Forty-Two, and the Life That Finally Brought Me Home
On turning 42 with a nine-year-old bonus son who shares my birthday.
Honestly? I still don’t feel forty-two.
I wasn’t staring at the calendar thinking about my age. I woke up in my own bed, looked over at my husband sleeping next to me, and before my feet even hit the floor I started taking inventory. Not of wrinkles or years. Of my life.
This isn’t the life I thought I’d have.
It’s better.
The Virginia Beach morning light came through the windows soft. The kind of light that doesn’t demand anything from you. Just enough to remind you that another day is beginning. I made my coffee before the house fully woke up and stood there for a minute longer than usual. Not rushing. Just noticing.
Then I smiled. Then I took one really deep breath. Not because I was excited to turn forty-two. Because I suddenly realized how grateful I was to have made it here.
There were years I wasn’t sure this version of me even existed.
Thirty-two was unpacking boxes in San Francisco after leaving New York City.
I had my little boy. A marriage that looked fine from the outside. Big ambition. Big dreams. I thought I was building the life. I had no idea life was still building me.
Thirty-two thought by forty-two everything would be settled. Marriage. Career. Motherhood. Confidence. She thought life got simpler with age.
Instead it got more honest.
Thirty-two was apologizing for her freedom. For wanting more. For traveling. For building. For dreaming bigger than the room she was standing in. She spent years shrinking her ambition so other people could stay comfortable.
Forty-two doesn’t do that anymore.
Thirty-two was spending her energy trying to become enough. Good enough. Successful enough. Lovable enough. She thought achievement could finally convince her she belonged.
Forty-two is spending her energy on something different. Building a life that feels as good as it looks. Protecting her peace. Creating moments the boys will remember. And helping women trust themselves sooner than she did.
Thirty-two believed she had to earn rest. Joy. Peace. Love that didn’t require performance.
Forty-two knows those things were never prizes. They were always birthrights.
At thirty-two I treated my body like an employee.
Push harder. Sleep less. Figure it out.
At forty-two my body gets a vote. And I’ve learned she’s usually right.
The last lab results felt like validation. Not because they gave me answers. Because they confirmed I hadn’t imagined the questions. For years I felt like I was trying to convince people something had changed. Those results felt like my body whispering, I told you.
Symptoms aren’t weaknesses. They’re information. My body was never betraying me. She was trying to get my attention.
Forty-two finally gave her permission. Permission to rest. Permission to heal. Permission to age without treating every change like something to fight.
The four years between thirty-eight and forty-two are the ones I did not think I would make it through.
Divorce. Rebuilding my identity. Leaving behind who everyone expected me to be. Falling in love again. Learning to co-parent. Building a blended family. Having another baby at forty. Finding my voice again. Finding my body again. Finding myself again.
The moment that came closest to breaking me was ordinary. I remember sitting alone after my oldest had gone to bed. The house was finally quiet. The legal paperwork was spread across the table. The business still needed me the next morning. I remember thinking, I don’t know how one person is supposed to carry all of this.
Then I cried. Not because I was weak. Because for the first time I finally stopped pretending I wasn’t.
I did not know I was going to make it until one completely ordinary day. I laughed. A real laugh. And afterwards I realized I hadn’t thought about surviving all day.
That’s when I knew.
I wasn’t rebuilding anymore. I was living.
I became the woman I spent my whole life looking for. Turns out she wasn’t waiting somewhere else. She was underneath everything I had to let go of.
If you are turning a corner into your forties this year, here is what I would tell you.
Stop treating forty like the end of something. It is the age where you finally stop asking for permission.
You do not need to have it all figured out. Not this year. Not ever.
You need to trust that the life falling apart may actually be making room for the life you’re meant to build.
Every hard conversation. Every goodbye. Every reinvention. Every version you thought you lost. Those weren’t random moments. They were MOMumental. They were quietly introducing you to yourself.
Here is what I am giving myself for forty-two. Not a gift. A permission.
Permission to stop rushing my own life. Permission to enjoy the one I worked so hard to build.
Maybe your forties aren’t asking you to become someone new. Maybe they’re finally introducing you to the woman you’ve been becoming all along.
If thirty-two could hear this letter, I would tell her: I know you’re terrified of losing everything. You won’t. You’ll lose what was never meant to stay. And one day you’ll wake up at forty-two, look around your kitchen, and realize the life you were so afraid of isn’t the one that broke you.
It’s the one that finally brought you home.
And here is the part thirty-two could never have imagined.
Every year, I share my birthday with a little boy who wasn’t born to me.
He turns nine today. I turn forty-two.
Every year we stand side by side, blow out candles together, argue over whose birthday it really is, laugh when everyone sings twice, and celebrate a life that neither of us could have predicted.
When I was thirty-two, I thought family was something you either kept or lost. I didn’t know family could grow. I didn’t know love could arrive through people you never expected to meet. I didn’t know that one of the greatest gifts of my life would come with the title bonus.
If you had told thirty-two that one day a little boy who didn’t share her DNA would share her birthday, and eventually share her heart, she would have smiled politely and assumed you had the wrong story.
But life has never been interested in giving me the story I expected. It has always been writing a better one.
Somehow, before I ever met him, before our families found each other, before I even knew this version of my life existed, the universe quietly stitched our birthdays together.
Every year when we blow out our candles, I’m reminded that healing doesn’t just restore what was lost. Sometimes it gives you people you never would have known to ask for.
Forty-two doesn’t celebrate the number anymore. She celebrates the family that found her.
The universe blended us long before we understood why.
MOMumentally,
Erika Hanafin Austria
Reply to this letter and tell me what the woman you were at thirty-two would be proud of you for.
If you are turning a corner into your forties and want tools for the body-truth part of this rebuild, The PHASE™ Bundle is $97 (all five volumes). The Complete Library is $228 for the Founding cohort, every workbook I have built to make this transition survivable. Join the Founding cohort · $228.
Free every Tuesday. Paid subscribers get the Community Chat, Behind the Essay, and early podcast access. $7/mo · $70/yr.
Erika Hanafin Austria
Erika Hanafin Austria Founder, MOMumental Moments® · Publisher, MOMumental Reinvention Co-Founder, NeonID · Former CEO, HeyMama · 2x Top 50 Women Leaders, Virginia
🛒 Shop The Stack · The habits, supplements, tools, and essentials behind the reinvention. Curated by and used by me daily.