In recent years I’ve always promoted the message that all birthdays are worth being celebrated, especially when we get older.

I so often hear from older people that “I’m so old, it’s nothing to celebrate“. And I can understand how they’re thinking. But I don’t agree.

Before I moved to Ireland, I was a nurse – I left my profession for a variety of reasons. But before that, I worked a good number of years in respiratory care, and the last 4-5 years in specialised palliative care.

One thing I learned was that anything can happen at any age, that we should never take life or health for granted, and that we should appreciate every year we live. I formed the opinion that we should celebrate every birthday, especially when we get older. Every birthday means we’ve been blessed to live another year, and if we’re blessed to be healthy, there’s even more to celebrate.

Still, when I turned 50 recently I didn’t think much of it. I didn’t feel like doing anything in particular to celebrate, but maybe especially because February is such a useless month to celebrate a birthday! All I wanted was a nice hike in some beautiful place where we don’t go often, but hiking in February can mean wading in mud up to your knees (yes I know I’m exaggerating) and that’s simply not my idea of fun.

So we went for a hike

The weather was very promising on the Sunday before my birthday so we DID go for a nice hike. And mud was involved!

Gougane Barra is a stunning place in the northern part of West Cork and it is probably mostly known for the little island with an oratory which is the site where it’s said that St Finbarr built a monastery during the 6th century. There is a ruin still in place on the island. (Read more here)

But the area also has a national park with walking trails of different difficulty levels. We only knew about one of those trails, which starts just opposite the entrance to the island. To access the other trails you need to pay an entrance fee to the car park.

This trail goes up the mountain, but I certainly didn’t expect it to be anything else than a hill! Instead, this was a LOT more challenging than that “fitness trail” in Italy.

The first part was a nice grass trail with some very muddy areas, but then it quickly went uphill, steeper and steeper. I thought we would soon reach the top, and we walked on. The views were stunning.

After we had climbed higher and higher for some time and the trail didn’t seem to reach any plateau, we decided that maybe we should turn back – because what goes up must come down, and if it got steeper I wasn’t sure it would be safe enough for myself to get down (because of my higher fracture risk if I fall), and we had no idea if the difficulty level would get any worse.

It’s possible I overrate my injury risk, or what is perhaps more relevant, underrate my strength and ability to climb this kind of trail. It’s not like we’re in the alps! But we decided my husband would go up over the ridge and see what it looked like.

He then came back still not knowing how the trail would proceed, so we decided to go back down, and that my husband would go back another time to do the whole distance (which is about 10 km) and then we’ll go back together when we know more about what to expect.

Our total distance this day was 4 km, and even if we didn’t continue all the way, I really enjoyed it. Going down turned out to be much easier than I thought, particularly equipped with walking poles.

There was some company along the way too!

Turning 50 sparked some reflections

The 50th birthday is a milestone and it sparked a lot of reflection, about my life, things I’ve been through, experiences, people I’ve met. And I could see that even if I’ve made some bad choices in life, I mostly didn’t have other options at the time, and what I’ve done has shaped me and given me extra experiences and opportunities to meet people I otherwise wouldn’t have known. And I could see and appreciate what I’ve learned and accomplished, instead of what I should have done differently.

I was massively celebrated. On the day of the hike, we had dinner in a restaurant and my husband had secretly invited friends of ours.

On the Monday, my actual birthday, the same friends came over for drinks (because I had invited them over, knowing nothing about the dinner), and before that I had lovely video calls with friends and family in Sweden.

On The Tuesday we went to the music session in town, and my husband had organised with gluten-free cake, and the pub owner offered sausages to everyone (including gluten-free). Good songs and tunes were of course enjoyed!

My 50th birthday with its celebrations, suddenly made me feel loved, blessed and appreciated by people. Hadn’t I thought of that before? Yes, but perhaps I was too busy struggling with myself to realise. Now it filled me with an almost overwhelming gratitude. It was like I was awakened from a slumber.

Most of my life has been ruled by self-doubt and fear of failure, and I’ve been feeding myself negative self-talk for as long as I can remember.

But now I’m too old for this shit.

Turning 50 didn’t suddenly make me confident and brilliant, but it made me set priorities. I’ve lived half of my life being fearful and wasting time on self-doubt and other BS, and now is the time to truly start enjoying life.

My focus of the year is also JOY and to ENJOY.

This is midlife. It means the middle of life, right? So let’s rock the second half of it!

I’m entering my 50s being stronger than ever

Strength training has always been the most appealing exercise form to me, but I could never do it consistently until now.

I started seeing a personal trainer. In the beginning it was mostly about doing some regular exercise and getting help with shoulder pain.

After a while I started noticing how much it boosted my energy level and mood. A few months later I started seeing muscle gain, clothes fit better, and aches and pains slowly started disappearing.

Now I’ve been lifting weights regularly for two years. My stress fracture last year and being diagnosed with osteoporosis was a huge bump in the road, but it was also an eye-opener that made me focus even more on training, nutrition and health. And I decided that I’m going to get strong and live a good life anyway!

Since last summer I train three times a week, still with the same coach. Particularly in the last few months, I’ve seen some amazing development in strength and muscle gains, and I’m entering my 50s being stronger than I’ve ever been.

And this is about so much more than physical strength. It’s about seeing I’m able to create good habits, push myself, believe in myself and make a positive change. This has given me a higher level of self-confidence and self-respect. It was about time.

It’s bye-bye to trying to fit in or be “good enough”

I’ve always tried to hide in a corner because I didn’t think inferior people like me were allowed to show up.

But all that is over now. There will be no more trying to fit in or struggle to be good enough. Life is too short and it’s time to enjoy the things I love doing without thinking about whether people like it or not.

Now, it’s normal to want people to like what we do, especially when we’re out there as musicians to entertain people. But it’s not ok if we let this rule what we do, how we do it or whether we enjoy it!

What is good enough anyway? And compared to what? It’s subjective. My priority now is to keep doing what I love doing, keep learning and improving, become the best version of me, and enjoy life while I can. I’ve always been an oddball and will never fit in anyway so I should just show up, be myself and enjoy the ride.

In music this means being ok with putting myself out there to sing even if I’m not perfect. It means appreciating how far I’ve come with my musical skills – it’s ok to be happy about my achievements even if I don’t play the guitar like Norman Blake. And even more ok to enjoy playing even if I sound like a noob!

In photography, it means to stop listening to the opinionated guys with big lenses, and just do my thing, keep learning and having fun with the camera.

In the gym I still have a lot of insecurities and don’t totally trust what my body can do. But a year ago I didn’t think I would be able to squat 50 kgs either but now I do! And every PB kicks my self-doubt in the butt.

Will this mindset be easy? Of course not! It will be hard and continuous work to keep it up. But life will be so much better if I do.

Let’s do the work and rock the 50s!