Powerful women

My friends are all forty-somethings. I will soon be joining their ranks. My husband will be a forty-something in 42 days. Lots and lots of forties around me lately and I love it. My friends are fabulous women. Sure, I had fabulous women friends in my twenties and thirties, but by gosh if you really want a friend who knows how to be a friend, find a forty-something and sit back and enjoy.

Forty-something women are real. If a forty-something woman is laughing or smiling, laugh and smile with her because this woman has lived enough to know real pain, which makes her real joy that much more to behold. By forty a woman has herself or had someone close to her give birth. She has probably had someone close to her die. She has had herself or known someone with a serious medical condition. She has been brought to her knees and humbled by the pain of a lost love, loved one, or fear for a child. She has known joy and given joy to a child, a lover, and a friend.

A forty-something woman knows herself. She knows her strengths, her weaknesses, knows where she struggles and knows what looks good on her, knows what she likes, knows how to juggle priorities, stretch a dollar, make a meal, and create a home. She has been tired like she never knew tired could be and has astounded others with her energy when she focuses on a task. She has performed miracles: she has healed the sick, mended the broken, comforted the downtrodden, and loved the unloveable.

She is pure energy, power without limit, a spirit just beginning to understand her divinity.

A forty-something woman has been called "ma'am" by a twenty-something, been overlooked by another forty-something, and been admired by a sixty-something. She has seen her body change, her face change, her hair change, and her life change. She has considered whether she likes these changes or not. She has enough wisdom to know she is a work in progress.

It used to be the attitude of a forty-something woman was that she was nearing the end of so many things that her forties were the beginning of the end: the end of child-bearing, the end of being useful, the end of youth, the end of beauty, the beginning of a slow and relentless decline. I feel sorry for our mothers, grandmothers, great-grandmothers and beyond because of that attitude. I wonder when that attitude began because all the ancient wisdoms know the power of forty: Moses wandered the desert for forty years, Noah built an ark to withstand the rain that came for forty days and forty nights, Jesus stayed in the desert 40 days while being tempted by the devil, the number '4' in feng shui means change, and numerology states that the number '40' symbolizes when what is good and true in a person is challenged (a state of temptation). Forty is a powerful time of beginning, not ending.

All my friends are in their forties. I will be honored to take my place among them. I hope I do them proud.

After all, 40 is the new 20.