Member-only story
Three Priorities, One Happy Life
I am forty years old.
I am a happy forty-year-old woman.
Depending on your lived experience, gender, and upbringing, that sentence might seem unremarkable. But let me tell you — it’s profound.
Being female, forty, and happy is rare. It’s short of a miracle.
How I Found This Happiness
I achieved this by distilling my life down to three core priorities.
Here’s my fundamental belief: A woman is a full person outside of her roles like mom or wife or boss or daughter. She is complete on her own. I’m defining this explicitly because society has done a shit job of reminding us of this fact.
The Priority Principle
In previous life chapters, I tried to uphold too many pillars simultaneously. Now, I know a person can only genuinely focus on three priorities in any life stage.
Priority roles in my world include: parent, wife, professional (employee, boss), student, child — and the list continues.
As an adult, I’ve spent years trying to be an exceptional wife, mom, employee, boss, student, child, friend — and the list never (fucking) ended. The people to please, places to go, things to accomplish — it was exhausting and absolutely not my idea of a good time.
