59: A Different Kind of Year
I’ve just turned 59. It’s my last year in my 50s—and I can feel it.
I didn’t feel different when I turned 40. I didn’t feel it at 50 either. But something about 59 is landing in me with more gravity. Maybe it's because the next birthday ends in a zero. Maybe it’s because time feels more precious lately. Or maybe it’s just because aging, like everything else in life, is not linear. It unfolds in layers, not in numbers.
The truth is, I thought I had made peace with aging years ago. I had read the books, done the inner work, embraced my laugh lines and silver hairs. But this birthday didn’t bring peace. It brought presence. That quiet, undeniable nudge that something is shifting—on a soul level.
In my teaching and in my personal practice, I talk often about the “messy middle.” It’s that place where we’re no longer who we were, but not yet who we’re becoming. It’s awkward. It’s beautiful. It’s emotional. And it’s incredibly human.
Aging, especially at midlife and beyond, is the ultimate messy middle.
Some days I feel wise. Other days I lose my reading glasses and cry in the car. My body asks for more rest. My skin is changing. My joints make new sounds. Some dreams have faded, and others are just now waking up. There’s grief. There’s joy. There’s everything, all at once.
But underneath it all, there’s the breath.
It’s what I come back to, again and again. This soft, steady inhale. This generous, releasing exhale. After all the stories, the striving, the letting go, the breath remains. Solid. Trustworthy. Present.
In meditation, we learn not to fix the mess, but to sit with it. To befriend it. To meet it with the kind of compassion we wish someone would show us when we’re overwhelmed or unsure.
That’s how I’m approaching 59.
Not as a problem to solve or a year to rush through. But as a practice. An invitation. A sacred window into what it means to age and grow. To change and stay rooted.
So this year, I’m bowing to all of it:
To the tenderness of noticing time.
To the resilience of starting again, every morning.
To the wisdom of letting things be messy.
To the quiet power of one breath, followed by another.
And maybe that’s the gift of turning 59: not that I know more, but that I’m learning to love the questions. To sit still inside the chaos. To soften into the unknown with just enough grace to keep going.
So if you’re here too—on the edge of something new, in a body that’s evolving, with a heart that still wants to live and love fully—you’re not alone.
Let’s breathe together. And see what this year has to teach us.