A Love Letter on my 40th Birthday to my Baby and You

Catherine A. Wood 00:00
Hello, hello, welcome back to the prosperous Empath cat here, I’m putting a brief pause on the podcast series on helpful wisdom I think Empath printers really need to know and overcome along their journeys because I am celebrating a milestone birthday over here and turning 40. And if you’ve been listening for a while now you know how much I value celebration as a way of becoming the best versions of ourselves the fullest and freest versions of ourselves. And I really wanted to honor this time in my life, and also, really this moment that I’m at in my life, I’m turning 40. And I’m officially halfway through my pregnancy and I really wanted to commemorate this moment and, and really honor all the becoming that it’s taken to get to this point. So in service of that, I wanted to do something a little different on this episode, and I wrote a love letter to my future baby and to you and I am recording this episode, while on a two and a half week European travel trip. We were I started in in Paris and then I flew to Milan. Now I’m in southern Italy, Partha will be joining me later this week to do the Amalfi Coast. And this just feels like a beautiful moment to really take a pause, and to reflect on the journey and to celebrate some of the learnings and to maybe share a little window into my heart and my soul. So I hope you enjoy today’s episode, I’m going to drop some links in the show notes around places in which you can come and gather with us in community. For our both our non networking Power Hour the next one up is in May. The next one up is. Okay, Hayley, maybe we can edit that where you can gather together with us in community for our next non networking Power Hour on Monday, May 13, at 12, noon, Eastern Time, or come join our online community for Empath printers, it’s certainly where you’ll find me hanging out more and more often these days. And with that, I hope you enjoy today’s episode. dear sweetheart, I am writing this letter to you from the Jinka daddy, which is on the north west coast of Italy. Speaking of I am so so excited to show you and experience the whole world together from your eyes. And stopping here for a couple of nights on a two and a half week, European holiday a babymoon of sorts to celebrate you, and your arrival later this year. And to celebrate me and to honor my 40th birthday, gosh. Truthfully, I’ve gotten pretty comfortable making lots of time for myself, and having quiet time with our pups and with your father. And I really wanted to commemorate this period in my life. Before it changes when you join us later this fall. I know it will be an adjustment from my introverted parts. And the parts of me that have gotten really comfortable being alone. In all the best ways I know. And I wanted to honor the version of me that I am today, as I transform into the version that will become your mom. You know, I’ve been wanting to become your mom for as long as I can remember, from the time I was a little girl, I wanted to be a mom, playing house, playing school, babysitting all throughout middle high school and college. These have all been such big parts of my life. And don’t worry, you can play with whoever and wherever and however you want no pressure there. But this was my childhood. Speaking of I cannot wait to teach you about and talk about money. Your grandpa helped me more than he probably knows by teaching me how to balance a checkbook as a young girl, which you may never even have, by the way Time, you’re old enough to have one. Wow, that’s crazy. He taught me how to open a Roth IRA account and invest in my future. He taught me how to make my money work for me and so much more. Hopefully, you Don’t roll your eyes too much at me when I talk about money, I have so much to share about it. But like I was saying, I’m 40 now and wow, I’ve waited a long, long time for you to arrive. For a while I thought it was too long. I worried about what I was doing wrong. Why was my journey so different than that of my peers, I was so impatient. And then when your father and I decided we were ready to try, there were so many more lessons to learn along the way to getting pregnant with you. And you’re not even here yet. But I’ve already learned so much from you, as an ambitious mama and entrepreneur, learning how to surrender my attachments to how something should look or how I want things to go. Learning to give up control, and letting in more support from your father, from the Divine from our community and family. And truthfully, as much as the ambitious part of me doesn’t want to admit it. Another part of me knows that the timing of you is perfect. Because as much as I wanted you for so long. I didn’t want and love me for so much longer. And that’s really what I want to share with you and my greatest wish for you as you enter the world and join us and become the perfectly imperfect human that you’re meant to become. When I was a little girl, I did not love myself for me. And I probably couldn’t have put words to that at the time. But I valued myself based on how hard I worked on what I was able to accomplish, and how well I made other people happy. How easy and helpful I could be for your grandparents, for my classmates, for my teacher, I valued myself on how perfectly I could accomplish things. And just on how much I could achieve all of these ways in which I learned to love myself, they were all externally acquired sweetie, based on what I did, based on what I accomplished, and based on who I was for other people. And in the process. I lost me. Now don’t get me wrong. I had lots of fun and adventures along the way. Your family and I we traveled all over growing up. And you’re blessed to have the most incredible loving and supportive family and grandparents and uncle and cousins. But at some point along the way. I had to find the parts of me that I had hid and buried, buried behind my accomplishments, buried behind my hard work ethic, and buried behind my helpfulness. And it was messy. It was a messy journey. I had to learn how to enjoy being with myself in the absence of being busy, or helpful or working hard or help a thing or prioritizing someone or something else in order to feel better about me. I had to learn how to answer the questions. I’m going to start that over. I had to learn how to answer the questions. What do I want? What do I love? What do I appreciate about me? What support do I need? What if I didn’t have to do or deal with this alone? Who do I cherish? What am I most proud of? What do I value? What makes me feel loved? What contribution do I want to make? What community do I want to support and surround myself with? These are all such big questions, sweetie, hopefully you’ll appreciate or at least tolerate me asking you these questions and helping you find the answers to them for yourself. These questions they saved my life. They helped me find contentment and fulfillment. They taught me how to live in The author of the world, how to fully embrace the present moment, how and learn how to be still, in my mind. And in my body. These questions taught me how to be enough how to feel deeply worthy for who I am, rather than what I do or what I’m able to accomplish, or who I’m able to help. And ultimately, they brought me your father. Do you know we were colleagues, cube mates and economists together at the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, friends for four years before we started dating, and then we dated for eight more years before we got married. But who’s counting right. And I am so proud of your daddy and me, sweetheart. Other than you, our relationship is my single greatest accomplishment. Because I know without a shadow of a doubt, that the degree to which we love ourselves, puts a cap on the degree to which we allow in love from another human being. And your father, he adores me and I him. So on my 40th birthday, I want to celebrate you, and I want to celebrate myself, and I want to share some gifts and some lessons learned with you over these past 40 years of my life. I want you to trust the seasonality of life sweetie, just like there are four seasons in a year in New England. There are seasons in life and each season serves that purpose and teaches us important life lessons. I hope you can learn to trust the journey and embrace the process. I want to teach you how to celebrate how to celebrate yourself, celebrate other people celebrate the beauty and all that is all around us. In my experience, presence is the most important gift you can give someone I know that my undivided attention is going to be so important for you and vice versa. And I hope you learn how important it is to make others feel seen. And want you to know that family is as much chosen as it is blood related, you will have your birth family. And then you’ll have the family that you choose over time. And that family that you choose is so so important and I want you to choose intentionally. Your relationships are everything they will follow you throughout your entire life, and they will become the most important aspect of your life. Learn how to welcome surprise and novelty and delight in each moment. Sweetie, when we got pregnant with you, I told your father that I wanted to be surprised by your gender at birth because it’s one of life’s greatest surprises. Learn how to lean into the discomfort of not knowing. We’re going to talk about money, honey, I want you to get comfortable earning, saving spending and investing money. Learning how to make your money work for you so that you don’t work for it. I promise you that when I mess up, I will apologize. I will make amends to you. I may not do it immediately. We’re all learning, but you can count on me modeling, owning when I mess up because I know that it creates deeper relationship and trust. I want you to know that your failures do not define you. they direct you and your path. Every willingness to step outside of your comfort zone and to practice something new and different will direct and guide your next step. And the last gift I want to leave you with is the invitation to ask for support. We are never meant to do life alone. I love you so much and I cannot wait to meet you. Love mom. Thank you so much for tuning in to today’s episode. I love you too and I hope that you found something meaningful and of value for yourself in today’s episode. See you next week.