50

It's 4:21 AM and in these first early hours of my fiftieth birthday, fog hugs the Toronto skyline. In mid-February this part of the world is supposed to be plunged in the depths of winter, but today the temperature will soar into balmy early-spring territory. Nothing is the way it used to be.

It occurs to me that "Nothing is the way it used to be" is my personal experience of this milestone birthday. I've started and discarded countless pieces I was trying to write for today, pieces that capture what it feels like to be entering the back-half of life feeling powerful, dynamic, and aligned, with full trust in myself and my future, and all because I had finally had the courage to pull the rug out from under my own life.

Everything I want to say about the radical transformation that happens when self-worth is no longer just a concept you understand intellectually but one you embody and deploy as a life operating system sounds trite and dully repetitive — I've been writing about it for a year as it's been happening. And yet turning fifty is such a crucial part of the process, with its critical mass of life learning and self-awareness making it possible, finally, to detach from external sources of validation and be authentically guided from within. And when that shift happens, NOTHING IS THE WAY IT USED TO BE.

It clarifies who and what belongs in your life and who and what doesn't. It illuminates the fears you must step through in order to live the life your soul aches for. It allows you to stay aligned with your core values and ethics, even when they put you in a tiny minority fighting for what feels like insurmountable change.

It also means you can unplug from societal norms and expectations, and actually mean it when you say you're okay living a different narrative. It means you can inhabit your motely mix of traits, desires, and talents instead of using them as armour. And it means you can take your fiftieth birthday self-portrait in a shiny black corset because it is the thing that makes you feel sexiest.

I'm fifty today. Nothing is the way it used to be. And I couldn't be more proud and hopeful about that.