What 46 Feels Like

On March 17, I turned 46.

It’s a strange number. Not quite a milestone, but far enough along the timeline to make you pause. People ask, “How does it feel?” and I honestly don’t know how to answer that. I don’t feel 46. But then again, what should 46 feel like?

There’s no textbook description for this age. No clean, universal definition. Some of us are raising children. Some are burying parents. Some are reinventing careers or navigating health issues. Some are chasing dreams we set down years ago, now finally brave enough to pick them up again. Forty-six doesn’t come with a rulebook—it comes with stories. Lots of them.

That’s the most profound realization I’ve had this year: my greatest strength is not in how young I can stay, or how much I can still do, but in what I’ve lived through. The experiences. The heartbreaks. The doubts. The faith. The lessons I learned the hard way and the ones I learned by watching others fall and rise again. That’s where my real power lies now—in the hard-earned wisdom of all the ages I’ve already been.

I don’t resent getting older. I don’t want to go back. But I am becoming increasingly aware of my mortality, of the finite nature of all this. The clock ticks louder in midlife, not in a panicked way, but in a purposeful one. Time feels like it’s speeding up, and suddenly every moment is asking to be noticed.

I’m trying to slow down where I can. To be present. To laugh without distraction. To see the people I love more clearly. To soak in the ordinary. Because these are the days I’ll want back someday—the ones I’m living right now.

46 isn’t old. It’s not young either. It’s a bridge between who I’ve been and who I’m becoming. And standing in that in-between space is sacred. It’s humbling. It’s beautiful.

So this year, my birthday wish isn’t for more time—it’s for deeper time. More intentional, more meaningful, more alive. I don’t want to just exist. I want to live—fully, truthfully, and gratefully.

Because I’ve never felt more me than I do right now.

And maybe that’s exactly what 46 feels like.