how to play music and figure out how to express all the creative feels and travel and start loving the people around me with uninhibitedness.
This isn’t your typical story about turning 25. This isn’t about dreading a quarter-life crisis. This isn’t about figuring out how to adult, or freaking out about my peers buying houses and getting married. This isn’t about adulting at all, or feeling like I’m still 18 or 19, because I don’t. I feel ancient.
I’ve lived through, endured, and enjoyed countless experiences up to this point that many people in their old age haven’t had. I’ve lived bravely and adventurously, and embraced chaos — sometimes with logic, but usually with abandon.
I’ve had a health crisis already, a quarter-life crisis at 20, moved across the country multiple times, traveled alone, and taken huge risks with and without recklessness. I’ve started a family that fell apart the day my son died in my arms in premature labor. I’ve followed my heart and dreams and passions without considering what a single person thought.
I’ve fallen in love many times, and said goodbye almost as much as I’ve said Hello, you’re beautiful.
So maybe my story today isn’t typical, and maybe that’s an old soul thing. Maybe I feel ancient because I was forced to mature too quickly in some ways in my teens. And yeah, maybe I hardly have any assets, nor do I have multiple degrees or a wardrobe of fine, designer clothes.
Frankly, I’m still pretty impressed by my new mattress and my car that is only 6 years old as opposed to 15. Maybe I don’t have a space to entertain all of my friends comfortably, or maybe I still drink wine out of mugs. But what I do have is a wealth of wisdom and knowledge, and the tools to share them compassionately and concisely.
I have experiences out the wazoo that I wouldn’t trade for my most ideally decorated home. I have friends scattered across the globe, stories of riding horses that only know Spanish, and of living without technology, and of climbing mountains on my lunch breaks, and of severe loss followed by monumental growth.
This isn’t a story about turning 25 and just now starting to discover who I am and what I want. This is a story of entering a new era that transcends the societal fixation on a number and an expected life stage. Sure, part of me still identifies with being a 20-something. But in this story, in this article, this is about celebrating who I am.
My story is about transcending all of the things that each of us think will end up limiting us from being all that we truly want to be when we’re in the hospital in our 60s or 70s or 80s with an IV drip, surrounded by machines and family struggling to keep their worries from adding another wrinkle on their face.
It’s about celebrating what I have found out about myself by facing struggles with authenticity and vulnerability. It’s about celebrating who I am. It’s about conquering the quarter-life crisis.
And this is who I am: I am a fighter for creativity and self-expression, for nature and returning to it with childlike appreciation, for finding the parts of ourselves that we’ve forsaken in the pursuit of societal measures of success in the forms of money or degrees or social roles.
I’m also an artist. I express emotional truth mixed with spiritual and psychological catharsis. With my art, I humbly managed to turn the greatest tragedy of my life, of watching my son die, into a series of writings that impacted the hearts of so many around me.
I’ve found ways to make dysfunction a little more beautiful, mostly through being a consistent source of “Uh-uh, me too. We’re all crazy, really. Now let’s go on a walk in the woods and play, and see how you feel afterwards.”
I am seemingly fearless, gifted with an ability to take charge in any setting, taunting the voices in my head that say, “Do you really think you can do this? Don’t you know you’re always going to fail?” with action marked with confidence and clarity.
I’m an empath. That means that if I love you, I feel with you. I feel you even. What you go through, I’ll go through with you. And if you trust me, I’ll help you through some dark times because you’ll know to your core that you’re not alone.
I’m a leader. I thrive when I have a group of people to be the voice for. I’m at my best when I get to be the person who stands up and directs and guides and encourages and gives undying enthusiasm. I’m a lover.
I prioritize connection above all else, and I know without a doubt that my Number One reason to live is to help people connect to purpose, to meaning, to feeling, to stories, and to all of these things in their individual manners. I have been a yogini for six years, and for two years as an instructor, and for a lifetime as a practitioner and teacher.
I am a curator of depth, of an enriched life tapped into the undercurrents and themes of spiritual, emotional, and psychological growth. I am a cheerleader. If you need someone to liven up the room or the party or your sullen funk that has lasted for days, call me, text me, beep me. I am an activist.
Give me a passion, and I’ll find ways to make even the cynic soften for the shared goal.
I am a challenger. Cross a friend, disrespect someone I love, or disregard a boundary, and within no time, I’ll be standing up for that very line that was crossed for the sake of those that I love. I have been a writer ever since I wrote the short novels for my elementary school’s science fair, entitled “The Adventures of Mary Caldwell.”
When all my classmates were dreaming of being teachers and nurses and doctors, I was envisioning finding an editor and being published in magazines, and writing books that would inspire people to politely decline dinner with friends so that they could stay home and read.
I am 25, and that number means nothing to me in the context of measuring how much life I have lived. What it means to me is a unique symbol of knowing that I have lived life to the absolute fullest. What it means is a celebration of handling deep, dark struggles, only to discover more beauty and more depth in the light that illuminates all of us.
It means that I can soundly say who I am and humbly give thanks over and over every single day to the divine light that has let me know that there is more love in the universe than there is anything else, and encouraged me with undying hope.
This birthday is a celebration of knowing that I have laid the foundation of growth, values, experience, wisdom, and support that will lead me into finding and fulfilling any and/or all of the dreams that I choose to create and chase.
Today is my birthday, and I choose to honor the life that I have lived so far, hoping that you too will take the time to celebrate yourself.
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Rebekah Kolbe, aka The Moonchilde to her equally eccentric friends, is a writer and newb Yoga teacher in the Michiana area in passionate cultivation of a consciously loving and creative lifestyle. When she isn’t writing sassy and sappy personal essays or exploring esoteric psychology, adoring her loved ones, practicing Yoga, cooking, making music, or walking in the woods, she is working for the creatively philanthropic company called MudLOVE. To get connected to more of her musings, go here.
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