Before learning how to celebrate me, the way I had learnt to celebrate birthdays was by getting wasted.
My 30th birthday celebration – joints, coffee, drinking and getting wasted
From early in the morning, joints are passed around. Then copious amounts of coffee, then more joints. This continues for most of the day, with a bit of drama and a bit of ‘trying to be nice’ to each other.
By the late afternoon we are drinking as well. There are children everywhere, as well as bottles and ashtrays. Before dinner is anywhere near ready I find myself at the bathroom sink splashing water across my face.
I look into the mirror. I see a white face, but that is all I allow myself to see. I don’t want to look too closely as I don’t like to truly see my reflection when I am wasted.
I have the shakes, the sweats, and feel like I may be sick. I try to breathe through it and slowly find my way back downstairs to the couch. I have a little rest until I am ready to continue on to have another drink, to help prepare the food, and to smoke another joint.
By the end of the night the house looks like a dump and everyone is wrecked. This is what getting wasted looks like…
It feels like a lifetime away yet it was only a few years ago. And this is what I ‘used’ to call a ‘successful’ party.
My 34th birthday celebration – No joints, No alcohol, No getting wasted, No drama
This year, I decided to celebrate me instead and thought about what I would like to do for me.
What I really wanted was to go out to the local Thai restaurant. So I sent a text, letting friends know that I was going and that if they felt like joining me, they could. I had no expectation of anyone to come; I just knew that I was going.
I will set the scene at the restaurant for you. The table was decorated and candles lit. A few friends arrived bringing gifts – beautiful candles, a plant and a bouquet of greens from one friend’s garden. There were 4 kids at one end of the table, then 9 adults.
It was wonderful.
There was…
- No alcohol
- No joints or drugs
- No loudness
- No one needing to be the centre of attention, and
- No drama.
There was no one getting wasted, just …
- Delicious food
- Honest, open discussions, and
- People sharing and connecting.
I went to the bathroom and I looked at myself in the mirror. For the first time I was happy looking at me; I could admire my own beauty.
This was the best birthday I had ever had. I felt at ease and so joyful. We didn’t have a late night; there was no need to. I didn’t have a hangover the next day and it was awesome.
Celebrating Me
I can see now that the party I had when I was 30 was about my trying to please others. It was ‘normal’ – socially acceptable in the way parties are these days.
But this year it was really just about celebrating me. I had no expectation and no need for it to be anything and because of that, I was shown something beautiful – me.
I can celebrate where I’ve come to and the fact that I no longer want or need drugs or alcohol to get wasted and feel like I’ve partied or ‘had a good time’.
Since then, I’ve also learnt that celebrating me doesn’t mean I have to have lots of friends or wait until I go out for a special birthday dinner.
Celebrating me can be done in the most simple of ways. I can celebrate me every day, for the small things.
I have been inspired to celebrate me and to make these awesome changes in my life thanks to presentations by Serge Benhayon and Natalie Benhayon and the support of Esoteric practitioners at Universal Medicine Clinic.
By Anonymous
Wow what a difference and what a transformation from trashing your body to honouring it and having a fabulous time with friends at the same time. To me there is nothing worse than drinking too much alcohol and feeling like death the next day. I can now admit that I only drank to fit in and to be seen as one of the team. Since my association with Universal Medicine by reconnecting back to me I have grown in my confidence so that I don’t have to drink alcohol to feel socially acceptable.
Drugs (caffeine, illegal drugs, abuse of legal drug, nicotine, sugar, Etc.) are a distraction that catches so many people and when we find our Essences, Inner-most / Souls we start to find True purpose in life and the elimination of all distractions and comes with huge amounts of Joy.
Funny (and at the same time sad) isn’t it that we reserve celebrating to a few select and specific occasions throughout the year. The rest of the time we’re just going through the motions. Hang on a minute when you examine the way in which most of us celebrate then you realise that that too is simply just going through the motions. Anything that we do by rote is simply just going through the motions whereas when we connect to the body and do something consciously then this brings an aliveness and a zesty quality to whatever it is that we’re doing. It also ensures that the consciousness that would have us living our lives on repeat is barred from entering.
Traditionally birthdays are a time to hammer our bodies. From a very young age we load the body up with sugary rich foods and then as we get older we introduce alcohol, drugs, staying up all night and throw in a liberal sprinkling of indiscriminate sex. Our bodies must dread our birthdays for the same reasons that most of them dread Christmas.
Today is my birthday, I am going to work and it feels very normal to do so and I look forward to it. I love what I do and what I bring to my work. Just because it’s my birthday doesn’t mean the world stops and and my birthday doesn’t have to revolve around me because I enjoy being me with others, I enjoy the relationships I have in my life and those are worth celebrating. Not just today but everyday.
WOW Love this! What a difference. I also really loved the idea that it didn’t matter who attended, there were no pictures or attachments you just went with the flow and impulse of what you wanted to do.
Who needs parties and drunken fuelled nights when you are in love with yourself? When we connect to the love inside ourselves we don’t need any substance to interfere with the natural divinity that is there within all of us.
Some of the worst times in my life have been at parties fuelled by alcohol and drugs, its so super crazy that at the time you do it for a number of reasons but all are lies and basically drag you further away from your light.
Things could not be more different now as I love just being me, no substance will ever be better then the feeling of us just in our essence.
Young and old people everyday put themselves in danger due to the drink and drugs they consume its crazy how in the western world it is considered less normal not to drink.
When we party hard it is all the ‘I’ so maybe we should call it parti or part-i as it separates us from our True essences. A true celebration is all about coming together and sharing a delicious conversation over a meal so we feel whole and not in parts.
A gorgeous turnaround Anon showing that change is possible. Every movement we make towards the unfolding of the beauty and love within makes a huge difference in our lives, how we relate to others and the lives of others. It is incredibly inspiring and something to deeply appreciate.
Your new way of celebrating birthdays may just catch on and offer a gift to others.
Keep on celebrating and don’t turn back I say.
‘I can celebrate me every day, for the small things.’ This is beautiful and I can feel the joy behind your words. We don’t need to wait for a big occasion to appreciate who we are, but in the everyday. Keeping in touch with appreciating ourselves is a great stabiliser for when life gets challenging… it acts as a ballast in rough weather.
Getting wasted does not have to be any special day it seems to happen regularly when we are young and I had a deep understanding it had to stop before I turned 40 and so it did. Now at 65 I feel so much vitality and alive. But it is not just the stopping that has made the difference it is how I understand that after stopping all the abusive drugs that I replaced them with other behaviours that were more kosher but I was still addicted to the empty behaviours that were causing the drug addiction in the first place. It was a different addiction but the same underlying pattern that fostered the drug use. Thank God for Serge Benhayon for cracking wide open the underlying behaviours so any one can see what was causing the addictions and thus allowing us to say no to any type of addictive behaviour at there root cause.
The underlying root problem for all of us is the fact that we aren’t living true to who we are. I have touched very briefly on the beauty of the truth of who we all are and at the same time got to feel the ugliness of who we are not and it was devastating. But the thing is we have all got so used to living in this chronically reduced way that we’re no longer consciously aware of what we’ve left behind. But we can’t scrub the memory from our bodies and that’s why deep down there is such angst inside us, angst that we try and cover up with behaviours.
We can always appreciate ourselves, any day or time we can celebrate and appreciate ourselves for who we are and what we bring, and this is very supportive for us.
Gorgeous! It is never worth judging anyone even those who like you had been are very very self-disregarding and “wasted”. These people are the more sensitive in our society and change can happen very rapidly when the love and space is offered for them to just be themselves
Anonymous, this blog is a powerful confirmation of the choices and changes you have made to your life and the huge turnaround from being wasted to living in connection with your body and essence. In appreciation and celebration of YOU – I love the raw honesty you bring to your writing that everyone can benefit from.
I stopped drinking and smoking some time ago and I love celebrating and having parties….more than I used to, and I have always liked a party, sober is much more fun, way more cool and I still crack up, dance around and have a great time with people. We do need ask ourselves why it is that we need to be wasted to have fun…is there any fun had when we are wasted? And I know some will say I do not do it very often, I only do it little bit…etc, but from my experience even one drink is enough to take the shine off…..it is not the edge we take off, we lose our shine…who wants to lose their shine…..makes no sense…we have hang ups and habits, sort out any hang ups and habits and no need to drink through a party…but instead be completely present, sober and be with every moment, so you do not miss a thing!
Interesting how we can miss so much when we are sober. Having never been a drinker we can miss so much as well when we choose to judge and critique the behaviours of others.
With downers and stimulants there is always a temptation to have more except that the body is indicating the harm it is under. An indulgence is then to ignore the body and accept the consequences because we can’t do that regularly without suffering substantial damage.
Hence a ‘celebration’ is really a way to do more of what harms us without overdoing it. Finely calibrated abuse.
Love the simplicity of this – no drama, no need to be the centre of attention, just a simple enjoyment of feeling and being you. Appreciating who we are and what we bring, and committing to build a relationship with our body where we learn to trust what we innately know and feel – these are huge but simple, moment to moment choices that can have a profound effect on how we feel about ourselves, and how we interact with others and commit to life.
I am so so glad I am out of this game, the one that says you should get wasted to have a good time, I haven’t drunk for 15 years and I have never ever felt better.
‘Celebrating me can be done in the most simple of ways. I can celebrate me every day, for the small things.’ Why only bring such an appreciating and celebration on the day of our birth when we are worth this and more every moment of every day.
And to add to my last comment, it does not stop with getting wasted – it can also be negative self-thoughts, over-eating, being nice and doing things for others without consideration of ourselves. There are so many ways of making ourselves small and we do this instead of truly appreciating ourselves on our birthday celebration.
We have allowed life to become totally upside down when we call getting wasted – so much so that we feel sick on the day and definitely the next day – a celebration.
I booked a dental appointment on my birthday and the receptionist asked in a tone of disbelief why I wanted the appointment on my birthday. It’s a day off work and why not? Afterall it’s a gift to myself for keeping my health in check.
Yes, poor dentists receiving so much feedback about the pain they cause and not the benefit they bring.
How much do we actually avoid celebrating ourselves during the day ? Celebrating meaning: taking moments where you appreciate your expression, no matter how small it is. Whilst doing that you just don´t want to disconnect from that anymore. NO party can ever equal this kind of fulfillment.
We really are crazy (we as human beings) when a ‘good night’ has your body and home wrecked well before the end of the day. When I read blogs like this it confirms to me that the intelligent species we have the potential to be is currently not intelligent at all when we will not see the harm we are doing to ourselves.
Now I have taken away the more obvious addictions, coffee, cigarettes etc., I’m starting to get more honest about all the other addictions in my life, addictions that are perfectly legal and which if you’d asked me a few years ago I probably would never have described them as addictions.
That´s a great point- addiction of being emotional, insecure, doubtful, playing small, being arrogant, indulging into thoughts/ food- the list is endless, is as harmful as being addicted to go out and get wasted. The soul and the body suffers energetically the same from these addictions, that´s why it is so important to put some light into the dark in that corner.
I remember years ago how I used to celebrate birthdays and it was almost as if I used to try and kill myself in the process and in fact if I did now what I used to back then I’m sure it would kill me. It is such a strange tradition that we seem to think it is a good idea to get messed up like that in the name of celebration as if we look at it more closely it really is more like a punishment.
What a change from pleasing others and get wasted to celebrating you and sharing the joy of living a life of being connected with yourself, appreciating and confirming it in the small things of everyday.
Appreciating ourselves in our everyday movements is a lovely way to confirm the love that we are, as we are in constant relationship with all things and people around us.
Appreciation itself is a movement and such a beautiful one at that.
How fantastic that you were able to do what felt true for you from the fact that you had no expectations or needs from anyone outside of you… that you didn’t need to conform to the so called normal way of ‘celebrating’ a birthday.
A beautiful sharing Anonymous, so gorgeous to celebrate you, how far you have come and the self loving choices you have made, and most of all to celebrate you for being you, I am reminded by your sharing to celebrate and appreciate even the small changes that I am making in my life, not just the so called big ones.
What is more important than connection and true joy?
Definitely nothing, since you meet your truth and feel the love you are worth and so are others.
This is a beautiful sharing, thank you. It is so important to understand that the life we have created is far from what we really enjoy and thus we need to allow ourselves to start to bring ourselves back to what we deep down feel so that we can step by step return to the true joy in life of connection and inner contentment and vitality.
I always had an issue with celebrating my birthday growing up and as an adult. I was uncomfortable with being celebrated for one day and then everything went back to, a so called normal. Now I see how any day and at any time we can celebrate and appreciate ourselves and when it is our birthday it’s deepening what we already do throughout the year.
Thanks for sharing this Aimee because it lets me see how when we don’t usually celebrate or appreciate ourselves, it can feel quite foreign when we do. It makes me want to do it more often!
I used to dislike my birthday and wanted to avoid it each year because of not feeling worthy of being celebrated. While there is still work to be done in fully letting go of this old pattern now I too enjoy having people come together and share dinner on my birthday and deeply appreciate the quality of people that I have in my life.
You are not alone Jude, so many of us suffer from lack of self worth. It is great when we start to love and appreciate ourselves and not be stuck in it anymore.
I love this anonymous, it sounds like how my birthdays have been and how they are now. I had my first party last year since my 21st (which was your first description), it was the first time I said yes to celebrating me and honouring that I was worth celebrating.
It is great when you can really see the changes you have made and celebrate this and on one level know that this is just the beginning in so many ways because well for me, its like I had gone so far away from me and who I truly am that it takes a while to let go of all that and let the real woman within shine out.
Celebrating ourselves for the small things is so confirming and supports us to move forward with our lives in appreciation of all that we have been offered which leaves no space or need for the emptiness of ‘getting wasted’ to forget about the lack of love we are demonstrating towards ourselves and others.
When we celebrate and confirm ourselves, there is no need or seeking confirmation from another which is a powerful feeling to feel. I used to always want someone else to tell me, to boost me up but its great to just know it from the inside out and now if someone does give me a compliment, I can feel like, yeah, I know it and it doesn’t come as a surprise.
It is very true that each time we move in presence we confirm and celebrate who we are in essence for we celebrate the connection to the soul within the body.
In a similar way Anon I used to be permanently walking the tightrope of being liked. I spent my whole time tipping, wobbling and falling dependant solely on whether I felt liked or not. What a precarious way to live! And yet now I feel rock solid in who I am and whether or not someone likes me hardly ever enters my head. In fact I have had a few instances recently at work where it has been implied that a group of people have been criticising me behind my back and whereas before I would have fallen off my tightrope, I have been able to keep walking very steadily on. And with no negative feelings towards the group.
I remember having one of the biggest parties I know of at the party capital of Australia the Gold Coast. I had a cocktail of alcohol and drugs and partied for 2 days. This in no way I was celebrating me because it was abusive towards my body. Celebrating me truthfully is any moment I am confirming how much I enjoy and feel in my body completing any task in a quality I know is loving me and another.
It seems we have misunderstood the word celebration and what it is to truly celebrate ourselves because it is so very far from getting wasted and abusing our body with poison.
The terminology of ‘getting wasted’ could not be more appropriate – for surely every day we live not appreciating our own divinity and that of others is time down the biggest drain. Thank you Anonymous for celebrating here with us all.
I hadn’t looked at it like that, but sure is a waste!
The amount of parties I used to go to that used to be all about getting wasted, no true connection, no real joy just a feeding of a need to check out from the cold reality of life.
Waking up feeling sick from drinking so much and waking up feeling silly about reckless things that had been said or done. So glad I am over this type of party!
Giving ourselves the gift of ourselves is the greatest gift we can give ourselves.
Celebrating ourselves do not need a reason to begin and end, it is natural. Yet the opposite of celebrating ourselves has become our every day normal, which tells us how far from being natural we have chosen and we have compromised to celebrating not being ourselves. We have chosen complicated over simple.
That is TRUE — we do not truly celebrate ourselves or each other in the way we actually deserve to. Not meaning just on your birthday once a year, but in our whole daily living. Allowing the beauty of us being seen by ourselves, acknowledged and truly appreciated.. For it is from there that greater love can exist in one’s life, by simply choosing so.
This is such a beautiful testimony of how deeply confirming it is to appreciate who we are through our every day living, as with this celebrating who we are is a daily occurrence. And what’s more is that you have shown how this is possible for us all, from simply developing a loving and honouring relationship with our essence, who we naturally are within.
It is an absolute Joy to be celebrated for who we are and there is absolutely no need for this to be accompanied with any from of ‘social habits’ that consist of taking you away from who you really are. I can’t express in words how different my life is and how each day celebrating me is what it really is about.
Even the phrase getting wasted… Is such a revealing comment on the way so many people choose to live
It is so interesting that what we commonly call celebrating always involves some kind of self-abuse like drinking alcohol, smoking, going to bed way too late, eating things that are not healthy for us and so on. If you really observe this it does not makes sense but as long as you are ‘in’ it is seems so normal! Therefore it is always great to take a moment and see what you are doing and if it is really what you think it is.
A true celebration of you does not need others to do so. Any task being with the purpose of being with all of you in the moment, and keeping it that way is celebrating the fact you know that you are moment to moment.
The opportunity to celebrate ourselves for the tiniest things, and the big things reminds us of who we are. We are not the critical thoughts that can run unchecked, we are not the makeup, muscles or clothes we have, we are a being within a body, that is at its essence divine.
How cool it is to totally redefine and reconfigure what we feel celebration truly is… How amazingly liberating this is.
A great question to ask,”What does it mean to celebrate ourselves and others?” We have it upside down when we go to drugs, staying up late and forgetting where we where the night before. This is not a celebration it is an escape…and so what are we escaping from….I say lets build a life for every day that is worth celebrating. I know I have done both and I can who heartedly recommend the later.
Samantha Davidson when we get wasted you say this is not a celebration but an escape so what are we escaping from? This is a great question to ask ourselves is the escape because we can feel in our bodies the unrest of not being who we truly are and rather than addressing this we try to escape the feelings as we feel they are too much and too overwhelming. The problem with escaping in whatever form that takes is that when we come back into our bodies the unresolved feelings are still there. So we have brutalised our bodies for nothing because getting wasted doesn’t change anything.
Such a turn around from what today’s society sees as normal to celebrating yourself without needing anything from anyone. There is definitely a richer quality in that than your previous birthday get-togethers.
It is my birthday soon and often it is a day I have dreaded as it has been a day where I judge and measure myself quite a lot, however, I can feel that the celebration that I feel now is quite different. I know the quality of who I am and also all the people in my life who I love and deeply appreciate. My birthday is a celebration of all of this.
If we made our birthdays about appreciation and appreciating everything the last year has offered us, every step we’ve made and everything we’ve learnt then it provides us with a great foundation with which to move forward on.
It’s true Meg, appreciating all of it allows us to take it all to another level the following year, but reality is we need to do this every day, not just on our birthdays as reality is they are no different than any other day which offers us the opportunity to start again and change things if we want to.
Rosie Bason this is a great reminder thank you. You share that we have an opportunity to start again not just everyday but in every moment. As we grow in our awareness it is possible to feel how hard we are on ourselves as we look out side of ourselves for confirmation. This is a huge trick of the mind as we will never be confirmed by the outside world as its purpose is to constantly entice us away from our innermost and keep us all in the cycle of perpetual motion of unrest.
To allow ourselves to truly be celebrated requires a deep level of self love. Often many people can struggle when there is true appreciation delivered to them, it requires you to have a deep appreciation and knowing of yourself to be able to accept it in full.
This explains why I never liked compliments in the past! These days I find it a lot easier to hear and that is because I know it and feel that yeah, I am that amazing!
What a contrast, that’s so incredible. And boy does the 34th birthday sound so much more appealing than the 30th. Inspiring to read about your choice to turn things around and appreciate who you really are.
I can remember that too… and what I feel now looking back is the sadness that we did that to ourselves and to our homes. No wonder we had to roll another or as you say, have another drink to not feel what was really going on around us.
Anon the other thing to consider in all this is not just yourself and how abusive you were with yourself but what reflection you brought to the children you mentioned that were there too?
When we really start to feel what is actually going on then we realise that there is more than just us being selfish there is a responsibility to all others around us because everything we do affects everything. That is a scientific law we cannot escape from.
I remember the feeling of sadness when I would walk downstairs the morning after partying late the night before. The stink of cigarettes, the empty bottles, crisp packets and mess to clear away felt horrible, so inevitably we would smoke more cigarettes, order takeaways and open a bottle of wine just to be sure we did not feel what we were doing to ourselves and so we could forget that on Monday morning we would be going back to work.
A never-ending cycle of trying not to feel everything you can naturally always feel, how much easier and simpler to feel it and address it and make changes.
So true and it is the same with everything. We can try to avoid it, turn a blind eye to it yet eventually it just keeps on coming around again and again until we do eventually look at it. So we have the choice to look at it now or keep delaying.
It is crazy to think that to be able to say we had a great time celebrating ourselves we have to get wrecked, have loud music, lots of drama and then feel ill afterwards – this makes no sense. How can we possibly be celebrating ourselves by harming ourselves?
It is the complete opposite of celebrating ourselves but seems to be a normal these days.. Each to their own, but for me, I am glad that I don’t celebrate like that anymore.
I find when I appreciate myself it feels like a celebration, no fan fares or need people to know about it but a celebration that then extends out to and includes others.
Hi Ruth, I like what you say here because I have come to know that you cannot really appreciate another if you can’t first appreciate yourself… so the more we care, love and appreciate ourselves, the more we also have for others.
I have found that the celebrations of a birthday or another event are a celebration of a Livingness, a way of life already lived. If I have not loved myself or been in full celebration of myself up till that point then how can I do so at this event on the spot?
These days it is not abusing alcohol that I need to be aware of as drinking is a thing of the past for me. What I have to be careful of, and a habit I keep finding myself repeating is over eating. I get so engrossed in the food, eat too much and put myself into such a state that my body feels bloated and terrible after. It is not a poison such as alcohol, but it really is abusive and really hurts so I have to stop doing this when celebrating!.
Only accepting what we think is normal, like I did by celebrating with drugs and alcohol only to come to a point in my life when I knew there was more to life than the escaped checked out loveless being. Today I know and feel that every nano seconds makes a huge difference and the quality in which I choose to move in ether confirms and celebrates this or not.
When we do things well there’s a voice in our head that can come and say ‘well you did that ok but what about x’ or ‘you still could have done better on this point or that’. This part that critiques and degrades, analyses and cuts down is relentless. Everyday in what we do, we need to appreciate and champion, salute and confirm all of the beautiful things that we choose. With this, there is less space for negativity that’s not true to get a grip and it gives us a solid platform to build on. Without this it’s like we are starting from scratch every day. As they say at my work it’s like we are ‘rebuilding the wheel’ when we already have everything we need. Thank you Anonymous for this brilliant blog – so worth celebrating.
So so true Joseph, we do need to celebrate all those small moments, those parts that we actually did well, that we do day after day, as more often than not, the focus and energy is wasted on the putting down, the criticizing and degrading.
Just because we do something amazing daily, does not make it any less amazing!
We need to celebrate all the little things as they are what make up our lives. We miss out if we only celebrate the big events. Also celebrating confirms that we are on track!
Rosie I celebrated the little, but big things yesterday. I have a box that has a lot of different sizes of small cut off’s of Bamboo its a box especially made for Solitary Bees to lay their eggs, which they have done, then they close off the opening with a plug of earth. Yesterday 2 Little solitary bees, a lovely burnt orange in colour emerged from one of the Bamboo tubes and they flew around me as I stood watching them. I find nature fascinating. It brings me back to the simplicity of life and the absolute beauty that surrounds us.
Recently I felt a deep sadness from the way I have been living to not celebrate myself in the small ways that I do live that feel amazing. Celebrating doesn’t have to be a party or jumping up and down (that’d get tiring) but I am open to learning how to celebrate myself in the little ways.
I used to think that drinking and smoking pot until I was unconscious was fun and a great way to celebrate my birthdays. When I look back on those years I can see how disconnected from my self I was to even consider this was an okay thing to do. It is so ludicrous to think that we are celebrating ourselves when we really are in total disregard and dishonoring of our entire being.
I agree but when you are in it, you can’t see a thing and think that its normal.
I totally relate to this blog as I can remember my last birthday when I was turning 30 and it was in a club and I was having gin martini’s at 3am in the morning, still standing after a night of messiness but feeling completely lost at the same time. That was close to the time when I realised I didn’t like living my life like this anymore and going forward my birthday celebrations have been much more loving and truly celebrational. Each year as I become more and more intimate with myself and honour every cell of my body the more my relationships with others deepen also. Life is rich and wholesome.
Awesome Natalie! Life is rich and wholesome and as I read your comment, I feel that whoa if only I had known this when I was younger, I would not have damaged my body so much along the way. Some may say, that is what you do when you are young, you go a bit wild and experiment but it actually doesn’t have to be that way. I am lucky to see some late teens and 20 year olds who are showing me what it can be like and they rock this world. Seriously they are so inspirational. I am taking notes so next life time I don’t get lost in the crowd and do what others do and waste a decade or so being wasted.
It’s so true anonymous. We and society as a whole place so many expectations on ourselves and others that we lose ourselves and accept that particular ways of life are normal because everyone else is doing it – when they actually are very unhealthy and unloving for our human bodies and simultaneously erode our overall quality of health and wellbeing.
Yes it is a sad thing that many of us do and I still do at times….. join what the masses are doing rather than stop and feel for myself or be the one that steps out and shows everyone else that there is another way and we don’t have to do it that way just because others do.
What if we made celebration a standard part of our day… I think our movements, how we felt about ourselves and how we got things done during the day would look and feel very different. There is so much Joy to be had when we are simply being ourselves.
This is so true Rachael, and what if we then walked that celebration. Walked the appreciation so that everyone else around us could see and feel it and be inspired.
I felt this today Rachael, as I was bouncing down the beach at sunrise…. what if we celebrated, strutted our selves and lived in celebration all the time….. it feels so good so why not right?! I laughed at myself this morning because I realised that I have been a master at not letting myself shine and live it up.
“Celebrating me can be done in the most simple of ways. I can celebrate me every day, for the small things.” I love what you have shared here, I also have found that it is in the small things, those self honouring small things that foster celebrating all that we are each and every day.
I just read a great blog about how we often only appreciate and celebrate the big items rather than notice all the little things but it is the little things that form our every day. If we stop to notice the little things we realise that there is So so much to celebrate and appreciate.
What a huge turn around you have made Anon. What a different world it would be if humanity as a whole could get the message sooner than later. We don’t need to get “wasted” to celebrate an event and suffer after it? How is this a celebration?
Each and everyone of us that makes the change is now inspiring others…..so slowly, slowly others will see that there is another way if we keep sharing.
Walking through the city centre just now, I am aware of how many people are out tonight celebrating, I look through the pub and bar windows and see people desperate to have a good time whilst all the time masking the emptiness they feel.
I realised yesterday it doesn’t matter where you are, most of all we are all just craving connection. I love that I don’t search in pubs and the like to find that any more.
Loud noise, everyone pretending they can hear even when they cant, pretending they care when they don’t, distractions everywhere and for me its like no one is really at home in their body as they are a bit all over the place.
When you look into it closely, it’s so odd that getting wasted is something that comes with celebrations – be it a birthday, a wedding or a special night. What are we celebrating?
Birthdays are a great time to do a stock check and really appreciate and confirm everything that’s happened in the last year, I find that gives me a great platform to move forward from, it helps me embrace what’s next and it’s a great initiation into the next year.
It truly sounds like you had a ” Happy Birthday anniversary ” when you were 34 years old how awesome is that .
I loved reading of you celebrating the little things. We tend to think celebrating should be rationed out to particular events eg birthdays or Christmas but this is simply a picture designed to stop us celebrating moments in each day.
When we make a point of celebrating, we make more room in our life for that, but when we don’t even stop to take in the moment, it is missed and we don’t appreciate what was given in that moment.
Going to late night parties was something I used to do when I was younger and found I would feel so awful the next day with lack of sleep and my body would ache from wearing little dresses in the cold and I would need a few days to recover and I didn’t even drink alcohol. If I go out to a party now I consider my body at every point: what time the party is, what clothing will support me through the event, supportive shoes that won’t make my feet sore and staying for only as long as feels right and not feeling obligated to stay for the whole event. When we appreciate and value ourselves we begin to make supportive choices to cherish our bodies and our ideals around celebrations are then poles apart to our past party experiences.
If we value and appreciate ourselves and how we impact others, it changes how we choose to live and how we care for ourselves. I know that you can feel quite terrible as you have shared above, even without the alcohol because of the way in which you disregarded your body. And in doing this, what message are we sending to other women? That it is okay to treat your body that way? There was a festival near where I work on the weekend and seeing half naked women in the middle of winter was sad and shocking that that is what they feel to do to look good and get attention and I gave thanks that I don’t live like that anymore.
I vividly remember when I smoked pot, a night with friends consisted of sitting on the floor around a coffee table, one person making the mix of tobacco and dope, this person was revered for being able to make a super fine mix, perfect for the bong, you really had to be special to do this!!! Another was on the task of packing the bong and according to us back then, there was a real art to this, so again, you were considered special if selected to do this and the other 2 or 3 well, they puffed away as it was passed around and around until we passed out. No-one ever said much to each other except how strong or weak the dope was…. and this was deemed a great night, to be repeated the next and the next night.
I had to laugh as I read this Mary-Louise as it is so true. Nothing much can be said as everyone is wasted. And each so caught up in their ability to roll or mull. What a way to waste your life. Glad I came out of the haze.
Thank you for this blog. I understand how it can take a lot to step out of the drug culture because of all the promises and excitement that it brings. You are very brave to have made these changes and the quality of your life now shows how worth it you are.
When up early recently and I was driving down the main party street in my city, and wow was it a mess, it was around 5am and there was ambulances, police cars, people being sick, people passed out, people completely off it ,people being abusive it was really sad that we go out drinking under the illusion of ‘celebration’ when in fact all we are doing is harming ourselves and other people.
I can just picture the scene Samantha, and I have to stop and appreciate that I am no longer part of that. I was talking to some young people recently and they were complaining about not being able to make ends meet with their pay check and I realised that it is hard only because they chose to spend so much of their money on alcohol and going out. I have saved heaps of $$$ since I gave up drinking and smoking, its actually what has enabled me to get a house.
The current unspoken definition of ‘to party’ for most adults is to use a substance or substances to alter our natural state to such an extent that it impacts greatly on our ability to function. We can’t think properly, speak properly, walk properly or make good decisions and we often put ourselves in dangerous or damaging situations. And this I know well because I did it for a really large part of my life. It’s often only when we switch to a different energetic source that we’re able to see things more clearly because as long as we’re being fuelled by the same source of energy that gets us to party we won’t be able to see it for what it truly is.
I can remember quite clearly a moment of being wasted and looking at myself in the mirror, feeling lost, I looked in to my eyes and could feel my whole body and being communicating a strong sense that ‘this is not you, what are you doing?’. This truth was almost too much to accept as I could instantly feel how far away I was from being myself, and yet this sense never left me. Although I continued with the evening something had changed. Regardless of how lost I felt I began to return, little by little, to that sense of truth within me, and over time the ‘little by little’ became more and more to the point that this sense was louder and clearer than ever before. I now look in the mirror and look in to my eyes and feel a strong sense of appreciation, love and knowing that this is who I am, and I now don’t even need to wait for a birthday to celebrate just how magnificent this feels.
I know exactly how you feel Carola, I have never felt more me and more content within my body than ever before.
The things we do to please others. I find that it is when I feel some doubt about the choices I have made that may have offended others that I can go into being nice to please others. But it is exhausting living in this way. I was at a party recently and felt uncomfortable. I paused and reflected. When we give to others without giving to ourselves first it becomes a doing, to please, to be nice, to try and give off something we are not and this way of being can pollute the body with emotions such as resentment and bitterness. How can this be love?
Its actually quite horrible to be on the other end, where you have someone just trying to be nice to you, trying to please you, putting the fake smile on and you can feel how fake the whole thing is. I notice this quite often and for me personally, I wish they wouldn’t try so hard or play this game as I see right through it and there is no love for sure.
Connecting and appreciating ourselves is something to be celebrated every day as for how can we reflect something that is true for all our brothers that there is a way to meet life full of joy, love,and continual evolution?
I remember how much I tried to talk myself into enjoying partying – the super late nights, going out in the cold, the way I felt the next day. I never enjoyed it, yet needed to convince myself that I was having a great time or I would have to completely stop and re-assess why I needed it in the first place.
I love the honesty in your comment. It made me stop and question the partying and what I realise is… It was not the party that I wanted, it was the people and connection as I love being with people but reality is, at most parties, people once they are under the influence of alcohol or drugs, don’t actually connect as they themselves are disconnected.
It is quite ironic that the way we celebrate ourselves in society can often leave our body feeling completely abused. This is far from what a true celebration of ourselves should be – where we treat our body and being as the precious, gorgeousness it is.
Reading this beautiful blog reminds me that it’s not just drinking alcohol or taking drugs that aids getting wasted and feeling empty. These activities may be the extreme but simply any checking out from connecting to my body leaves me feeling drained and exhausted.
A beautiful celebration of knowing who you are. Getting wasted is a waste of true connection to love.
This blog is a great reminder that simply being content in our own skin is the greatest celebration of all. Life is very simple when we allow it to be.
Taking stock of the choices we have made and feeling the joy our bodies emanating true vitality and love is to be celebrated every single day for it is everybody’s right to receive such a reflection.
The notion of getting wasted at a party as a ‘celebration’ is full of illusion, why is this even in our culture? are we not worth so much more then this.
Coming back to and being me in wherever I am and whatever I am doing is a celebration in itself no need for parties or drugs to dim the beautiful light we bring through by just being the me who we are. A beautiful sharing and transformation, thank you Anon.
i love the simplicity of the party you had recently- no neediness from you or the other guests, no need to impress anyone or seem popular – just 100% love and fun together. I love how there was no so called ‘party drugs’ just simply healthy tasty food and a fun evening together, and I bet you all woke up feeling great the next day too!
Anonymous, this is such a great article to read, ‘I can see now that the party I had when I was 30 was about my trying to please others. It was ‘normal’ – socially acceptable in the way parties are these days.’ I used to have similar parties and they were never about celebrating me but always about wanting others to have a good time and I felt tired and empty and ill afterwards. I now have birthday lunches with a few friends, everyone brings a plate of food to share and it feels lovely, simple and joyful to be with them and to allow myself to be celebrated, very different to birthdays in the past.
So beautiful to read about your transformation and claiming of the true YOU Anonymous, thank you; keep on celebrating, enjoying and appreciating.
The first birthday you described made me feel ill reading it. I’m totally with you on celebrating in a way that does not involve hangovers or a whole load of mess.
I agree we do not need to wait for a birthday to celebrate our self. We can do this every day in many ways through out the day.
This is a great transformation and as I have read some of the comments there is more to celebrate about than this one particular day that comes around everyday instead of every year.
What I have observed in my work environment is that birthdays are celebrated with a big fat, sugary cake, instead of celebrating that person by appreciating them everyday.
I loved the ‘texting of friends’ and ‘having no expectations’ with no centre of attention, with people sharing and connecting’ – who needs alcohol and drugs when the realness is around you.
I can remember the day after a party feeling hung over, exhausted, tired and irritable, in truth how can being out of it and harming your body ever be called celebrating?
I was touched by the description of the different experiences when looking in the mirror at the two different birthdays, anonymous. We may call it a great party when we end up feeling wrecked, yet when we are faced with the mirror the look in our eyes, or the inability to look says it all.
Yes what is with that? It is like we are a bit afraid to be amazing and shine!???!
yes it is worth stopping to ask ourselves – why do we willingly choose to make ourselves feel so awful with a self-inflicted hangover yet when offered the understanding and opportunity to live a vital joy-filled vibrant life, we baulk.
Many people rate a party or celebration on how awful they feel afterwards. The worse they feel = the better the party. How crazy is that??
Crazy indeed, because really it should be the other way round. If you go to a party, and you feel like terrible the next day….. that is a big sign from your body that something was not quite right! It could have been the food, the environment, the way people were falsely engaging or even the music or a combination of it all. Everything has an effect, we just have to be open and aware to feel it all.
That is a great point. If someone ends up feeling nauseous, drained, head/body aches and generally unwell without going to a party, it will be recognised as a cause for alarm. Yet if the same ill follows a party it can be deemed as the sign of a great party! It simply does not make sense.
No sense at all. One is labelled sick the other hungover but it is the same. We make ourselves sick by choice all just for a party!
Such a gorgeous blog that I can so deeply relate to. If, ten years ago, you’d described to me the birthday lunch celebration I had last year I’d have laughed and written it off as boring. Yet it was so sublime and simple and joyous….and by 4pm I was back at my desk working and continuing with life!
It is interesting how we could see something as boring and then later see it totally different. Some blame it on the fact that we are getting older, and yes that is true, but for me it is really down to being more aware and feeling rather than being numb.
The more love we have in our body, the less sense it makes to get wasted. The contrast is simply too stark.
So beautiful to feel your celebration of you that has no need or expectations of others because it is built on a foundation of appreciating the choices you now make on a daily basis.
Redefining celebration itself is necessary for mankinds evolution…. i know its a bit of a leap, but its true
It makes sense that a real celebration would leave everyone feeling great, because that is what the word celebration is all about isn’t it? Greatness being honoured. And it just so happens that it is your birthday, it is you who we honour.
The ridiculous obviousness of this observation is actually pretty embarrassing when I consider some of the ‘celebrations’ I have indulged in, organised, attended, hosted, or been involved in – zero true celebration that invariably left everyone feeling less.
Yes learning to celebrate ourselves without all the normal societal pleasures, is quite a feat. I know for me, I used to be the same, celebrating my birthday with alcohol and at times in my 20’s quite a lot of drugs. These days it is a very different story and one that i couldn’t be more joyful about.
When we get together, be it with another or a group to celebrate I’ve noticed that when there is an attempt to make the focus of the event on what we do or how many exciting activities or ‘fun times’ we can cram into the day – it doesn’t work, or if it does go according to plan (like my 18th whereby in the UK that allows you to drink legally) getting wasted does leave us with that morning after experience of feeling wrecked.
However, celebrating myself, or the other person, making the get together about the people makes the whole room feel rich and warm and theres a joy in that simplicity of celebrating ourselves.
Whenever I have held a party or event I usually have this idea of how I want things to be, but inevitably they never end up being that way. Thanks for sharing your change of lifestyle which resulted in a different celebration of you, one thats about you and your connections rather than everyone individually disconnecting through substances, food and partying.
So many of us think that we’re connecting really deeply when we’re wasted, especially those of us who have taken ecstasy but also those of us who get drunk as well. We feel that we’re less inhibited, more loving, more able to open up and share but this is just rubbish because in getting drunk or wasted we have left ourselves completely and so who or what are we sharing?
Celebrating ourselves can be done in the simplest ways we can imagine, it is appreciating and confirming ourselves in our movements and feeling the joy of connecting to something older and wiser within and around us.
When I think back to the birthday parties I attended before the amount of self abuse has been horrific I remember myself nearly setting a bar on fire as I dropped a burning shot glass of Sambuca. I burnt my hand but that did not stop me I continued from bar to bar with my hand in a pint of cold water and carried on drinking to drink to numb the pain. I now see how crazy this was and wonder how any form of abuse can be noted as a celebration.
It is great that you can now see how crazy that was yet I wonder how you felt about it at the time. Quite possibly it was championed and celebrated that you were able to carry on, even though you were in pain and hurting. Why is it that we are so comfortable at times with being abusive to ourselves, yet to be loving and take care is not so easily accepted.
I was wondering that too Samantha when I looked back at what celebration and having a good time used to be. Crazy that wrecking ourselves like that can be considered a good time and a celebration. Celebration of what I wonder.
Happy birthday or happy abuse-day? It’s pretty awful what we do to ourselves in the name of fun, a good time, a celebration. There is nothing to celebrate in this kind of behavior – and everything to feel joyful about when we eventually see the error of our erroneous, self-annihilating ways. Congratulations Anonymous, a true coming of age!
Wow what a difference in celebrating your 34th to your 30th! I felt a bit sick when I was reading the ‘celebration’ of your 30th, mainly because I can remember times I used to live that way … it was not good! What I really love about this as well is how the gentle love you have for yourself can be felt in deciding what you would like to do for your 34th letting people know where you will be if they would like to join and taking yourself to the restaurant for you with zero expectations. This is lovely.
My feeling is we get wasted for a purpose – it makes us feel better at least for a time. If getting wasted doesn’t make us feel better, why do it? What hurts us is that we do not fully feel the long term pain at the start of getting wasted, only the short term benefits which may be euphoria or a pleasant numbness.
I remember doing it for the pleasant numbness but mainly because that is what everyone around me did. I had no other role models, so at the time, it was my normal.
It is amazing just how great a time we can have celebrating, being with others and not drinking or smoking and going to bed at a reasonable time supporting ourselves to feel great the following day.
The going to bed at the end is the best part – I still really love and appreciate myself for making that choice to look after myself. When I consider what my normal was, it is a massive evolution, so every time it brings a little smile inside.
I totally agree and know that inner smile feeling well, where I am just loving myself up and appreciating that I make different choices these days and I get the result of them!
This sounds like my birthdays and New Years Eve too. On the first day of the year this year, I went down to the beach to watch the sunrise and so enjoyed being there to greet the day. On my walk home, I passed a party and some intoxicated man called out to me and I appreciated the choices I now make. I don’t have an issue with those who want to do that, but I just love that I have made a different choice because having known both ways I know which one feels better for me.
What a massive transformation to take knowing you are going against the grain in what is often a peer lead behaviour. There is so much depth and quality we can appreciate about ourselves when we make the small yet powerful steps to recognise that when we bring more self care into our lives and accept that this has made changes to our life there is no doubt that we are on the road to live the true vitality we have been looking for.
My 30th birthday is now 7 years ago and so much has changed and the whole team at Universal Medicine continue to inspire me and support. I love their consistency as it has enabled me to build a trust I have not known in the past. My love for them is massive but that love has grown for everyone including myself and that is awesome to feel.
“But this year it was really just about celebrating me. I had no expectation and no need for it to be anything and because of that, I was shown something beautiful – me.” Gorgeous Anonymous. What a turn around in 4 years. Appreciating and celebrating even small things means we are accepting of ourselves. Small things lead to bigger ones – and so we reclaim ourselves.
I am getting ready to celebrate a birthday. I’m thinking of having a Saturday lunch with friends and family. It’s very different to the way I used to celebrate. No longer do I think that getting drunk is an obligatory part of the fun. Staying sober and enjoying every minute of my time with others is way more enjoyable.
I agree – people are quite different when they have had alcohol and if you enjoy being with them as they are, you may enjoy them less in their altered state.
Elizabeth your comment made me realise that I never had many mirrors or looked in them often in the past but now I have lots, in most if not all rooms. I enjoy looking at what I see, even when I am tired or bloated because then I become aware of it and can do something about it rather than carry on regardless.
The party used to be my normal too and today things are so different because to me, to not be sober is an insult to the people I am with. I want them to get to know and be with me, not with some other version of me that is under the influence or as is often described, someone who is beside themselves. Why do so many feel comfortable with someone who is not being themselves? I sure don’t like it. I like the real deal.
Why is it normal to celebrate ourselves by getting out of It? We as a society have strayed a long way from the true meaning of celebrating if we cannot cherish our bodies and have true connection with others by being present and aware.
Such a beautiful blog to read, thank you. That joy of celebrating you is felt in your words as a stark contrast to previous birthday ‘celebrations’
With Christmas approaching alcohol is high on the agenda. There is a particular weekend that hospital A&E departments have given a name because they are overrun with calls due to excessive drinking.
Just imagine how much money would be saved if there was not all this crazy amounts spent on alcohol and then all the amount that is spent on the medical services, ambulances etc etc not to mention all the domestic violence that goes hand in hand with it. There are so many other constructive ways that the money could be spent that could have a really positive impact on people’s lives.
What a massive difference in the two birthday celebrations you describe. I know which one I prefer now, but I do remember being very dependent on alcohol when it came to celebrations. It was my way to unwind. It’s lovely to now live in a way that doesn’t need unwinding from.
How beautiful you celebrated you, the way you felt. This is a great turn around in such a short period and very inspiring. It just goes to show we know what is true for us and we just need to follow that truth.
The statement celebrating me could almost be a platitude, and yet it can be and really should be the foundation of our lives… And if that is the case then what is the foundation that requires all of the “ addictions” and habits and fall-backs that are all around us in our society now
Describing the two scenarios like you did, the choice between a “wasted party” and your 34th year party is a no brainer, now I would choose the latter. In my past I too would have kidded my self that a”wasted party” was the goer. Exposes far how away from our truth we can get.
Thank you Anonymous for exposing the consciousness of ‘having a good time’ whilst harming ourselves through alcohol, drugs and getting wasted, is not truly a celebration and in fact is the opposite as it is a degradation of who we are. As you have beautifully shared celebrating who we are can be done so simply by honoring ourselves, even through the little things throughout our daily living.
The way we feel about our own reflection speaks volumes about the way we are choosing to live; and thus, how we feel when facing our choices in the mirror.
I had a reminder of this recently when looking in the mirror, I could see how tired and run down I looked and I just knew and accepted that the way I have been living lately was too much. I had pushed too hard once again and the results were in my face!
This happens all around the world and the most recent event in Australia, the Melbourne cup saw many visiting the hospital for emergency services. To me it is disrespectful to be so irresponsible and then put all the extra pressure and workload on the emergency services that are here to save lives, not deal with drunks.
Last night here in Britain was Halloween and like any “celebration” night I am sure this increased sales in alcohol and illegal drugs, unfortunately with many “celebrations” Accident and Emergency departments across the country become overrun and extremely busy with many of the patients completely out of it on drugs and alcohol. As a society where are we in this? Where is our responsibility?
I remember my 25th birthday – or rather I don’t – as I was plied with shots and didn’t make it to 9pm. While I’ve had memorable (sort of) birthdays since, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the birthdays of the past few years when I’m there, fully present with no mind altering substances, with a great group of friends. Those are truly memorable.
Yes, its so lovely to be there, present with everyone and remember it all. That is what memories are made of.
That it IS possible to celebrate, just with our selves , and what we truly are , and that being more then enough, must deep down be the dream of everyone.
What a contrast! It feels so amazing to hear about the way you now celebrate your birthday, to me this is true celebration and when I look back on what i thought was “celebration” i.e. drinking the most expensive things and passing out – it seems somewhat crazy!
Unfortunately, when we celebrate there can be a lot of compromising done as we tend to want to please others in order to be seen to “having fun. True celebration of self requires nothing but our own commitment and appreciation of our essence and how this inspires others to celebrate themselves too.
Being able to say no to all that which society champions take courage, strength and a lot of love. Deep appreciation and a lots of self honouring too. These are the ingredients that are really what life should be made up of, not all the stuff that just contributes so highly to drama, emotion and a whole lot of pain.
The contrast between these two birthday parties is quite astounding Anonymous. I can only imagine how different every day of your life in between has been. That’s the amazing thing about birthdays and other things that happen regularly in our lives, they offer us an opportunity to mark where we are at, take stock of what we have chosen and see where we are heading. No matter where we are or what we are doing, there is something that we can appreciate for even beneath a drug or alcohol induced haze there is an amazing being that knows truth, and once we connect to this we can make our way back to who we are.
I really enjoy looking back on the choices I have made each year, even the ones that aren’t so great because from looking back I am able to change direction, make other choices and change things rather than allow them to keep happening and wonder why it happens!
And I can imagine you actually have money to take care of yourself way more now than when you were wasting it on bottles of champagne!
These days I celebrate me when I go for a walk in nature enjoying my own company or I wake in the morning and spend some time with myself before starting my day. Far from the days when drinking a bottle or 2 of champagne was the only way I knew how to celebrate…. and far more enjoyable with loads less headaches!!
It is very sad that it is considered by many to be the norm for a birthday celebration to be where everyone feels wrecked.
I love the concept of celebrating ourselves rather than trashing ourselves, from experience looking back… there is just no comparison. The problem was that until Universal Medicine came along, I didn’t even realise I had the choice as the latter was so normal.
I hear you Samantha, without knowing there is another way, it is easy to just do what everyone else is doing without stopping to ask why or how does it really feel to me.
There is a lot of self love when you decide to stop getting wasted, in what ever way that may be. But it’s ok, because the love that you start to choose for yourself helps you through, it shows you the way with each tiny step and you really can break free from the mess and step in to a kind of clarity that is so precious and so sweet, you may find that you will never want to get wasted in any way what so ever, ever again.
There was a time in my life when it was super important to celebrate my birthday with alcohol, partying and generally being wasted. I used to think that was normal, which it still is for many people. I now choose to look after myself, to not experience hang overs, to honour myself by not drinking. To enjoy the experiences of connecting with people, not through the eyes and feeling them through alcohol. There is much deeper and enjoyable experiences as a result.
I can remember the birthdays I had when it was all about how much could we drink, we all ended up really messy with hangovers that lasted weeks. Thankfully I grow up and realised how harming this behaviour was to my body and all those around me.
It’s strange celebration has become about ‘writing ourselves off’ – which is essentially hurting ourselves – instead taking super good care of ourselves and of fostering an actual true appreciation of where we’ve come to and then asking ‘what’s next?’
What an amazing turnaround Julie, it is something that often makes us feel very uncomfortable to celebrate ourselves… so staying sober for it, allows for a true celebration to be felt. Well done, a very inspiring change you’ve made.
This is not Julie’s story but I am sure that it is many of our story’s and one that many can relate to.
It is interesting how you have shared Anonymous that your idea of a good time was to use substances that altered you feeling yourself. How often do we all celebrate our birthdays looking for that great high and ‘thinking’ that appreciation happens on one day in the year? I was glad to read that your choice this particular birthday was to see that the choices we make can prove to be successful in appreciating everything that we are each and every day.
Reading your comment Katie, gave me a moment to remember those times of drug induced attacks, where knives, guns, abuse and car accidents were quite normal. It also makes me appreciate how that is no loner a part of my life at all. At times it is hard to believe that it was a part of my past. I never used a gun or knife or attacked anyone physically but I could hurt with my tongue and the rest of the abuse was all around me and I played like I was not afraid but I can feel the fear in me just thinking about it.
I am the same Karina, glad it is a thing of the past, only 7 years for me but best 7 years of my life and the amount of money I have saved means I can put a deposit on a house!
I don’t miss it at all and never have cravings. Just not something I want or need anymore.
I am so grateful that all drug consumption stopped for me a long time ago. The body let me know 23 years ago that it didn’t want to smoke anymore ( I could not bend my arm to put a cigarette in my mouth anymore) , then it told me it couldn’t stand the smell of alcohol never mind the drinking of it 15 years ago – I feel very blessed that these things are no longer part of my life and that my body is so awesome to show me in a way that I could immediately accept this and drop it. And since then there has never been any single fleeting thought that I miss it etc …
How illusional are we to think we are ‘celebrating’ ourselves when we can actually be doing so much harm to bodies?
it really is extraordinary that we used to think that this way of celebrating was a celebration! Whereas in fact it was just a desecration of our amazing human body.
It is a setup or something that we have all or at least many of us have been caught in. Celebrate what you do but never celebrate who we are. It seems socially acceptable to put yourself on a pedestal because you can run this far, over work and complete X, Y, Z., jump this high, got this badge, been this far etc etc. We have learnt to champion what we do and be identified by it. We have come to believe that we are what we do and in choosing this way, we have missed the bigger picture and that is we are awesome just as we are even if we did none of those things. Appreciate who you are and that you make a difference in the world just by being you.
So very important to celebrate ourselves and deeply appreciate our being and not what we do.
I love how you chose to celebrate you. Appreciating yourself without the need for alcohol, drugs etc.. It is amazing to see how your changed your celebration from your 30th to 34th Birthday and is great that you are actually starting to enjoy and appreciate yourself.
What a beautiful turnaround from getting wasted to simply celebrating you. This is very inspiring and reminds us to deeply appreciate ourselves and to enjoy and celebrate how amazing we truly are.
Celebrating our milestones, no matter how small they are is beautiful and super important for me. I find that if I don’t stop to appreciate what i have chosen or changed or even just something that I have become aware of, then the lesson doesn’t seem to be really learnt and it may have to come around again and again for me to really get it. When I stop and appreciate and celebrate what I have gotten to, it feels more solid in my body and there seems to be a shift and more space for me to grow into.
The trouble is most of us don’t feel amazing and that’s the problem. In fact most of us feel so ordinary that in comparison we feel amazing when we’re wasted, hence our desire to do things that get us off our chops.
What a great turn around from what sounds like a very unhealthy way of celebrating to a true celebration of yourself and of others.
I have a friend who once had 3 day bender birthday party with dozens of friends, now happily settling for a cup of tea and possibly dinner with friends – and wouldn’t have it any other way. It may sound boring to some, but there must be something in it to joyfully relinquish the mad bash for an intimate true connection with friends.
Ah the sweet smell of another birthday and how they have changed over the years. I use to just have my birthday off work and always do something. Go for an early morning swim, have a coffee and catch up with friends, maybe go shopping and then dinner with friends with a couple of drinks. Of course when you turn a ‘big’ number there was a party and I remember my 30th. Well I don’t remember all of it as I was way to drunk to see it all but at least I have the photos to prove it. Birthdays I wanted to last forever or when they were over I wanted them to start again. I was always so looking forward to the day that when it was half over I was already anxious that it was nearly over. There was such a pressure on the day and on myself to make sure I didn’t waste it because I only had it once a year. It’s funny because this is how my life was, high and lows. So at times there was some high moments but you always had an eye out knowing what went up must come down. It’s not that now I don’t want to waste my birthday but I take that approach to every day. In other words instead of waiting for a day to deliver something for me once a year, I live the feeling I have everyday and then it doesn’t matter birthday, Monday, Sunday they are all just a day for me and everything to be deeply appreciated.
I have been to some parties like this in my youth, but not being able to drink much or do drugs, it was quite a bleak experience to arrive with everyone off their faces, wasted on the couch, the place stinking of alcohol and undercombusted joints/cigarettes. I never could stay long as there was absolutely no way to really talk with anyone, I always wondered if there was something I was missing out on… but really deep down I knew that I wasn’t. It always seemed like there was something missing, and that everyone was pretending they had it, but really didn’t. Now I have been to celebrations full of joy and full of love, but there is no one looking for joy or love because it is already alive and living within – and the celebration of living this together.
I was a party girl once upon a time, deep in the land of astray covered tables and empty bottle as far as the eye could see. The more ‘significant’ the number eg: 18, 21, 30th the increased pressure to get even more wasted!
I live a clean and loving lifestyle like yourself these days and going out for Thai on my Birthdays is often my pick although this year I had dinner at home with the family and it was stunning too.
I never, ever miss my party daze, deliberate spelling of daze just to be clear. At the time I thought it was so fun but the reality was extremely depressing and to think that children were around, alert and in the middle of it is so sad.
I am so proud and glad all the parties I now throw my children are safe to be apart of, plus they are finished around the children’s bedtime, which supports everyone.
What a change Anonymous, and something very much to be celebrated. To go from being involved in drugs, alcohol, not liking or loving yourself at all, to feelings of celebrating who you are, deeply, not just on the surface, sounds really amazing and very inspiring.,
I enjoyed coming back to reading this blog again. It is so bizarre that we have the notion that getting wasted is equivalent to having a good time, yet we make ourselves sick in the process.
It is funny how from an early age we are given sweets, cakes, chocolate to show reward and celebration, when in truth these substances do nothing but harm.
What a beautiful story Anonymous, the insanity of what we once considered to be celebrating an occasion hey. Celebrating and appreciating the true you wins hands down.
We need to get this blog out in mainstream media, to many people actually harm themselves through the illusion of celebration, you are saying there is another way, a way that needs to be truly acknowledged if we are to evolve as a society together.
An inspiring sharing Anonymous – the difference between the 2 birthdays was stark! I haven’t ever used drugs so haven’t experienced what it is to get wasted in this way, but certainly have experienced alcohol and drama as a major focus in my birthdays and other celebrations in the past – not necessarily to write myself off but just to take the edge off of life. At the time, I couldn’t really imagine a celebration without alcohol, excess food etc. however I too now have come to appreciate and enjoy the beautiful feeling that comes with celebrating me – without a drop of alcohol etc in sight.
Thank you Anonymous. I read this today because it is my birthday and I have been left feeling deflated and sad due to having expectations. This is a huge contrast to my birthday last year where I had no expectations and a truly wonderful day where many people expressed their love.
These experiences have allowed me to feel how harmful it is to have expectations and that is a wonderful birthday gift that will keep on giving every time I remember it. Fantasies are lovely while they swim around in your head but the let down soon exposes how harmful these pictures are.
It is great to put the effects of drinking alcohol, smoking joints and getting very wasted in clear daylight. Seeing it in the clear daylight makes it very clear to me that it is not an enjoyable thing and harming for the body. I once though too that that was a way to celebrate and I understand that, but taking an honest look at it .. it was never really a celebration.
A perfect reminder that we don’t need mind-altering substances to create an amazing celebration. When we are fully ourselves, that is the greatest celebration of all.
I remember that feeling – glancing in the mirror, maybe noticing how unwell I looked if I gave myself the chance, but certainly not wanting to look any deeper than that. In so much of life (not just drug related) we like to pretend that things are a certain way.. yet it is quite clear to everyone else exactly how things are truly going. We only pretend, to hide it from ourselves.
Beautiful Anonymous, celebrating birthdays is something that comes with many expectations, not just our own but from those around us too, especially those ‘significant’ ones… eighteen, twenty-one and then each of the decades. Understanding what it means to truly celebrate is such a relief in my experience too… what you described sounds absolutely perfect to me, and the way you ended up feeling is confirmation of that from my perspective.
I loved reading this Jenny. I can see that I put a lot of expectation on my birthday believing that this day is more special than others when the fact is I can choose to celebrate myself every day. I can see that I have counted on my birthday being a time where people openly express their love for me. This year a few things happened that upset that picture and I realised just how much I have relied on the way other people express towards me to feel good about myself. Today (my birthday) has not felt like a lovely day but your post reminds me that that need not colour the next moment, day or year if I choose to confirm myself.
I can really feel the power of that moment when you looked in the mirror and chose to appreciate yourself fully and the choices that you had made this time round. This blog is so important. I am recently discovering how huge it is to take appreciation to such simple and stripped-away levels. To really truly, deeply appreciate the choices that we have made to walk so strongly away from what was our norm. Which then makes the simple choice to just appreciate the reflection of ourselves in a mirror so very profound. The changes that you have made are ginormous. Same for me. And every single one of them needs to be acknowledged. Where my life is now compared to where it could have been…truly it is incredible – but, because I have now made so many of these changes, I then don’t often bother to look back and appreciate them. I am now doing this more often and the gold is that, through doing this I am literally propelled into taking the next step forward.
Why is it that our society celebrates and condones this first way of partying – it is the ‘IN’ thing when one smokes or drinks and gets hangovers. And don’t try going sober or you will be called a wuss – your ‘friends’ won’t let you get away with that! I remember when I was 12 years old and a pen pal sent me a letter saying she had the best party with her friends as she got so drunk and spewed all over the front porch. I recall sitting there and wondering how she could brag about such a situation and call that the ‘best’ party ever?! In our society there is an expectation of how to party in a way that trashes the body, but what if we all have the capacity to change this perception and bring in a different way of partying as the ‘norm’, just like Anonymous here has presented, a form of partying that does not leave the body and the surroundings looking like a bomb has just hit…but rather a form of partying that allows the body and the being to glow and flourish.
Thank you Anonymous. The contrast between the past and today is phenomenal! Well done for the change that you have put into place and above all your appreciation for self that has allowed you to deepen your self care.
Allowing simplicity into our lives is one of the richest presents we can have… on a birthday or any day. And it brings us back to our core qualities and what is really important: relationships (to include the one we have with ourselves and the world!)
Yesterday I married an amazing man and we celebrated with friends and family with no alcohol, no gluten, no diary and no sugar. For many of our guests this was unheard of yet they absolutely loved the food and I am sure many are grateful today that they do not have a hang over.
With my birthday celebration this weekend, it is gorgeous to feel and embrace that it will be a celebration of ME and all that I have let go of to reveal more of who I am. There is no need to create complication of any kind, just open our home for our big extended family to join us for a meal.
We grow up with a warped way of thinking a celebration needs to be. Thinking that it needs to include indulgence in every way. It is so beautiful to realize that celebration is about the presence that we bring to share with each other and in this simplicity is the greatest joy. In this, we can share yummy food, but food that truly supports the body, not makes us dull or drops us out of the vitality we otherwise live.
I completely agree with you Emma, we have grown up with some crazy ideals and images about how a celebration could and should be and when it doesn’t meet our image, there can be disapointment.
One of the images I often have in my head is that I am not going to eat the foods that dull me and I think I will make the right choices but more often that not, once I am in front of the food, I can no longer control myself and I end up making choices that hurt my body. It is one thing to have the knowledge and another to then live it. Living it takes practice and how we are living each day then sets us up to be able to make better choices or not. Either way, we learn if we are open to being honest with how we feel and what actually happens in our bodies when we eat certain foods. What may affect one person may not effect another, so really it is a very personal exploration.
One of the more subtle but delightful aspects of living what Universal Medicine presents is indeed the turnaround with regards to celebrations… Because one has absolutely no desire at all to numb, checkout, lose conscious presence, or have any drop in energetic integrity at all, the simplest reasons become a cause of great celebration.
I agree Chris. I was just at a Universal Medicine celebration at the retreat in Vietnam and it’s so lovely to feel the quality of presence that the people were in, it takes dancing and being together to a whole other level of connection and intimacy.
Thank you Anonymous for your honesty, and sharing your amazing commitment to loving all of you. This is Confirmation that all we need to do is to re-connect to who we truly are and make the choices that encompass what loving self really means.
These sorts of ritual celebrations, often celebrated within families, are great places to feel old hooks and tendrils from the past and how they still influence and affect us… Look at Christmas for example… Do we find that getting together with the family at Christmas time can be a little fraught??? Enough said …
Yes enough said…. but how many people still play the game, hang out with the family, pretend they want to be there when they don’t, play happy families etc. It can all be so fake.
“Celebrating me can be done in the most simple of ways. I can celebrate me every day, for the small things.”-
Yes, I agree- allowing myself to go deeper with my own connection – really honouring what my body is telling me re food to eat, how much, when to eat; sleep- when to go to bed, how long to sleep, ensuring I wind down before going to bed
Being aware of the quality I do things in – in tenderness and honour of my body. And confirming what I appreciate about myself- this is a work in progress but it is definitely allowing me to feel more confident and empowered as a woman.
I agree Loretta, appreciating myself and all the little things about me, is very empowering. I never appreciated myself in the past and therefore did not value myself. What I have experienced is that when I don’t appreciate or value myself I am able to make some very unloving choices because I don’t see my worth.
I love the fact that celebrating ourselves does not just have to be left for one day a year. My partner and I have started texting each other every day with one thing we appreciate about ourselves. This is a great confirmation of who we are. I have realised the more I appreciate myself, the more I am able to appreciate others.
That’s beauitiful sharing Samantha, when we start to appreciate our selves we can appreciate others. To appreciate one thing about self each day is a great idea.,
Yes I have a few friends who have been writing down or sharing with another 1 thing that they appreciate about themselves each day and some have shared that its really hard at first but gets easier with practise.
The world will definitely benefit from more appreciation that is for sure.
Today I was at The Women in Livingness Group held in London by Sara Williams, it was a fantastic day and appreciation was discussed. What I came to realise is that I cap the appreciation I have for myself by putting on limits when in truth there are no limits to appreciation and the more I love and appreciate myself the more I am able to love and appreciate others.
Dear anonymous when reading your blog I came to even more deeply understand why it is that we are getting wasted on birthday parties – I feel it touches with the actual confrontation of how we have lived with ourselves the last year and how we are continuing. If we have lived a year of forgetting and wanting to push away and numbing what we are feeling, then the day of our birthday only shows us , like everday, how we have lived with ourselve and the relationships we have with others. Then drinking or using substances to override those feelings and reflections are easy to do with getting wasted, right? What you show us here, that even if you are used to get wasted on dinner parties or birthday celebrations, we actually have a choice to feel or not feel and decide how we truly want to spend that day or time. . This leaves us free to feel whatever comes our way – even if this means we do not feel to celebrate it with family or friends for instances – birthdays do not come with rules if it is a real celebration!
Birthdays, Christmas, Easter or Thanks Giving etc can be celebrated in any way we want or not celebrated at all, it is up to us to choose and not feel obliged or just do things to please others.
Danna- what you have shared about the possibility of why people get wasted on their birthday has made me ponder also- yes, they are confronted with how they have lived for the past year and really don’t want to get honest or real about what’s going on for them, and take responsibility for their self abusive choices.
They feel tension in the body and the only way to deal with it is through numbing the body with alcohol or drugs.
But what is so awesome about this blog is that another way is possible and its never too late to change.
I understand how confronting it can be to take responsibility for our choices and it can be hard as some people around us don’t want us to change. BUT it is so worth it, it is so worth breaking any cycle that we are in, any patterns of behaviour or automatic pilot that we may be in that are contributing to us wanting to numb or contributing to the tension we feel and don’t want to feel.
I was at a birthday celebration the other day and what was fascinating to see were the effects of a really sugary dessert in people’s bodies. Having partied hard for a long time I would never have considered using the word ‘wasted’ to describe the effects of eating sugar but people’s behaviour changed dramatically after dessert, they became either hyper or kind or bombed out, it was fascinating to see.
I wish this blog could be given to all teenagers once they hit 13. I spent many years believing that birthday celebrations where about getting wasted and generally behaving in all sorts of wild ways which I thought was fun. I realise now of course that I never truly found it fun it was all about fitting in with friends and wanting to be someone.
I was just thinking of how doing drugs has been made out as bad or worse yet drinking alcohol is different as it is socially acceptable. What I see now though is what a trap this is because it is alcohol that so many are caught up in and is the main issue. It is as shame that our governments are spending millions on this each year and almost no one wants to get honest about it or deal with the real issue.. instead we are led to believe the issues lies in drugs. If you speak to nurses, or the police most if not all of their main things that they have to deal with one thing in common and that is alcohol.
What a lovey blog Anonymous. A simple, yet beautiful contrast of life before and after you re-discovered the love that you are. And one that I can fully relate to. Any celebration in my life up until a around my 30s was only successful if I ended up very drunk. And even though I gave up drinking (most of the time) a while ago, this past new years eve was the first one in which I was so content in having a dinner with some family and an early night. Before I still had had that feeling I was missing out by not partying the night away, but non of that was there this year round as I really start to understand the meaning of true joy.
The part that we miss the most is our connection to ourselves and to those who we are close too, and that connection cannot be found when we are under the influence of alcohol or drugs….. so really the only time we really miss out is when we are wasted.
Me too Gill, I thought all celebration had to be accentuated and heightened by alcohol. If you’er are honest this is quite ludicrous for it is a fact that alcohol is a depressant to the nervous system and this is clearly illustrated by how low you feel when the hangover effect sets in after the sugar rush of alcohol is gone. Drinking alcohol as a means for celebrating nowadays for me does not even enter my mind – it’s awesome.
What you wrote got me thinking Suse. Celebrating and alcohol always went hand in hand and I could not have imagined the two apart but these days, like you, the concept of drinking doesn’t even enter my thoughts. It just goes to show that we really can change the way we think and let go of old patterns of behaviour and ingrained thought patterns.
There is so many ideals and beliefs around celebration of birthdays and we can be made to feel that we are not “normal” if we don’t party or have lots of friends around. Sometimes having a quiet time with lovely connections with friends and family is a much more self loving way to celebrate a birthday and there is no hangover in the morning!
Isn’t it interesting how we all have so many different pictures of what a successful party should look like. I love small intimate parties where you get time to connect with each other rather than be like the social flutterby who flutters by but doesn’t have time to stop.
Getting wasted, needing to have alcohol at any event I ever went to, was just the norm. It was how I lived life. It was like the event, dinner, or catch up with friends was secondary to ‘having a drink, the wine, or cocktail. Then for a while it was drugs, the focus for the evening was to get high, on lots of different drugs, again, the meeting up was secondary to what I was doing to not truly connect with myself or others. This has now changed 100% in my life, which is amazing. I no longer need any of those substances, finding great pleasure in connecting with people, family, friends, colleagues, celebrating each moment, event or being with me. Definitely a celebration.
Yes and last night, being a New Years Eve night, I could celebrate with friends, enjoy their company, and today start the new year without a hangover. Getting wasted is so over rated. I am celebrating 6 years of not smoking or drinking!
It is so expected that at parties and celebrations we drink to get drunk and wasted that when you go to party and don’t drink most people can’t believe think it must be because you are driving when I say its because I don’t drink most people are surprised. I find it really sad that getting wasted and needing a glass of alcohol to have a “good” time in societies norm, are we not worth so much than this?
I experienced organising and participating in a celebration today and really felt how so many expectations are set up around these events, and how so often they easily lead to compromise of ourselves, or other people. The food people eat at celebrations is one thing, as it is often out of keeping with what they would normally eat, or feel to eat given it is placed in front of them. Alcohol has become customary at so many celebrations that people appear to be blind to the harm it is doing everyone that attends the celebration (at a minimum). We can have so much fun celebrating as human beings – we just need to connect back to the truth of what they are really about.
The expectations at some parties and gatherings are so strong that often people feel the tension and walk on egg shells so as to not offend any one or to try and make it be something that it is not… When there is no expectation that is when the best time can be had!
I love the celebration nights by Universal Medicine it is so refreshing to celebrate when no one is drinking, or on any kind of recreational drug. They is an undeniable sense of unity and real community which I have got to say I have never ever found in any pub!
Me too, I love them because there is no competition, no nasty words, no fights, and no drama… just a whole lot of celebration and a safe place to be with your kids. I love that we can show our children that there is an awesome way to party.
Just like a breath of fresh air anonymous to read your blog. There is so much emphasis that to celebrate you have to do lots of things, go crazy and ‘party’. I have found that celebration can be very simple and just in the little things, it is a deep confirmation that I am amazing as I am and feeling this deeply. This is something we can do indeed every day. This puts less pressure on birthday celebrations to make them ‘it’ and allows for more joy every day.
How did birthdays and other celebrations we have in life turn into times that we so easily compromise and abuse our bodies? This it would seem is the antithesis of the reason behind the event. If we are truly celebrating ourselves, do we allow ourselves to compromise our bodies and ingest substances that harm? Or do we take the celebration as an opportunity to deeply honour who we are? This is something we all need to look at more as a society, that is for sure!!
Dear Anonymous, thank you for sharing your experience of celebrating you. I could relate to a lot of what you have shared in that, there was a time in my life when I could not even imagine what life would be like without a drink in hand, whether we were celebrating a birthday or event. This was just every day life. Going out for lunch or dinner, actually even breakfast, as the bloody mary’s would present at this time. It was just so far outside of my consciousness to not drink. I actually remember thinking when I was over in Amsterdam, sitting at a bar looking at the scenery, drinking wine, ‘what would I do if I didn’t drink?’ My answer to myself was, ‘I do drink and will continue to do so, so why am I even asking myself this question?’ Some part of me did know that life was not always about drinking, but re-learning to celebrate who we are!!!
Thanks for sharing Raegan, I find it fascinating how strong our thoughts, ideals and beliefs can be about drinking… and how so attached to it we can be… but what you clearly show is that its not actually true and we can change and make different choices.
celebrating who we truly are is the lodestone of what Universal Medicine presents, and it is within this celebration that we find a rhythm of living that is, within itself, a celebration of life.
Thank you Anonymous for sharing a very inspiring story, what an amazing turnaround from wiping your self out on your birthdays, to coming out and enjoying the true celebration of the real and beautiful you. We are all worth celebrating the beauty of the love that we are.
Your 34th birthday sounds really cool, how much better is it without the toxins.
Getting wasted as a form of celebration is not a celebration at all. Being present with friends and family just celebrating each other in our lives is a true way to celebrate
Natalie, I never use to understand the concept of getting wasted to celebrate. That was never my way of celebrations, I would rarther be present and In Communication with my friends and family enjoy celebrating together.
Anonymous this is blog is so powerful in its honesty and simplicity. I really connected to this line “Celebrating me can be done in the most simple of ways. I can celebrate me every day, for the small things” – because it’s impact is so huge – truly life changing. When we allow ourselves to celebrate ourselves in the simplicity of how we are, we are then open to celebrating these simple or seemingly small things in others also. It is these little details that actually make all the difference. When you share with someone how you’ve noticed the way they are with someone, or the quality they do something in, even though they may at times try to brush it off, you can see that it really touches them, they feel they have truly been seen.
“Celebrating me can be done in the most simple of ways. I can celebrate me every day, for the small things.“ That is the way forward to celebrate ourselves and others for the beauty we bring.
So lovely to read how you celebrated your birthday this time, no longer needing drugs or alcohol which are now a thing of the past. A time to truly celebrate you and all that you are.
“But this year it was really just about celebrating me. I had no expectation and no need for it to be anything and because of that, I was shown something beautiful – me.”. Today is my birthday, i was very touched reading your blog.
Its such a relief to feel our innate loveliness, to now ourselves as the tender true and beautiful beings that we are , and to be able to celebrate this in the most simple of ways.
I was doing True Movement yesterday and I had moments where I could feel how sweet and tender I am and it was so beautiful but then I would change a bit and the old pattern of being quite hard and protected came back, the two were and felt worlds apart. What I realised in that moment is that my body has lived in that protection and hardness for so long that it thinks that that is who I am. I have been thinking that feeling that way was normal. My muscles have learnt to live that way, quite tense really but it is not actually me, but just a way to live that I have adjusted to. Now all I have to do, is remind myself of how sweet and tender I am and allow that instead of falling into the old pattern that feels awful.
Like this blog exposes, we can easily get lost in patterns of behaviours that don’t feel good and a so far from our own natural selves.
Celebrating the way you did was really simple and gorgeous and a far cry from the wasted chaos of the past we all know too well. In doing so you were gifted with seeing the beauty of yourself and there is nothing you could want or need more awesome than that.
The term ‘wasted’ was what we used when I was young to describe being stoned and drunk, it invariably involved a few other substances as well, it does feel like another life and looking at how I celebrate today, it is another world. A world that now contains love, truth, responsibility and an ongoing development of caring more deeply for myself and therefore others. Learning to appreciate who I am now and not perceiving myself as the man from from the previous life, is a work in progress, knowing that adoration is in fact required.
I know what you mean Mark, adoration is required with a good dose of appreciation for the choices we have made to change our lives in so many ways.
I love how you have discovered the most precious gift in the world – you and your beautiful essence within – and that you now choose to share this gift with the world. Definitely worth celebrating!
I have made similar changes in my own life but had not really grasped ‘celebrating me’ but this blog beautifully and clearly allowed me to feel how this is a missing link for me, thank you Anonymous.
Great, celebrate away Michael, because the more we celebrate and appreciate the more we say YES to more of these great ways of living!
That’s an amazing turnaround in less than 4 years, it shows a real big yes to you, very inspiring.
“I’ve also learnt that celebrating me doesn’t mean I have to have lots of friends or wait until I go out for a special birthday dinner.” I really appreciate this sentence, it’s so good to have it pointed out that all the so-called small things through each day can be acknowledged as being a celebration of me too, eg, feeling vitality when getting up in the morning, remembering to take a few minutes to do gentle connective tissue exercises a few times through the day, seeing how gracefully I pick up a pen, eating the delicious lunch prepared by me for me … all these and many more can be celebrated within myself as celebrating me, it’s great!
I have been enjoying celebrating myself and taking the time to massage cream into my body. It seems like a simple thing but the other day I realised how good it felt and yet it is something that I deny myself.
I used to celebrate myself with drugs and alcohol too. It is so freeing to feel everyday that it is possible to enjoy living life without these substances.
It’s wonderful to hear you celebrating yourself, whether that’s on a birthday or any other day of the year. When it comes to celebrating with others I’ve also enjoyed birthdays and special occasion, marriages, Christmas parties, house warmings, all without alcohol or excess – and they have been the most enjoyable and love filled celebrations ever.
Thank you for sharing your story Anonymous, it is true how we can go out of our ways and hurt ourselves when we try to impress and please others all in the name of a celebration, it is refreshing to read of your turn around and how now you can truly celebrate you and appreciate who you truly are, and the great reflection for others to receive.
I always had ideals and beliefs about birthdays, I always felt weird about my own and other family members, and it was not until after years of letting go of these old paradigms, with the awareness that has come from attending Universal Medicine presentations and really starting to heal old stuff, that I have come to feel a natural celebration of these and other events.
It is interesting that when we go to celebrate or ‘treat’ ourselves, it very often involves hurting our body through the food, drink and activities we choose. “I only drink on my birthday’ or ‘I’ll have a second serve because it’s christmas’ are very common. Could it be that we don’t want to feel how much we have drifted from our connection with ourselves and so we numb ourselves through drugs, food and activity? This blog is a gorgeous offering of how simple it can be to connect with ourselves truly – through appreciation, making choices which honor yourself, and inviting others to share in your celebration of yourself.
Your blog reminds me on, how important it is to appreciate ourselves every day, not only on our birthday. That is still a topic I have to work on. Sometimes I’m again lost in the DOING, rather than just enjoying just to be me and to enjoy the company with everybody around me.
Great point Alexander, appreciation is definitely not something we should reserve only for birthdays or special occasions. I am learning to bring appreciation into as many moments of the day that I can, for if we are not in appreciation – of ourselves, others, and what is around us – then where are we?
The old way of celebrating is getting ‘wasted’, is not a celebration at all, it’s a numbing. To really honour yourself which you described anonymous is the way to celebrate you. I can so relate to this blog, thank you
This is a really lovely blog to celebrate, rather than getting totally wasted to celebrate your birthday, you celebrated ‘you’, without being drunk, or high on drugs. That’s something to truly celebrate, making different choices, knowing who you are and that you are worth celebrating not once a year but everyday.
What a contrast between the two birthdays! I know which one I would love to attend. To honour someone with true connection is wonderful for all, especially the children.
Great blog, Anonymous. The common meaning of celebration has become so warped in our world today, to the point one has to ask themselves – “WHAT is it we are celebrating??” We’ve taken the word and used it as an excuse to make trashing ourselves seem OK. And it most certainly is not. I love that you have come back to what it truly means to celebrate – in honour of appreciating you any where anytime, a celebration where all are invited – I’m in!
Great idea Elizabeth, it would be great to make this happen, and to get this out to highschools or even year 6 kids!
That is exactly what I felt Elizabeth. Many people could benefit from this blog.
This is such a beautiful and tender turn a round in your life, what I felt was we are not shown how to truly celebrate and accept our beauty, love, tenderness, stillness, truth and joy within ourselves from a very young age which then allows loads of issues, disregard and doubt to come in through the gaps … so it leads to the first parties as you have described. Also it shows that what is accepted as ‘normal’ in society can in fact be really unhealthy and harmful to us (and others). Thank goodness for Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine because they are the only people and organisation I know that have truly helped thousands of people see what’s really going on and make loving changes to support themselves in turning their life around. They have helped me loads too.
Elizabeth I agree that is a fantastic idea, what a real experience that children can relate to. For me I had no role models that showed me that to be you and not use alternative substances to make you feel better and more fun actually supported a lot more strength and power in who you are.
This sounds like a very similar 30th I had, making sure that I was being fun and up for a good time and getting wasted. Like you I was very inspired by Universal Medicine and the Ageless Wisdom teachings to introduce self-love. Once I brought this into my day-to-day living I naturally started to respect and love myself. Now having a birthday it is all about celebrating how beautiful I am and as you say this acceptance is becoming a daily one that is seriously amazing.
4 years later, a huge turn around and that look in the mirror, a totally different person. So much joy being shared in this blog and feeling it big time.
I love what you share about celebration. Before, there was no true celebration, just an attempt to check out of normal life and live up to a picture of how ‘it should be’. No one felt lovely or truly enjoyed the day. Now, with no need to escape life and with no ideals and beliefs, every moment can be a celebration – this is gold!
The check out factor is a great point you have shared here Carmin Hall. Take your choice of checking out that extends to big lavish birthday gifts, huge spending sprees and overeating just because you can pull out the “its my birthday today.” Yes our birthday is a day to celebrate us but what if each day could feel like this yet we take one day to make it about the gold that lies before your eyes each and everyday.
Yes Toni! Too often we reserve celebration for anniversaries of one type or another, or other occasions that are considered out of the ordinary enough to justify celebrating, and then celebration often means indulging in either food or drink which makes our body feel either dulled out or completely numb.
Instead of that, what a beautiful way to be to feel that we are worth celebrating and appreciating at any time simply because we are beautiful and such beauty deserves celebration!
Why do many (as a general rule) often associate alcohol with partying? Why is alcohol at most social gatherings? why can’t we enjoy ourselves without alcohol? Is it because if we didn’t drink alcohol in social gatherings we might feel the tension of not having connected simply to a person for no purpose other than because they are a person. Most other connections that we have (like at work, shops etc) there is an agenda (we have things to do) but at social gatherings we are getting together not really for any reason other than to be near the person. So why can’t we just enjoy being with people?
We can just enjoy being with people Harry, as I have experienced over and over in the past 6 years but it is not something that we have been brought up to know and to be comfortable with.
I feel that people are often quite anxious at the idea of just being with others, and they are perhaps not even aware of the anxiety in the first place and to avoid that tension, they choose alcohol…and because unfortunately our society has made that the “normal”.
Picturing the state of your house at your 30th birthday I don’t feel great. But if I picture your recent birthday I feel warm and honoured. I like how you have described that no one was trying to be the centre of attention either, the whole occasion would be truly lovely. Those ‘wasted’ party’s are so damaging to our being, it really knocks us out of life and the substances cloud our senses.
Some people may use drugs because of the pain they feel about life. Drugs, however, do not allow you to appreciate (neither you nor the others). So, it brings you to a sort of numbed limbo where you look at your version of life through a window of sadness. To be there is only a matter of choice. To leave it is another option.
This should really be studied. What you have shared here is groundbreaking. I know so many people who can’t imagine life without those tools and what you are sharing would be such great support.
Thank you, lets share it and start a true celebration movement!
“Celebrating me can be done in the most simple of ways. I can celebrate me every day, for the small things.” Exactly, we can celebrate us for just being, perfectly imperfect as we are. I love that.
Wow your description of the 30th birthday party brought back vivid memories. I could almost feel the haziness that descended into my body when I would get stoned. For me it was a coping mechanism, how to be around people and not be with people at all. These days my life is so different. The crazy thing was when I was stoned all I would want to do is have a shower. I would always feel something enter in my back like a rush of energy, it was coming from the outside in and I would want to stretch to try and get it out – I now know that because of the drugs, I would disconnect and let another energy in – I could always feel it but didn’t have the words to describe it. I made a choice to stop taking drugs and stop running and just feel what was really going on in my body, and I found that people really weren’t overwhelming. In fact I now I can say I really love people but that started with me loving me first.
I can remember feeling from my peers at school the pressure to drink, smoke drugs, party and ‘trash’ myself on any occasion possible. It is amazing how ingrained such a way of ‘celebration’ is in our societies today.
Anonymous your story shows what a complete reversal and rebirth we can achieve when looking deeply in our own eyes. We all have the wisdom to undertake the journey, all we need to add is our free choice to get started and then there is no turning back.
Our ability to look into either our own eyes or the eyes of another is deeply revealing. I was shocked to realise at the age of about 45 that I didn’t look into the eyes of others and what was most shocking is that that included my partner. How is it possible to truly connect with another without eye contact? Answer: it’s not.
Wow! It’s amazing how what we think of as having a good time can look so ugly and not be all that fun at all. How gorgeous to hear the polar opposites you experienced and how they left you feeling. I know which birthday I would want…
I so get what you mean Kristy, what I just realised is that for me in the past it was always easier to get drunk than it was to appreciate myself. I didn’t even consider celebrating for me, because I did not appreciate myself or have any self worth.
Oh Yeah, and my life just seems to be getting more and more amazing each day so I am celebrating more each and every day!…. and wonder…. why did I not do this in the past!??
It is amazing to consider just how normal it is for when we gather in groups to introduce intoxifying substances. I wonder how much of this is simply about not wanting to feel the tension between us, perhaps from all the comparison, jealousy, resentment, anger, sadness. Maybe we are not taught how to be in groups with each other without imposing all our issues in to each other, but deep down inside we do love to gather, so continue to do it, but just go to the bottle or the drug to make it less challenging, more easier.
I know what you mean about that tension Shami, and the jealousy. I have tried to avoid it by not speaking up, not looking too good, and I have learnt to play it nice, and to override what I feel so that I fit in and am socially accepted.
The past celebration was more a gathering of equal checked out people who cannot else than use the substances to numb themselves from having to feel the madness they are in. How different our gatherings are if we are able to celebrate one and each other for the love each and everybody is.
Birthdays and Valentines day, why should we celebrate just one day when we can ‘celebrate ourselves’ everyday?
I love how simple and clear this message is for us all. We live life and often ‘celebrate’ things for any reason other than to truly celebrate ourselves. Celebrate means different things to different people but to celebrate for me is to pause slightly and really take in and feel what I am doing or seeing, this can be ‘good or bad’. This can be anywhere, anytime and with anything, there is no need for a special date or special location. If this seems boring, well then it is possible you don’t celebrate enough. Celebration is a feeling and not a function.
I love that last line Ray! Celebration is a feeling, not a function!
And I would add – Celebration is something that we feel for ourselves, not something that we wait for someone to do for us.
I have had a few birthdays like the first one you describe. Not many, but enough to feel the stark contrast that I feel these days. My birthday this year, I will not be stoned, drunk or numbed out, but awake, feeling great and feeling life in all its glory and foibles.
One of the delightful sort of subtler aspects of life and living that Serge Benhayon has brought clarity, has been, certainly for me, and obviously to Anon., is birthdays. Birthdays were amazingly loaded for me, and it was something that no amount of reiki or deep breathing could shake. It really wasn’t until I could connect with me, truth and the depth of me, that I was able to start to reconfigure this most annoying and insidious pattern, full of expectations, hopes and disappointments which I’m sure plagues many people.
I agree Chris. Birthdays were always loaded with expectations, hopes and disappointments with another year gone past and being left with a feeling of flatness that all was not as it could be. Birthdays never lived up to my expectations. Serge Benhayon has inspired me to make many different choices in the way I live and choices I make and celebrating me for the beautiful loving woman I am has brought true love and enjoyment into celebrating me on my birthday.
“Celebrating me can be done in the most simple of ways. I can celebrate me every day, for the small things.” I absolutely love this Anonymous, why wait for a birthday, you have inspired me, I am going to light a candle for myself at dinner tonight, and make my evening meal a celebration for me. I need to do more things like this, to celebrate and appreciate just how far I have come from the person I used to be, to what I now know is a truly beautiful loving woman.
I agree Beverley, why not put on your favourite clothes, even if you are not going out, why not light the candle as you say and make a delicious meal just for you no matter what day it is.
I enjoyed dressing up the other day and I did see a friend and she admired how I looked and asked me if I was going somewhere to which I replied, I am staying home to work with me and I felt like dressing up for me for a change. It was fun.
So interesting that the meaning of the word ‘normal’ has come to endorse and facilitate a set of ‘socially acceptable’ ways of checking out, dumbing down and disregarding our bodies in the pursuit of fun. The joy you describe in a stimulant/depressant-free celebration four years later just underlines the power of personal choice over substances that are anything but normal for the body.
I did disregard myself so much, that my body did show it to me in form of thyroid under function and being tired the whole day. Thanks to Universal Medicine I could see that there is another way out of this set up to fail. Now I am celebrating myself with little moments of stillness, feeling the beauty I am and my sweetness in just being myself. There is no need anymore to prove what I can do and how to look like. I feel amazing for being me!
I agree Elizabeth, we don’t want to see the reflection because then we may have to do something about it…. yet if we don’t look we can pretend we don’t know… but who are we kidding right.
I love your blog, been there, done that and I love where you are now. The photograph is a bit of a giveaway though.
Hi Nick, the photo with this blog, is not of the author.
Celebration brings to mind a big event, a fanfare, a fuss made over someone but why not ‘celebrate me every day, for the small things’ as you have discovered? This gets rid of expectation, disappointment and the momentum of moving from one high to the next with the lows in between. Life becomes simpler as we no longer need the drama of these peaks. Every moment is then an opportunity to say Yes to love and life.
Dear Anonymous- I can truly feel the gorgeousness of you in how you are today. Celebrate this everyday!
I remember, sort of, a birthday celebration where there were three of us and are birthdays were the 15,16 and 17th and the 15th was a Friday. I had never thought it was possible to celebrate anything without the aid of something to release tension of life first, to dance without having to loosen up with a few drinks. Now life is a celebration… just being me all the time.
Today is my mothers birthday – but we celebrate our relationship everyday!! We have become so much closer over the last 4 years and enjoy each others company – without the need for alcohol!
Today I celebrated my birthday with some very dear friends and family. It was a beautiful evening, celebrating each other and our connections. Every year I get to feel the changes I have made and take stock of where I am at and where I have been. And boy was this one a completely new marker.
What a shift anonymous. What great changes you have made in your life. When we surrender the pictures we have about what a celebration looked like and letting go of ideals and beliefs, having no attachment to the outcome makes all the difference. Reclaiming ourselves celebrating and appreciating who we truly are feels amazing.
What a lovely way to celebrate your 34th birthday and such a contrast from your 30th. It is amazing how much you have managed to turn your life around from drugs and alcohol in 4 years.
You sure take celebration to a whole new level anonymous!
I use to find it uncomfortable to go out with myself, for lunch or a drink. Now it has become a lunch date with me, no matter what I’m having, a mini celebration of having my own company, connecting to the beautiful inner impulses that come from just observing the world around me and the many dimensions that are layered together.
Hi Matthew, your comment is inspiring. I think I will have to take myself on a few dates! Usually I like to do things with others, but I think it is time to spend a bit more time just with me.
I love this Matthew, if it’s a date with me and I feel connected to myself, there is certainly no need for any alcohol or even overeating as I feel comfortable just with myself
I went on a date with myself today at the park, I had a little play on the swing, I bumped into some old friends, one of whom I have been trying to make contact with for about a week, and even made some new friends. It’s amazing what can unfold if you just allow and stay open.
How you describe your 30th and your 34th birthday celebrations are like day and night, as in the first felt very dark and seedy and the second your 34th felt full of light and the joy of you celebrating you. Thank you for sharing.
It feels that way to me too Jacqueline. Day and light, or even a past life as how I live today is so different, thanks to all the inspiration and all the choices I have made for myself since attending Universal Medicine presentations.
Birthdays have come to mean a very special time when I appreciate the person I am, or the person who’s day it is. But recently I noticed how it was just another day, and why should any day be any less special or fantastic. This is of course so much easier when it is not fuelled with drugs and social expectations. But still, to live simply knowing each and everyday that you are fantastic just for being you and that you do not need a birthday to prove it.
What a transformation you have had. your commitment to you is inspiring.
It was my son’s 4th birthday today and it was wonderful to see just how naturally and unashamedly he was able to celebrate himself. It just goes to show that we know how to do this intuitively but something must happen along the way to adulthood where birthdays become something much more complicated, even political, in terms of pleasing family and friends or even just pleasing society by conforming to the rules of what birthdays or other celebrations should look like.
Yes, Andrew, children and birthdays are simple and joyful and children have no expectations…
So what happens along the way to adulthood when birthdays become complicated and much more serious, as people comform to the ‘rules’ of what birthdays or other celebrations should look like as you mentioned instead of celebrating your birthday how one feels to, which keeps it super simple.
I just had my birthday yesterday, and it was great to not go into pleasing anyone. I had a shared dinner party and invited friends that I felt to, not friends that I felt I should. This was massive for me, because in the past I would do things to be nice, even if it didn’t quite feel right for me. No more NICE or SHOULD’S… It feels so much better just choosing what feels right for me.
Revolutionary to live every day with the same commitment, so that there are no huge highs and lows but a consistency that supports life and brings deep joy. It is possible, I am learning but I can feel the difference in my life beyond measure. I choose this way, not the exhausted person I used to be. I still love a birthday and I still love a party but the drama and expectation around them are no longer there, it frees them up to be true fun.
What a relief to not have to party like that anymore to ‘think’ you had a good celebration! I remember something similar and it is so so much nicer staying with and celebrating me, regardless of what I choose to do on the day – I cannot imagine why I would drink and feel ill, or smoke joints and lose myself and then ‘think’ this was having a good time. I’m glad you can celebrate yourself just being yourself now, you sound great.
I couldn’t even do it anymore, even if I tried. It’s just what our friends were doing at the time and we joined in. It’s funny the game we played though, how we equated a good time to the amount of drugs and alcohol we were able to consumed.
Gorgeous blog Anonymous… and what a gorgeous way to celebrate on your 34th, and the remaining birthdays to come! It felt light and freeing to read of such a simple, no-drama celebration.
I love the simplicity of what you have shared here, no marching bands or surprise birthday party, just you and some fiends connecting, enjoying being with each other without the need of alcohol or drugs. Perfect.
I agree Julie it sounds great, I love the fact that I can now have a good time with out any alcohol and no need to prove myself. Sharing my true self with friends is all that is required, no trying to fit in no selling out just enjoying myself and others for who they truly are. Awesome way to celebrate any day.
My birthday is coming up next month and I am looking forward to it:) I use birthdays as a time to ponder on how much I’ve grown in myself and how much more aware I am of how things really are since my last birthday. It’s a great time for reflection and appreciation of me and that’s worthy of celebrating.
Celebrating and appreciating ourselves everyday is what the Ageless Wisdom is about. Reflecting on the waisted years is not worth thinking about when there is so much life to live everyday in our full expression. Thank you Anonymous.
For me reflecting back is an opportunity to celebrate how far I have come, and when I feel that, I just get this sense of well, if I have done that and changed my life and feel this good….oooooh well then what next. Bring it on!
I agree Patricia, it is not with it and it is easy to fall in the trap of feeling ashamed when we look back at the ways we have hurt ourselves and others, but having the understanding that that was not us in the first place gives us an opportunity to move forward and appreciate the choices that we have made and how far we have come in life, and that is worth celebrating!
Yes, no point staying in the past and beating ourselves up about our mistakes.
In four years to have your life change that hugely as well as consistently is a miracle and an amazing story to share. What a testimony to Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine!!
My sentiments exactly Ariel, this blog is a miracle and inspiring and highlights that anyone can turn their life around if they so chose, and when they chose, this story describes how much can be transformed in a short 4 years.
Thank you for this blog. It really shows how celebration as true feeling comes from within us and can be there today and forever. Needing to be celebrated by others, only lasts for a little while and we have no control over whether or not it will come our way.
It is so lovely to read about your transformation and the choices you made to honour you
Thank you for sharing
Keep on enjoying the transformed you each and every day
To know and to feel we have this freedom of choice of how we want to live, to celebrate etc is something I did not had before getting to know Universal Medicine, just like you I did what was expected to please others and to be accepted.
Thank you Anonymous for sharing the way you celebrated birthday’s and the difference in your ‘now’ birthday celebrations. My birthday falls around Christmas, so was usually forgotten in the busyness of Christmas and then school holidays when we went beachside camping. This I used to resent, now I accept that this is the way it is. Now, I frequently take myself off to a favourite cafe and celebrate me with a lovely meal and delicious savouring of myself. Awesome.
Wow what a wonderful change from turning 30 years old to 34 years young. (I bet you not only looked younger but felt younger looking into that mirror on your 34 birthday)
What a transformation. I recall many of my birthdays only ever being an excuse to relax with a few drinks and cake with friends, not so wasted but complete comfort and indulging. No way was it ever a celebration of me in a respectful or healthy way, only in the last few years have I embraced this also inspired by Serge Benhayon.
Isn’t it bizarre and dare I say, downright sickening that we have bought into this notion that in order to celebrate something, we need to hurt the body we live in – by smoking, drinking, hanging out with a hangover, etc? The contrast between the two occasions is huge. It actually feels like during the first celebration, you were not even truly present, but for the second one, you very much were.
Definitely Gabrielle, in the first party, the lights were on but no body was home!
How wonderful to read your experience of stopping to feel that the way you celebrated your birthdays did not make you feel like you were celebrating you. It’s amazing how we loose ourselves in the way we “think” a birthday “should” be celebrated with family and friends but lead ourselves towards some loveless results. A great choice made that respects you and a wonderful reason to keep celebrating you without the need for a birth date.
Such a beautiful birthday present to bring yourself back to love.
I have to admit I had some pretty wild birthday parties and had a lot of fun, but I am just so glad and thankful it’s not like that anymore. The way you celebrated you 34th is far more up my alley these days.
Absolutely Tony – appreciation of ourselves is true medicine and deeply healing.
Why wait 364 days to have a day the celebrates you. Just think of how many missed days and opportunities to have enjoyed ourselves.
Indeed Matthew. Just yesterday I felt that everyday can be a celebration of myself. Not big thinks needed, just caring for and supporting myself and having true appreciation of what I bring and how I am :o)
Definitely Michael, it doesn’t need to be big things just moments of appreciation that confirms our loveliness.
Mmm, celebrating me – what a joyful way to be!
Anonymous, I love this blog and can relate to so much of it, switching between substances hoping that one or the other would make me feel better and I believed this was the way to celebrate. I love reading your experience of your 34th birthday where you told your friends where you would be with no expectations for anyone to else to come. I could feel the enjoyment you had connecting with your friends with good food and gorgeous candles around you and no need to stay up late.
So joyful this blog, inspiring us to celebrate wholeheartedly ourselves and every aspect of our lives. Brilliant, thank you Anonymous.
It’s such a fascinating subject, thanks for raising it. You know I wonder if when we don’t really feel ourselves fully then we fill the gap with anything that we can find. Often that is alcohol and drugs. But as you have found when we are full of ourselves the last thing we want to do is anything that takes us away from our fullness.
Beautiful transformation. I can relate to feeling that you had to fulfill an ideal about partying hard and getting wasted in order to successfully celebrate your birthday. However in truth I never did feel fulfilled in any way, just hungover and sick. And now I feel I don’t ‘need’ to do anything to celebrate. I now feel that my connection to my essence is the gift I give myself and that every day I have the opportunity to commit to and celebrate this gift that I am.
Well said Carola and that is true celebration.
Gorgeous Carola! That is definitely where the true party’s at!
When we were young, my brother and I had a family tradition where we would sit under a suspended canopy filled with balloons, and everyone would count to three and then pull on a string to release the balloons which would fall all around us. I remember enjoying watching this huge shower of colour envelop the whole room and all the party guests. I remember how much celebrating me was about sharing with my friends and family, how there was no only special me, we were all the same and the celebration was for everyone.
You paint a great picture of what getting wasted would look like. I can recall how my own home looked and sounded no different to what you have described. Its great that many of us can celebrate ourselves for the loving people we are these days and connecting with friends and family instead of coming together to get wasted.
Love what you write here Kristy, as it is so true, we forget to simply stop and appreciate ourselves in life, so birthdays can become either something to avoid or a means of getting attention. Feels so lovely to see the contrast here and to know we can celebrate ourselves in every moment. There is no need to wait for our birthdays to celebrate who we are.
This is an awesome blog. It is very true that you can celebrate youself everyday not just on your birthday. You have inspired me to write about my 34th birthday celebration too. I have never been able to drink and I wasn’t into drugs so on my 34th party I did something I have never done before. I sent out a request for no alcohol consumption at my party. I then started to worry how my friends who loved to drink feel. I realise I started to doubt what I had requested and feeling that maybe my friends may not want to attend. When the day arrived it felt amazing that there was no alcohol and that none of my friends had any issues with not drinking. This was the beginning of me starting to speak out for things that supported me and others.
I just re read this blog and the comments. Yours stood out Chan. It is great that you began speaking out for things that are important to you. How often in life do we not do this, in case it rocks the boat, offends or upsets your friends. It is as if we make ourselves not matter.
Wow chan Ly, what a birthday gift to give yourself – permission to speak out for things that support you – and in doing so everyone else is supported also.
Ah yes Simone and what I thought of was all those false celebrations, where I put the smile on and pretended I was having fun when actually I felt sad and didn’t want to be there. What a lie I was living.
I remember these times, I was setting the tables, the house, the food, the kids, the false smile and false fun, when my body was tired and exhausted from all the work and effort I made to leave a good impress and to get the well done tap on the shoulders.
Yes, waiting for the “Good job”, or “well done” comment and approval… for the recognition.
It reminds me of when I was young, there wouldn’t be much joy in the family and celebrating a birthday would be a strange pumping up of the situation. Suddenly there had to be fun! When that is not felt in the heart, one can have a thousand cakes and presents, but the emptiness stays and is felt by everyone. Celebration can be a marker of the
love- lessness we are in.
And yes, what a difference if celebration is a confirmation of what is already there!
Wow, what a stark difference in the quality of you honouring you in true celebration. What you described here Anon could easily have been the all day ‘after party’ or the all night birthday parties I once had. It makes my skin crawl just thinking about the excesses and indulgence of those times and I feel deeply grateful that that’s all in the distant past. There is nothing more beautiful than celebrating a birthday being fully there, clear and connected to yourself and all those we choose to celebrate with.
Yes Robert, it is beautiful to be fully present, clear connected to both myself and therefore with others. I recently celebrated yet another birthday and this time 20 people came over to my home and all brought a delicious plate of food to share. It was a great evening, no need to impress, no need for rah rah. No late night and no mess in the morning or hangover. Now the past experiences seem like they belong in another life time.
so true Rachel, the simplicity in this connection with self and others and the reflection is pure joy, nothing else can really top it, no cake, presents, drinks.
We have become so good at changing the meaning of words and lose the essence of what is being communicated in the process. Society frowns on children consuming alcohol or taking drugs, being subjected to loud noise that distress the organs, being kept up all night. This to me suggests that we all know all of these are harming to the human body in one form or another, so we wish to protect our young from all of these. Since when has this harm become synonymous to “celebrating someone”? I used to accept this as normal, but now that I am choosing to take a moment and review situations I can see many aspects of life we take for granted simply do not make sense. This way of celebrating is one such situation.
Thank you anonymous for making a differentiation between “celebrating your birthday” to “simply getting wasted”.
Very true Tony, if we don’t care for ourselves everyday, each birthday is going to reflect that, looking in the mirror brings home the dismal truth, not that we are getting older, but that we have failed to care for the most precious gift of all, US. And then its easy to choose more of the same things that have contributed to feeling so uncared for. I know that after 9 years of bringing Universal Medicine into my daily life, I love my birthdays. They are now a celebration of another year lived well and yes I am getting older and my body is changing, but my vitality, joy and health keep increasing and that is a true gift in all respects.
Truly a celebration of you, anonymous, and the loving way in which you do so felt in every word you have written. Keep shining bright.
Gosh, how I don’t miss getting smashed, wrecked, loaded, wasted. Looking in the mirror when you are in this state can be pretty scary. To think this was something I did on a regular basis and in times gone by equated it with ‘enjoying’ myself, or even ‘celebrating’ something special. That now seems really quite bizarre. Universal Medicine was instrumental in freeing me from such delusion. Now I am able to truly celebrate with things that are actually good for my body, and boy, how much better do I feel for that. As well, I am re-learning how to actually have real fun again whilst simply being the true me.
I can really relate to your comment, David as I have been there, done that too. I love how you say ‘re-learning to actually have real fun whilst simply being the true me’. By no longer constantly trying to be something I am not, I am re-learning to just be myself and it definitely allows you explore life from a different and often quite liberating and amusing perspective.
I had to laugh reading your comment Janet, thinking the most “bizarre” as David wrote and amusing part is that in the past, I was living such a false version of myself and I really really didn’t know who I was because I was caught up in the show version that I put on for the world to see. It is amusing to see the lengths we go to, and how fare we are from who we truly are. I for example went to the tough, hardcore tomboy, rather than the sweet, caring woman that I am.
I agree David, I have found the idea of getting wasted to celebrate is very bizarre because I have never experienced getting wasted myself. I have been to many parties where I have witnessed people who chose to go there. I was often dumbfounded by why they would choose to celebrate in this way and that they would have to suffer the consequences the next day. Now I understand that it was an illusion of what has been classified as ‘having a great time’. We have created and accepted this kind of behaviour as ‘normal’ but in fact it is far from it. There is another more loving and true way to celebrate and that is to truly connected with each other as has been shared in this blog.
Yes, I with you here David, Janet & Chan. To celebrate was to numb all our senses and toast to a ‘wonderful life’, where is the wonderful when you feel like dying for two days after and your body cannot function normally. This way of celebrating is definitely not normal.
Having had my own birthday just recently, I realised how amazing it is to truly celebrate our birthdays as a confirmation of the gorgeousness that we already are. In the past, birthdays were all about having a special night out so that I could feel special, not feeling that ‘specialness’ in myself first — and therefore seeing it outside of me. Birthday parties would be the high, with alcohol, party drugs and the odd drama, as you describe here anonymous and then there would be the post-birthday blues a couple of days later. Back to feeling the loneliness within. But birthdays now are so different. They are deeply precious because they are a celebratory check-point of how gorgeous I already feel from within, and the way that I celebrate that day reflects the honouring of myself: alcohol and drugs are replaced with deep and meaningful connection with friends and family and drama is replaced with a stillness and preciousness as we all come together to celebrate the amazing lives we all live, having chosen to live in connection to who we truly are.
The way you have described changing your life around is worth celebrating Katerina…. in the beautiful way you have just described!
I love this “I decided to celebrate me ” I can feel how refreshing and loving this is, and what an awesome reflection for other people to read this. So often we can do things to try and please others instead of simply honouring what we feel. I also love the line ” No one needing to be the centre of attention” this is such a relief to feel and so freeing, I can feel the imposition people put on others when there is a need for attention there, whether it is being loud etc . or to the other extreme being miserable. This is not solely about events or parties, but in life in general. We can seek attention in many disguises.
Thats true Gyl, and it doesn’t matter if it is in being miserable or the loud one, it is still seeking something from others.
The importance of celebrating ourselves and appreciating ourselves and from this others cannot be overestimated and this is beautifully written here thank you .True celebration, love and Joy is reflected to us by Serge Benhayon and his family to deepen and accept this for ourselves. A beautiful way to simply be. Thank you
Dear Anonymous, this is the first time in a long time that I’ve cried reading what someone writes. I get what you’re saying and feel inspired to truly celebrating me.
That is great that you could allow yourself a moment to feel and thank you for sharing as I am sure many also feel but do not allow that or want to expose that.
I totally agree Fiona, the way you have made celebration something that feels true to you anonymous, is how it could be if we let go of those social traditions and expectations and beliefs and just celebrate what is naturally there when you take all of that away, and that’s a truly loving and tender being. Something truly worth celebrating.
Thank you for sharing the inspiration of how it is possible to turn your life around. Your blog confirms that it is never too late to develop a loving relationship with yourself and your body, and that is absolutely worth celebrating.
That is right Janet. It is never too late… and the way I see it is, if I can do it, so can anyone else.
Celebrating me in more and more moments every day is a change to my life I cannot find the words to truly describe it.
It makes everything so much wider and simpler.
Lovely expression – and so simple, and yes it makes everything so much wider and simpler, I so agree.
I know what you mean Michael, and I often think to myself… why on earth have I not been doing this all my life!
Yesterday driving through town I saw a parked car with a big message painted on the back: “Livin’ on Reds, Vitamin C and Cocaine”. Honest, but horrifying. And this is about EVERY day, not just birthdays! I felt that the person who wrote it totally knows that they are self-abusing, and feels compelled to loudly proclaim it. That somehow by publicly declaring it as if it’s normal, light and funny, it justifies living in a way that is felt to be very untrue to one’s inner knowing. Sad. Perhaps they will find this blog, Anonymous, and be freed by your truth.
This is something of a common reality for most. That is the ‘getting wasted’ type of perception of having fun. Something of an expose for society when we realise how empty it truly is…
I remember getting really angry at the suggestion that not drinking was a possibility, I told that person that I didn’t intend to become a ……. tea toatler. I just couldn’t see how life could be without a social drink.
Boy how wrong, disillusioned and lost I was. Even just thinking about those days hurts me and makes me very sad at the lost years and the lost me. Now I’m back if full and cherish me and appreciate the uncomplicated simple loving life I have chosen to live….. It’s Glorious.
It is great when we can stop and appreciate how far we have come…and not only see the lost years, but now see the years gained!
Merilee I really love your use of the word ‘glorious’ to describe the ‘simple loving life’ that you have chosen to live because having lived both a life of getting wasted and also a ‘simple loving life’ I know from my lived experience that even when I was under the belief that I was having a great time getting mashed that I still wouldn’t have been able to describe it as ‘glorious’, whereas now, I can, without hesitation describe life as glorious.
Yes. How cool that there is an opportunity for our young people to realise they do not have to tow a majority line -complying with celebrating equaling getting wasted. When we do not wake up the next day feeling awful, remorseful, ashamed and/or confused, the celebration of ourselves and lives can flow on.
I love the every moment being an opportunity to celebrate ourselves you have presented. A great prompt for me in those moments when I feel myself go tough on me and life – the next instant is my choice: to continue down the hard nosed path or open up to the tenderness and grace that I am. Thank you.
Simple, honest and very inspiring, thank you.
A beautiful transformation shared and felt so delicately….the difference of putting oneself first and foremost actually truly pleases other people as it then presents them with a reflection of an alternative way to celebrate our lives. How getting wasted celebrates our birth is difficult to comprehend, perhaps these are ‘deathdays’, putting ourselves closer to that inevitability in a destructive, given up way. Yet if each and every day was truly honoured as a day to live in full as ourselves, then it’s like having a birthday everyday and we eventually pass over knowing the true wonder of ourselves and our lives. The Way of The Livingness through the inspiration of Serge Benhayon has brought this simple way of loving oneself and in turn all others to so many and for me, that is certainly worth celebrating, too.
What a great way to celebrate your birthday. Why wait for a certain day in the year to celebrate ourselves: birthdays, mother’s day, father’s day, seniors week, anniversaries etc when we can truly celebrate ourselves every day.
“Celebrating me can be done in the most simple of ways. I can celebrate me every day, for the small things”. This is so very true in everyday life simply celebrating us can take a back seat when it’s the simple things that we can celebrate about ourselves we do not need to wait for some ‘special day’.
I agree, Anna. There are so many moments in a day where we can stop and appreciate ourselves – the quality in which we have attended to something, or just simply the way we feel inside. This is what shines out from us and makes a difference in the world.
Thank you Anonymous, for a great blog. More and more these days I am seeing the influence alcohol plays in the lives of those around me. But I was the same, eight years ago if anyone would have told me I would be celebrating any occasion without alcohol I would have thought they were nuts but here I am with the realisation that it never really did agree with me and when I did drink, it was to fit in with what others wanted.
Yes… who would of thought.. it is quite amazing what changes we are capable of that we cannot even begin to fathom.
Anonymous lets Celebrate !
I have certainly had my fair share of boozy and drug filled nights along with enormous amounts of food in an insatiable attempt to fill myself up especially on this ‘my special day.’
Since my involvement with Universal Medicine, the Benhayons, the Student Body and many associated Practitioners I have let go of wanting to fill myself from the outside in and have come to know the beauty, simplicity and absolute joy I hold within.
While I continue to travel the road of release, I celebrate how far I have already come with my ability to look in a mirror and appreciate the clear eyed beauty smiling back at me.
Yes so true Gill. I never thought I could enjoy myself at a party or function without the required alcoholic drink to boost my confidence and help me “let my hair down”. These days nothing can beat connecting to one’s own inner joy and love to celebrate with.
how delicious – party with joy and love and fun, without needing to perform or to top the best. This feels very easy and inviting – my celebrating style is the same as yours, and I have found that when I celebrate every day this relationship with myself, it becomes part of my life.
I love this confirmation Toni. Celebrating ourselves in everyday for who we are. Not for what we have done but for appreciating and acknowleding how gorgeous and beautiful each of us are.
I love this way of celebrating myself with no need for late evenings or attention from outside, possibly a lunch out with some tea… Just love it
I love this “I had no expectation of anyone to come; I just knew that I was going” – by claiming to appreciate and to celebrate yourself it is already done – no need for others to do so. But they will come then – as a bonus I guess ; )
Yes I love that phrase as well, the celebration is there anyway, because it takes place in you. Then the people visiting, the balloons and perhaps the birthday cake are just a bonus indeed, like my grandmother would always say: they are the strawberries on the cake!
When we look at the phrases used around alcohol, the truth is there:- ‘Drowning your sorrows” “getting wasted” “What’s your poison”. I used to drink “socially” at parties and after the first one or two, would lose track of how many I’d had and just keep going until I embarrassed myself by being sick. I felt awful the next day as a result of the alcohol poisoning. Now, ten alcohol-free years on, those awful hangovers are but a distant memory and I don’t miss drinking a bit. I love attending celebrations where there is no alcohol – we have such fun, everybody is equal, no-one has to compete by shouting loudest, and I feel great the next morning. As a lifestyle choice, I can personally recommend it!
I love getting people together and being part of something. I always have loved this and felt amazing when I am connecting with people. I used to use alcohol and cigarettes, in group situations a lot, because they’re used to revolve around pubs, and clubs. I remember thinking, these group encounters would be a bit dull without the booze – not much ‘fun’. or ‘crazy’… I have realised what I meant was not so much ‘escape’ and ‘numbing’ from the pain of the world, as I knew it.
I have been resolving the ‘pain’ I felt, and feel that alcohol and drugs etc are an escape and damage people. We often collude with each other by agreeing to accept that they are a part of ‘normal’ society. I can say with no shadow of a doubt, I have more joy and connection in group occasions now than I ever have from now being totally sober; I laugh, play, sing and dance and still love a joke and I remember it all. And I don’t just save it for ‘birthdays’, there is an opportunity as you say to celebrate every day.
If we celebrate ourselves and give ourself all the love we want then we will never be disappointed. So beautiful to hear how you have given yourself the best gift ever – to love and celebrate you!
Even the the words “celebrating myself” go against the current trend.
What a strange culture we have created for ourselves where the notion of wasting yourself is MUCH MUCH MUCH more acceptable than celebrating yourself.
How wrong is that!
A very good point, Rebecca. We have got things seriously upside down when we celebrate self abuse socially, and look upon anything to do with honouring or nurturing ourselves as a bit odd. Universal Medicine has supported so many people to bring love back into their lives, that the tables are starting to turn, and the engrained, loveless collective behaviours are beginning to stick out like a sore thumb and be questioned.
Great observation Rebecca, you’re absolutely right, if someone was to openly celebrate themselves then they’re likely to get a negative reaction of some kind and yet when we share how wasted we got at the weekend we get a pat on the back. How non sensical is that?
Most of my life I have thought that I need some grand achievement or some major event in order to celebrate. It is delightful to read you have found you can celebrate yourself in the most simple of ways. And that can be done on a daily basis as a normal part of life. Takes away the pressure and makes it simple.
Dear Anonymous – this is such an inspiring blog to read. I love reading how you have made different choices and changed your life so dramatically since attending ‘presentations by Serge Benhayon and Natalie Benhayon and the support of Esoteric practitioners at Universal Medicine Clinic’.
I can deeply feel the beautiful quality of how deeply you are appreciating you every single day in every single sentence.
Totally glorious!
I love this anonymous “Celebrating me can be done in the most simple of ways. I can celebrate me every day, for the small things.” You have just inspired me to do just that and take time to deeply celebrate and appreciate myself! Thank you
I am only truly starting to celebrate me, too. Birthdays used to be a time to check out and get wasted with other people who wanted to do the same. More recently my birthday has been about celebrating who I am, honouring what I bring to the world and enjoying the connection of friends. Celebrating and honouring Me.
Anything we can do to break the patterns and expectations of society around alcohol, and now commonly drugs, being an integral part of any celebration is a huge service to humanity. Beautiful article and amazing comments. Thank you.
Dear Anonymous,
I actually found the opening of your blog and the clear description offered difficult to read. I could picture that scene (even though it is not one in my life). It made me feel sad and realise what the term ‘wasted’ can mean. The waste of the person, the emptiness, the trying to please. Celebrating YOU is well deserved. Thank you for your brave honesty.
Dear Anonymous, what a turn around from wasting your life away at 30 to celebrating the beautiful being that you are at 34! And as you very rightly say we don’t need deadlines like birthdays to celebrate our life and its many miracles, we can do that every day.
Now this is what I call a true “celebration of me”. Through “I had no expectation and no need for it to be anything” I really connected with this, and whilst reading this was very inspired to just be me, in life.
What an enormous transformation within 4 years. Anyone interested in psychology or medicine or human behaviour really ought to be knocking on your door to find out the details of how you did it. Truly inspiring.
Agreed. A 4 year transformation – inspiring and worthy of study. Thank you for sharing.
Nothing special or hard, no text books or rules. Just simple changes that were inspired by The Way of The Livingness by Serge Benhayon. I am so grateful for what I have learnt since attending the Universal Medicine presentations.
Absolutely agree Elizabeth. This is the kind of study that should be done; how can it be that people can dramatically change their lives within such a short timeframe, from lives of misery and irresponsibility to lives full of vitality and joy? There is so much inspiration to be had from reading stories such as these, and the world so very much needs to know about them.
Thank you Anonymous, your blog has inspired a big change in me.
Since my childhood Easter always used and had to be something special. Special foods, special drinks and an amazing effort to make it a very beautiful start into springtime.
Yesterday when feeling to go shopping for food for the holidays this old feeling of “it is Easter, I want something very special and celebrate it” came up, but it somehow felt different.
I took the time to stop and feel and realized: no, I do not need anything special, the most special there can be is me. So I bought nothing special at all, just a few tulips and daffodils to decorate the house and felt that this year Easter will not be about celebrating food or anything else, but about celebrating me, me and all the beauty and love that I am and the amazing steps that I have taken. Celebrating in stillness. This feels so beautiful :o)
You make something so extraordinary sound so normal, everyday and ordinary – thank you. The absolute magic that is a man buying flowers in celebration of himself. Exquisite.
What an inspiration you are Michael. Thanks for sharing.
I can relate to this a lot Michael recently I have realised that having special moments or rewards – be it food, drinks etc is actually not true as it puts one moment over another rather than allowing me to have equal joy all the time. The biggest reward is feeling the stillness in myself and knowing I will be able to live that quality the next day, where as if I was to indulge in food or drinks I know there is no way I would half as good the next day
Absolutely gorgeous Michael – “I do not need anything special, the most special there can be is me.”
Thankyou for sharing what a beautiful celebration your Birthday has become instead of the self destructive and disregarding times of the past.
I can certainly relate to this way of ‘celebrating’ and living in general – so far from normal now I feel back to it. I woke up with joints before going to work and would combat the haze with coffee and cigarettes. I knew I felt gross and this wasn’t a way I could live for long. I too am deeply grateful to Universal Medicine for presenting another way of living and to me for making the changes and continuing to refine my choices.
I am glad we didn’t meet 5 years ago Rachel, we would of been right into it all together.
The mirror… not such a metaphor, but actually a literal reflection. I remember going to the bathroom when I used to get drunk and be out at clubs etc… i NEVER liked what I saw… I was always surprised to see how awful I looked, how haggard and in disarray… which was contrary to how I thought I looked. I always felt let down by my choices when I was faced with my choices. I never really thought about it until now. I haven’t been drunk in nearly 7 years. Never say never, but I feel very confident that I won’t ever feel the need to dull myself like I used to again. It’s not worth it to me.
Yes the mirror can be oh so revealing if we stop and take an honest look.
So true Elodie, reflection can be so uncomfortable as it cuts through what we “think” is going on and shows us the truth of the situation. Whether we take heed of what is shown and choose to make some changes, or simply turn away from the mirror and continue on is up to the individual – but I know for me, as uncomfortable as it is, I would choose the reflection of truth every time.
For me this one stood out this time when reading your blog. “I had no expectation and no need for it to be anything and because of that, I was shown something beautiful – me”. This is exactly what I am feeling to do with my birthday this year too and it feels awesome, thank you for sharing.
I agree Karina, this is really beautiful, “I had no expectation and no need for it to be anything and because of that, I was shown something beautiful – me.” In the past I have always had an expectation of what my birthday should be like and how it should look and have never found my birthdays to be that enjoyable, often because I have been trying to make sure everyone else is having a good time, with little consideration of me, I also feel inspired to change this.
Expectation is a set up, it takes us away from the present moment and into the realms of fantasy. Our best investment in the future is to stay firmly anchored in the present.
Thank you Anonymous, this was great to read again. This time I could definitely relate to having the birthday party that others expected you to have (or what I thought was the case). It has been so great in recent years to really claim my birthday back (which is symbolic of my whole life really). I now feel so much freer of the expectation to see anyone or do anything – anything that is not completely loving and confirming of the awesomeness I am.
My birthday is coming up in the next few months and my family and friends are starting to plan a party for me, and I hadn’t realised how many ideas I had around birthdays, mainly other peoples opinion of my party – will they want to come, and if they do will they enjoy it? I am coming to see birthdays not as a time to show off or ‘party’ but to celebrate with true friends and family.
It’s so true that we don’t often celebrate ourselves. I too have had many, many wasted birthdays and believed that this would be the case forever.
Two days ago was my birthday and it was remarkable as there were no drugs, no cakes, no expectations but was filled with joy as my father sang to me a birthday song which he had not done so for at least 40 years.
What I get from reading your comment Andrew, is the love that can come in the most simple of ways… we don’t need all the presents, distractions, foods etc, just connection with the people around us and nothing else actually matters or is needed.
Such a beautiful and very simple sharing of how different things can be. With no pressure placed on anything or anyone you are able to fully appreciate how amazing and tender you truly are. That is the best birthday present ever.
Oh, this brought back some memories. I totally can relate to the carnage that was the aftermath of a “good night out”, and these were really obligatory if it was a birthday, or a long weekend, or sometimes, just a Friday night. It is amazing how totally exhausting myself by staying up until the wee hours of the morning, drinking, taking drugs and smoking joints was considered the sign of a good time. But the truth is, I usually could not remember what happened the next day, so how did I actually know it was a good time or not?
Now, without needing these artificial props to “prove” I am having a good time, I am able to celebrate being me with people who I want to be around and fully enjoy being with. There is no way I would go back to the way things were!
Here here Naren. It seems crazy to do self harming and abusive things (drugs, late nights etc) as evidence of a good time! The waste and horrific mess left behind is a sure sign and evidence enough of the carnage our body is actually dealing with from the night before. Yuk!
My idea of a good time is to be with me and appreciate me at any given moment and enjoy the rhythms that I have established. There are people that I love dearly so they are such a bonus and I am grateful for them to be in my life. I also love humanity and being part of it is an honour. Never was I taking drugs, alcohol and coffee and I never liked going to bed late but “peer pressure” was drawing me to this lifestyle particularly when I was in my late teens and as a university student. I was never really tempted although I sometimes joined in as an experience and to be with friends.
The partying of the past is like a reflection of how you felt on the inside, and now that you feel precious, worth-full-ness and value on the inside, it’s a completely different and very loving picture on the outside. I’m not sure why self harm is so easy to accept, but love is not, because love is what actually makes our lives work and it feels great. Why do we resist love? When we look out at the world it seems like there is a lot of resistance to love globally. Yet we all do know what love is. I can’t actually answer any of these questions, but I know that love is sorely needed in this world. I love this blog in how it outlines what love and what lovelessness look like. Really inspiring and beautiful to read – keep celebrating your gorgeous self!
Wow so much to celebrate here Anonymous, and as you say something we can do for ourselves everyday not just once a year. Up until a few years ago, I put so many expectations on my birthdays to give me something special… I know now something I was not giving myself. And each birthday would not live up to the pictures I had in my head and I would be left disappointed. I gave up alcohol about 6 years ago, but another way I would disregard myself on my birthday would be needing to keep everyone entertained by talking… leaving me absolutely exhausted. Now this has all changed and like you I don’t wait for just one day of the year to care for myself or celebrate me.
How beautiful Anonymous to have felt there is a choice to be made – to truly celebrate you and the anniversary of your birth.
I once heard Serge Benhayon say – “everyday is like christmas – we gather and celebrate even if it is just us on our own”. Living with ourselves in the joy of simply being with ourselves is really something I never considered would be possible for me in this life time and yet what I have learnt, and can feel that you too have learnt, is that it’s only ever a choice away. Thank you.
Anonymous, what a contrast between your ‘before’ and ‘after’ parties! I find it scary that parties mean pleasing others and fitting in with the socially acceptable norm of getting wasted on alcohol and other drugs, particularly among young people. One such ‘custom’ is the getting utterly toxic on one’s 18th birthday. Excuse my cynicism, but how can anyone feel it’s OK to encourage a young person beginning their journey as a ‘responsible adult member of society’ to start off by getting trashed in a display of self-abuse and disregard for consequences? Once at a work luncheon, the almost 18 year-old daughter of one of the staff was with us. It popped out of my mouth to say to her that she is under no obligation to get smashed on alcohol at her 18th birthday party the next day, just because older adults and peers apply pressure to do it! There was silence around the table, as the adults present there had a ‘stop’, and the young woman took in this awesome new possibility – that she could choose how she wanted to be at her own party! Why indeed not celebrate with love and care instead of abuse? And not just on one’s special occasion, but every day of life, all of which are special?
This is awesome Dianne how often are we pressured, or just do things because it is tradition, like a yard glass at a 21st birthday. You gave this young girl a real choice where before she may not have realised there was one.
Beautiful Dianne. I can recall many times where I could feel that I did not want to drink. I knew it was not right for me but did not have the support such as you offered this young women. Back on the tread mill doing the same thing over and over knowing that it was not right for me but not having the strength or understanding to step off the tread mill. If I didn’t party, what did I have? I was TOLD many times that I should stop drinking, made to feel guilty and more, but never offered the support of someone just saying to me in a loving and unimposing way, that I am responsible for me and it is my choice, not a choice influenced by others.
Your sharing of the mirror moments really strikes a cord with me.
A while back a wise man told me that every time you look in the mirror you see what you feel.
To see yourself and all your choices staring back at you is truly a moment to reflect but all to often we override & continue to dishonour our selves.
Here the power of responsibility & self honouring is proven.
“I went to the bathroom and I looked at myself in the mirror. For the first time I was happy looking at me; I could admire my own beauty.”
You paint a very real picture of what getting wasted looks and feels like. When reading this it’s hard to imagine why, as so called intelligent beings we would choose this in the first place and then continue repeating it. Congratulations on choosing celebrating you and the grace it offers others in that they don’t have to put themselves through a wasted experience to celebrate you or themselves.
Even though we are intelligent beings we don’t use our natural intelligence, hence why we make choices that are far from intelligent. Our natural intelligence comes from our bodies and we have bludgeoned and battered our bodies from our teens onwards and so we’re literally unable to hear/feel what our body has to say and because of that we listen to and are governed by a consciousness that has us literally desecrating ourselves.
This form of celebrating and getting wasted seems to start from so young, your average 6 year old party = sugarville, the hangovers have started, then from there the only thing that changes is the substance.
You’re absolutely right, Jaime. The peaks and troughs of life start very early, with sugar and then leading on to more heavy duty substances. It is incredible that we accept this abuse of our bodies as the norm, in fact as something that we get together to do in celebration of life – what?
Great point Jaime. It also reveals how from a young age many of us were often celebrated once a year, so it sets up an enormous pressure on just one day of the year…. maybe thats why out comes all the substances that give us a little high to make it different from every day. If we celebrated ourselves everyday and treated ourselves as precious, would there be any need for the highs?
Yes, I can totally relate to your beautiful sharing anonymous as is seems strange these days for me when it comes around to my birthday. I feel how lovely it is to be me and so I have no desire to lessen how I feel or inflict anything other than my own loving appreciation of me for who I am now, onto myself. There would be no birthday celebration at all if it was any other way.
This is true celebration – in simply staying connected to being the joy of who we are. The opportunity for that year by year, day by day, moment to moment is ever present and something truly worth celebrating!
What a U-turn you have made, absolutely brilliant, well done. Everyday is now like your birthday ☺
Birthdays used to be a very emotional time for me, I was very attached to them going ‘well’ but also used to rely on alcohol to get the event going. Often I woke up exhausted, dehydrated and a little underwhelmed. Making my recent birthday’s more about how I am living throughout the rest of my days is much more supportive and joyful. I still enjoy bringing people together and celebrating, but it is much more about celebrating life as it is, rather than it being all about ‘me’ or anyone else in particular, it feels great.
Sounds like the best Birthday present to yourself and to others. My Birthdays are very similar these days a far cry from those gone by.
It so weird to overhear conversations about how wasted people got on their Birthday as if to say I had a good time. How refreshing to hear how you turned your life around, and how you celebrate you in full… as I’m sure you do every day
Thank you for sharing the amazing turnaround you have made and what celebrating birthdays or any day now means. Imagine how life could be if we all realised “Celebrating me can be done in the most simple of ways. I can celebrate me every day, for the small things.”
It is a true joy to know that we are absolutely enough, in fact more than enough, by just being our selves. No alcohol, drugs or entertainment will ever feel as amazing as the natural connection we can have with ourselves and all others around us. I love celebrating any moment that joyfully arises, and no longer would I ever consider that a drink would be a celebration! All a drink would do is take me away from me, and that I would never choose to do again.
It is absolutely awesome what you say in this blog so simply expressed, the image of both parties is clear. The choice is clear, I have had those parties that became my normal way of life for a long time. The feeling in your new way of partying is so clear and beautifully simple. And you bring up an important point: the fact that many times we are more focused on getting attention and being popular and how liberating it is when we just feel like celebrating us and sharing that with others, with no expectations, but with the certainty of what we can share which is us.
So true Julia. This is such a lovely and refreshing sharing. Brings the true meaning to the word celebration.
“I can see now that the party I had when I was 30 was about my trying to please others. It was ‘normal’ – socially acceptable in the way parties are these days.
But this year it was really just about celebrating me.”
I too have had this experience and I can truly say that life devoid of alcohol is very freeing and for myself, a much truer and healthier way to live. I have so much appreciation of Serge Benhayon for his presentations that allowed me to feel this truth for myself.
This is awesome, what struck me, which I didn’t expect at all was the ‘trying to be nice’ – not necessarily on birthdays. I can feel how I have pandered and tried to please which feels yuck, instead of just being me. What I also love is the joy I feel when you wrote ” I just knew that I was going.”. So often we can feel we have to need other people to be around to celebrate a birthday or it’s not the same if we are on our own, I know I have had these feelings in recent birthdays. Which gave me a lot to reflect on, in the sense of how I had been living that previous year. But this changes everything, it is that commitment and joy in celebrating yourself no matter what we are doing and if other people want to join us or not. Yes it is amazing and so lovely to have people with us, but at the same time, it doesn’t make us any less if we don’t.
I have a new found understanding of celebration. I now know that it does not have to be about drinking too much or staying up too late. I know that celebration does not need to be confined to one night or one party. That it can be an endless quality in how I choose to treat myself. This blog makes me appreciate this new found understanding even more.
It’s pretty cool that you can now see just how off you were to think that a celebration could only happen if there were drinks available..
There is such a strong link that we have in society between alcohol and celebrations and this blog clearly explains why we should perhaps start questioning this relationship and looking at it in more detail.
I can so relate to this blog, having come through all the party days myself and being able to see how meaningless it all was compared to how I am choosing to live life these days thanks also to Universal Medicine and the Benhayon’s.
That sounds like my kind of birthday! (The Thai version, not the wasted one ☺️)
Personal I have never drunk alcohol and never explained a wasted 18th or any other birthday.
However what does stick out to is that yes it may be my birthday but what am I really celebrating.
I’m celebrating every single day since my last B’day
Celebrating and appreciating how far I have come and sharing this with people I deeply care and love.
Thanks, Luke. It is great to hear this, and be reminded that if you are not holding onto hurts or regrets from the past, there is no reason why every day isn’t the most wonderful celebration of life and your part in it.
This is beautiful Luke, appreciate deeply just how amazing this is as a young man in the world today.
What an amazing turn around in just four years – so very inspirational. I too am finally learning that my birthday is first and foremost for me, and it is now celebrated very differently than it was for many years of my life. And like you I have the joy of this realisation: “Celebrating me can be done in the most simple of ways. I can celebrate me every day, for the small things.” I am loving learning to celebrate me.
It’s great to highlight this Ingrid, “Celebrating me can be done in the most simple of ways. I can celebrate me every day, for the small things.” It makes me aware that I do not really celebrate myself and I feel inspired to now.
Our birthday day can be the day that we celebrate the day that we reached and graced this earth with our presence once again.
I love this Johanna and will certainly take to my birthday which is next month: ‘Our birthday day can be the day that we celebrate the day that we reached and graced this earth with our presence once again’.
Beautiful reminders of leaving the abusive ways behind and celebrating ourselves. Thank you anonymous and Johanna.
Spot on Kristy with the two scenarios of how people tend to be with their birthday day. I have also noticed this.
Dear anonymous
This is a celebratory sharing. It’s crazy how we see trashing ourselves as a way to celebrate. I too also used to think it was ok and normal but really it doesn’t make any sense.
Thank you for sharing.
Anonymous I love that you shine a light on birthdays, sharing honestly you show here there is indeed a different way and it’s not exclusive to just one day a year!!….Celebrating me can be done in the most simple of ways. I can celebrate me every day, for the small things….beautiful
This one line for me says it all ‘Celebrating me can be done in the most simple of ways. I can celebrate me every day, for the small things’. How lovely is that.
Absolutely Julie. And why save it for just one day when we have so much to celebrate!
For me, too, it’s such a big change – from needing to get drunk every night to feeling the joy of just being me. Aren’t we lucky to have recognized the truth of the Ageless Wisdom that Serge Benhayon is presenting to us?
So beautiful – thank you. How true it is that as we connect with and honor ourselves, celebration is a natural joy that we can experience with ourselves and share with others. I too have this past of getting wasted and I was simply not wanting to feel my emptiness and the pain of living in a way that was disconnected from the love and wisdom of my soul.
I can relate to the alcohol part as I use to use alcohol to numb myself and fit in with others socially. It does feel freeing to let this all go and choose to be more respectful and loving towards myself and appreciate myself as you said Anon every moment of the day. This feels amazing to honour myself in this way instead of the destructive way with alcohol. By living in a different way and dealing with my issues this has taken away the need to drink alcohol.
Definitely Toni – celebrating ourselves throughout the day and being appreciative of what we do and bring is very healing.
What a birthday gift to self Anonymous! A celebration of you that lasts all year round.
And everyday of the year. It’s beautiful to feel that we can celebrate ourselves because we are amazing and we don’t need to put the pressure on the birthday to do this.
The way you described your birthday was so familiar to many, many of my birthdays. I would get so wasted on drugs and alcohol that by the next morning I would not even remember most of the night … and this I considered a great time…. WOW… seems so crazy looking back. I loved your comment Heather and I agree, I was not only wasted on those nights I literally wasted 28 years with this type of lifestyle which most people consider normal. I was talking with a relative of mine recently who has a 17 year old son who parties most nights, his comment on this was “that’s what kids do at this age.” When I suggested otherwise he shrugged me off like I was an idiot. and didn’t know what I was talking about!!
Kristy the fact that we do all stop and adore a baby for the fact it just is shows me that we do know how to truly appreciate but we simply don’t do it often if more than a few times in our life. I agree with your two routes a birthday can go and what’s lovely about the blog is now feeling the real strength and appreciation in a 3rd way – the real and true way to celebrate a birthday.
I can so relate to this conditioning that alcohol/drugs = fun. As a child i grew up around a generation where alcohol went hand in hand with friends and being together. It was only when i stopped drinking myself that i have observed how strong the pressure to conform really is and how we continue to avoid begin with ourselves. Mirror mirror on the wall “how am i living every day?”
Wow, it is beautiful to read how you have gone from getting wasted to celebrating yourself, what an inspiration you are to many others caught in this way of living. I especially liked this line:
“I went to the bathroom and I looked at myself in the mirror. For the first time I was happy looking at me; I could admire my own beauty.” –
I find it quite refreshing to allow myself to feel that I am special every day and every day as being special for me. It allows me to feel quite free about public holidays, birthdays and not be constrained by the concepts associated with that day.
Dear Anonymous thank you for this great sharing of your transformation from self-abuse to self-love. Really looking at ourselves in the mirror is such an awesome way to connect to the truth of us in that moment. The awareness that we are always worth celebrating is huge.
Great comment – it made me appreciate how crazy it is to celebrate ourselves with as much abuse as possible (drugs, drinking, over-indulging – what ever floats your boat). For me the day was about enjoying the things I love doing, that make me feel more connected, and warm on the inside – with a commitment to keep building that into my busy days going forwards.
You are right about birthdays carrying so much expectation. I never did drugs and alcohol and from the past I can relate to not feeling worth celebrating and worrying if so and so would turn up or not. If they didn’t it confirmed me in lack of worth. I remember feeling sad many times on birthdays. But it all changed in the last few years. Over time with the support of Universal Medicine my self-worth increased dramatically. For my fortieth I made a decision to really celebrate myself and hired a hall and pulled out the stops for decorations… I didn’t mind who came, or who didn’t and it changed the way I am about birthdays ever since. All attachment for it to be something has dissolved because I don’t need anyone to confirm me now as I know my true worth.
I find it so interesting about looking in the mirror. In the past I was like you, always wanting to look different and not wanting to accept the truth of what I was seeing. I also wanted to look “like” something so I wouldn’t have to be myself. These days I love looking in the mirror, especially when I do sacred movement and watch myself come alive, but also when I look grey and tired I no longer try to avoid accepting that, as it shows me there is work to be done, and stops me from continuing to be in disregard of myself.
Thank you for sharing your story. This proves to me that there must be energy behind our actions. There is no way that we as members of the animal kingdom could feel so bad and continue on regardless without there being something driving it – something not from our true nature.
Wow this is a very lovely birthday celebration. Your appreciation of yourself and of the changes you made for yourself are inspirational… and there is nothing lovelier than looking into the mirror and celebrating your own beauty!
I couldn’t agree more Rosanna and this can be done every day of the year.
I like to use my birthday to stop and appreciate who I am and reflect on the year I have had and consider what is ahead. Its lovely to simply enjoy being myself with no need to get out of it or over indulge in cakes and partying, as after all there is nothing better than the feeling I get when I can connect to myself and others.
Lovely, Rachel. I really like the idea of making your birthday a confirmation of who you are and an opportunity to deeply connect to yourself and those close to you. It’s also possible then to feel what lies ahead for you in the year to come.
I agree Jane – it’s a wonderful marker then the following year to feel where one was with regards to connecting to self, and celebrating another new marker for the new birth-year-cycle to come.
Thanks for the inspiration Rachel. My birthday is coming around again soon. I will use it as an opportunity to take a stock take of my quality and how my life is these days. It sure is quite amazing to where it was just a few years ago!
What an amazing turn-around to choose you and the amazing-ness of you, and to let go of what was considered normal. This (and you) is truly worthy of celebrating and appreciating in full.
What a huge turnaround you have made in your life. I also remember similar birthday celebrations, containing alcohol and moments like yours in the mirror. What I can now feel of these days was the misery I was really feeling and the longing for something different. I now have that – I have me. My 38th birthday is fast approaching and your blog has set me pondering on how I would like to celebrate me this year – some bra shopping with friends perhaps. A facial, a quiet dinner, a long bath……the list is endless.
This is an amazing turnaround to be celebrated and the joy of celebrating me everyday can be felt in your beautiful sharing .Your birthday celebration highlights this as a marker of great change, with Universal Medicine as the light guiding the way.
To celebrate oneself in everything what we do is a life changer. Thank you for sharing.
Sounds like you feel younger and look better at 34 than how you were at 30, good work
So much so! I still have a few smokers lines around my mouth, but other than that reminder of where I have come from, I am feeling so much younger, vital and I don’t get the bouts of depression or anger that I used to have.
I think this is incredible and an amazing turn around in just 4 years, the internal turnaround that is not just the fact you stopped the drugs etc but that you can lovingly look in the mirror that is incredible!
A very useful reminder of what a Birthday can be, (and how similar my 30th was to what you describe). Great timing as its my birthday tomorrow!
Great sharing Anonymous, I never really enjoyed birthday parties as I always felt like I wanted to go home after an hour and so when it came to my own birthday I chose not to celebrate it just in case I was going to be disappointed and everyone would either not turn up or want to go home after an hour too. It felt easier to pretend that I didn’t really care about my birthday when really I can feel now I did want to celebrate it. I love how you celebrated your 34th Birthday not making a big thing of it, no expectations just a day with friends and children relaxed and enjoying each others company, that is my kind of birthday.
Sometimes the expectation and the pressure that we lace our birthday day with can be the biggest let down. I also loved how you just let it be what it was by extending an invitation out.
How inspiring, the changes you have made to how you celebrate you. A lovely sharing, thank you.
I love the way you contrasted the two different years reflection in the mirror. Lovely that you can now just celebrate you and also feel good about it the next day.
Yes Toni, thank you for the reminder, ‘One of the most healing things we can do is to celebrate ourselves throughout the day’, as you say simply because we are beautiful and we deserve it.
The simplicity of your writing and yet the vast change to your life is absolutely beautiful anonymous. Thank you for setting the scene on your experience as you have reminded me of that same feeling of disconnection and denial versus connection and deeper inner beauty and which one we would choose to share with each other.
The change you made is enormous and yet so simple, isn´t it?! Beautiful to read how you have a party with yourself everyday 😉
What a huge change in only 4 years, this in itself is worth celebrating as you were the one making the choices getting you there! It shows once again the awesome things we uncover when we stop and connect back to ourselves so we no longer need anything outside from us and find what is within. You looked in the mirror and saw your own beauty, that is the biggest gift of all.
What a turn around! This is amazing Anonymous… My birthday was a couple of weeks ago, and it was really incredible to celebrate me and appreciate everything I bring, rather than distract myself or check out. In the past for me it was always necessary to watch a movie on my birthday – this allowed me to alter the focus of the day off myself, and onto something else. This year I didn’t watch a film – and it felt great!
A truly beautiful sharing. I used to think that a great celebration or party was measured by how much I could drink and whether or not I could stand up at the end of the evening. I now feel that this is not a celebration at all but an abuse of my body. To truly celebrate me is to love and take care of me in every day. So this way makes every day a celebration. Awesome.
Yes that is what birthdays are truly about, celebrating ourselves. I used to like birthdays because of getting presents and a lot of food and sweets to eat but now I enjoy the sweetness of me on my birthday!
This is lovely Lieke, ‘that is what birthdays are truly about, celebrating ourselves’ ,it is beautiful to celebrate and appreciate ourselves and invite others to celebrate us too.
I love the sense in this blog Anonymous that any day we forget to celebrate ourselves and life, really is a waste.
The way you describe not wanting to look too closely when you were wasted resonates with me. I had a way of choosing to see only the very surface of life, because of things I didn’t want to see. Today I sat opposite a man with lovely eyes on the train. Unusually he met my gaze and me. I noticed how I looked away quickly. How powerful it is to actually let ourselves accept and receive everything that we see in full, instead of small glimpses.
Oh, I know that feeling of looking away, of not feeling worthy of being seen.. and then the other feeling, when you do allow each other and feel what is being offered. Thanks for reminding me of this.
Joseph, what you share here about when we feel met that we often pull away is so true, yet such a tell, as the only thing we ever really want is to be met for who we are. I too have found myself looking away when I have felt completely met. What I have felt in this instance is the shame of knowing deeply who I am, and of not having chosen it in full. So when someone mets me in full, it is a moment of honesty that I had not been ready to fully accept. This is something I am now more aware of and is certainly a work in progress in not pulling away when I feel met by others or when I meet myself.
Truly inspirational. Thanks for this great blog and showing us just how wonderful being yourself can be, rather than going along with what others do, to fit in.
For many (me included) it was ‘normal’ to mark occasions with alcohol, and maybe more. Making the change to celebrating without presence altering substances seemed daunting, strange and even ‘lacking’ at first but very soon it felt totally natural and far more rewarding. It is so worth taking those first tentative steps toward what you have written about here. 14 years down the track and no one even bats an eyelid anymore, in fact we’re setting the trend here!
I agree Helen, I am setting a new trend too these days and for me it has been about 6 years since I last drank alcohol or smoked a cigarette and they have been the best years of my life.
I too have spent many a night ‘celebrating’ in the way you have described. Anything, even just because it was a Saturday night, would be enough of an excuse to party. The word celebrate had lost all its meaning and had become synonymous with self-abuse. These days are long gone, but thinking back the way I felt in my body afterwards was a clear sign something wasn’t right. How strong are our beliefs that because we look around and see so many others behaving in the same way, that we can override the very loud messages our body constantly gives us.
Yes, makes me think of blind sheep or cattle just following the next ones. I did it… had my blinkers on and just did what others were doing even though I knew all along that it was not right for me.
It is interesting how abusing ourselves by drinking, smoking, checking out with music, or having sex which we regret later is done under the word “Celebrating” which is in truth the opposite of it.
It’s funny that the term “wasted” refers to that drugged or drunken stupor, but it occurs to me as you speak of the 4 years in between birthdays that when we check out with drugs or alcohol (often in the name of celebration), we are actaully wasting our lives away. We are wasted in the worst possible way, our days, weeks and months are wasted.
Hey Anonymous! I love your celebration of you. Thank you for sharing yourself with me and all of us.
Your birthday sounds like a very sweet, simple and lovely evening. My birthday is coming up, so I’m going to start the same way, and ask myself, what would I like to do for me…
What an inspiring blog, perhaps a mandatory reading a few weeks before anyone has a birthday. I really loved seeing how you chose to celebrate you. What an amazing turn around from a few years earlier. It feels very loving and supportive as a way forward every day – a constant celebration of who we are. Sounds much more fun than the constant dramas that easily fill up our days.
This is a poignant and a very real article that I enjoyed reading. Recently my own birthday was spent at work, having a normal day, serving customers, talking with colleagues. And actually I did not share with anyone that it was my birthday because I did not feel the need to. I just felt special inside because that is how I had been living all up until that day, which was just another day that I enjoyed and celebrated with everyone in my life.
The beauty and delight of just being you and celebrating yourself for being you – the fullness of you is much felt and in stark contrast to the emptiness that seeks to be wasted. The more we hold ourselves precious the more we are indeed precious in every moment, a living appreciation shared with everyone in all its simplicity. Thanks for the inspiration igniting my preciousness this morning.
Thank you for sharing your experiences of getting wasted on your birthday, to choosing to be alcohol and drug free and having the joy of celebrating you everyday.
Such a beautiful blog to read, and a massive change to happen in four years. I am looking forward to a birthday where I don’t get disappointed by my always high expectations. but you’ve made a good point.. why wait till another birthday when we get a fresh new day every day..
Let go of any expectations, they are a setup! Just be open to the day and know that you can create how your day is today and everyday. I have learnt to not be the end result, but to instead be the driver and make choices.
I love this analogy, being the driver and making choices in our lives. In driving I have found some very rough roads, but they never last, there is always a nice smooth stretch of bitumen up ahead. Making choices that come from me is the most gorgeous supportive experience, and something that I am choosing more and more.
So true anonymous, expectations are such a setup. Even when I don’t think they are there, there has been a little picture hiding away in my mind, about something to do with my birthday, that sneaks out on the day. This has definitely lessened.
You are certainly worth celebrating Anonymous. Your blog made me also stop to appreciate and celebrate how far I have come. Thank you
Thank you for your story anonymous. Getting wasted certainly isn’t cracked up to what it’s supposed to be – fun and enjoyable, that it is most certainly not! Your party at 34 feels lovely and honouring of you. I bet you went to bed that night feeling amazing.
Celebrating me is a new found joy that makes every day magical and so worth living.
That is beautiful said Katinka. And thank you for sharing anonymous
It sure does, and you never ever not want to celebrate because it feels so great.
I have attended such waste-parties, too. Or let’s say, I have allowed my body to be in this environment, but I wasn’t me on these occasions. There is even more to see here: Stepping out of such extreme behaviour is laying a track for all in similar situations to do the same. It’s such a magical service.
So true Felix. By choosing differently and saying no to such abuse that is glamourised, we offer a powerful reflection and opportunity for others to choose differently.
A beautiful way to celebrate your birthday and to celebrate yourself, thank you for sharing this with us all. The most amazing gift is is the gift you are to the world.
What a difference! I can relate with similar birthday experiences. It’s crazy isn’t it that we go out to celebrate and we right ourselves off and it’s considered perfectly acceptable and widely encouraged. There is something a miss here with this picture, given the harm we are causing ourselves. Your new way of celebrating your birthday, by celebrating you sounded perfect and a very joyous occasion.
I like the simplicity of this blog. For anyone reading this with a similar background can appreciate the alarming things one does to foster-up some type of celebratory feeling, instead of simply appreciating ourselves and celebrating it too.
Thank you for a beautiful sharing and how wonderful it is to celebrate you.
This is lovely to read, and really lovely to see how you have changed .. for you.
I can identify with how you partied in the past and how it always left me feeling empty afterwards. What a difference when we choose not to abuse our precious selves and to care and nurture ourselves instead. So true that celebrating can be done in the most simplest of ways and we can do that for ourselves everyday and not wait for a special occasion.
It’s my birthday let’s half kill me!! Wherever did the idea of poisoning oneself get misconstrued as celebrating oneself? One has to wonder, for if celebrating means honouring, glorifying and paying tribute to and we instead smash, poison and wreck ourselves you do not need to be a psychologist to realise that this is steeped in self loathing. This is us attempting to annihilate ourselves and must be reflective of what we think of ourselves. So it makes perfect sense to live in a way that celebrates ourselves each and everyday rather than continually detesting ourselves.
Great question Kathleen – celebration is about feeling lovely and certainly waking up the next day this way.
Good point, I didn’t have much self worth at the time.
Thank you for sharing the awesome changes that you have made in your life. Incredible that the former, your 30th Birthday, is what is considered what a real party should look like. A bunch of people so wasted that they can’t connect or enjoy each other’s company, compared to a lovely dinner shared with friends connecting simply enjoying each other’s company. Here’s to celebrating ourselves in connection and appreciation of who we truly are.
Thank you – I can really feel the joy about coming to that point in your life where you don’t need any alcohol or joints anymore – and being with yourself becomes a great celebration.
I remember as a little girl, I looked forward to my birthday, because that was the day that everybody made it about me. This was different to most other days so I enjoyed the attention given on my birthday. I could choose what sort of cake I wanted and what type of roast dinner I wanted to eat. But I remember one birthday clearer than the others and that was the day when I felt like my birthday was an inconvenience and felt rushed in my decision of what cake I would like and I remember the hurt I felt about this. After all this was my day, it was a day all about me, but this day didn’t feel like it. I remember I got really upset and cried about this. Remembering this now I can see how much pressure is placed on birthdays to make someone feel special and how disappointing it can be if any of our expectations fall short. It is certainly a different way to live nowadays where I look forward to my birthday for a different reason. For me it is about changing age and celebrating going into a different numerical year and looking to the next year of life to continue unfolding back to the glorious Me that lives inside always. This celebration actually starts a couple of months before my birthday as well, so by the time my birthday comes along there is none of the pressure previously placed on this being a ‘special’ day. Just a day to continue to celebrate being Me.
This resonates with me so much. I used to celebrate my birthdays, or anything for that matter, exactly as you described your 30th birthday. Since meeting Serge Benhayon and becoming a student of the Way of the Livingness I too have totally changed the way in which I not only live but celebrate also. What I love about this also is the reminder that we can celebrate ourselves in every moment of every day without waiting for our birthdays.
This year is then really a birth-day because the new you is looking in the mirror!
Awesome!
How inspiring, in just a few years the changes you have made. I turned 40 last year and at the time I was reflecting on the vast difference between how I elebrated turning 40 compared to the turning 30. My 30th involved lots of people, partying hard, alcohol, nightclubbing etc. My 40th was a simple beautiful lunch held in nature, no alcohol, gluten free, dairy free food, loving connections and conversations. The differences were huge. It led me to appreciate and celebrate the self-loving choices that I now make in my life and how I now honour myself. This was reflected in the way that I felt to celebrate my birthday.
It sounds like an incredible 40th birthday Donna! When we honour our feelings and instincts – in this case how you felt to celebrate your birthday – it can be a very joyful experience.
Making your birthday about a true celebration, celebrating you, that you are here and that you bring so much to this world. That is what a birthday is truly about.
What a great contrast from the before and now. What I love about this blog is how you started to feel you and how you wanted to celebrate your day rather than please everyone else. Here’s to many more great birthdays.
Yes, Tony I agree, I have noticed how sad birthdays can be for a lot of people.
I can very much relate to this Tony. I hated my birthdays, switched off the phone and didn’t want to be in the centre of attention at all. Officially I said that this was my day, so that I wanted time for me and what I loved to do. On this day all the frustration, insecurity and loneliness in my life became so obvious that I simply could not bear to have anyone around me. And all of this, because underneath I did not love myself.
Having started to change after feeling inspired by what Universal Medicine presented, my last birthday has been different. I actually choose to be with people, had a happy day and felt simply amazing and still in the evening.
A great point to ponder Tony – for a surprisingly large amount of people their birthdays can be quite sad/solemn events… But as you say what if that is just a reflection of how they live everyday with an underlying sadness?
Great point Tony, it can often be the landmarks events that we build up to that bring up feelings we have tried to bury. I often feel a birthday is a reflection of how I have lived the year, if I have feelings of sadness or if I have people in my life to celebrate the day it is all showing me how I have been living. It can be easier to sidestep those feelings by getting really drunk, but then that only exacerbates the problem.
Yes Toni, and there is no need to celebrate ourselves for what we do but for who we are.
Congratulations on your special today!
Thank you so much for this beautiful and inspiring blog, It has come to me just at the right moment and reminded me how much there is to celebrate in me in every moment.
Absolutely, every moment we deserve to celebrate ourselves and to appreciate all of the loving choices we have made.
Happy birthday Anonymous! What a great present to yourself and to those associated with you. How wonderful that you can now get to enjoy the simple beauty of yourself everyday.
I loved reading this – it is a reflection to me of what I too saw as a successful celebration.
A hangover was a marker of a very good night out.
But I didn’t for one second consider the impacts this had on my body.
And from there I would be tired, eat bad food and a lot of it, and not want to talk to anyone or take responsibility. Now I still socialize, I still have dinners with colleagues and friends – but the next day I am exactly the same as I was the night before – a consistency which I really do appreciate – as does my body.
The crazy thing too is that a hangover is seen as ‘normal’, when in actual fact our bodies are then trying to rid themselves of the poisons and toxins that have been induced.
Yes Hannah, on Monday mornings there often seems to be a little competition about who had the best hangover, therefore meaning they had a good weekend. I understand it because I too lived that way and so glad that I don’t make those choices anymore. I don’t mind that other people do, and make those choices because its totally up to them.
Very inspiring, to just celebrate yourself with no need to get recognition or having the need that others have to celebrate you and confirm what you actually already know. It so beautiful to just celebrate yourself!
Celebrating ourselves on our birthdays can be as simple as just being around our home, or in the garden, or with our partner or one friend. I don’t have to be with people to celebrate me, but it is lovely to share the celebration with others, and whichever way it happens, to have no expectation of a “good time” or trying to make IT a success or special, as it used to be in the old days. But nowadays simply being ourselves is enough because we are.
Wow anonymous, what a turn around you have had – this is awesome. Thank you for sharing your experience it is very inspiring.
Wow! How awesome it is to celebrate ourselves and enjoy the reflection in the mirror. Beautiful blog. I too can relate to how I used to believe how a successful party needed to look like, – not anymore though. Now, it ‘s a celebration of me, with my friends and their children. It’s a joy.
Wow, such a beautiful blog celebrating you!! Its incredible how we trash ourselves and abuse our bodies under the ideal of celebrating, when in truth our whole life can be a constant celebration of the love we are.
Yes Rachel, it is so ridiculous the way we celebrate and abuse our bodies in the process. It would be great if more people would observe and truly see the what and why behind this.
I agree Rachel, ‘It is incredible how we trash ourselves and abuse our bodies under the ideal of celebrating.’ This belief is so normal and yet when we really look at what we do in the cold light of day it seems like madness. Anonymous describes the party scene so well and the effects of it. Are we really celebrating life when we drink and take drugs, or are we numbing and distracting ourselves from what we don’t want to feel? By coming together collectively we make this way of being acceptable because a vast majority of us choose it. What if, as you say Rachel, “our whole life can be a constant celebration of the love we are.’ and this can be done and felt in each moment?
Yes, when we honestly look at it, it is absolutely ridiculous that we call drinking alcohol, taking drugs, eating too much food, a celebration, while our bodies only try to cope and feel horrible, which we particularly get to feel the day after we have celebrated in this way. This can never have been the original meaning of celebrating. We have got something totally wrong here. It is time to wake up and to see that the way we live is far away from the beauty and love that we naturally are.
I celebrate with you the choices that you have made and the beautiful confirmation of that you are worth a true celebration on your birthday and every day. This is the greatest gift we can give to ourselves, nobody else can do this for us.
We are all worth celebrating.
Those two moments when you looked in the mirror – so totally worlds apart, completely different and yet having occured in a relative whisper of time (4 years). Thank you for sharing your miracles.
I love the celebration of the whole and real you – the you that requires no razzmatazz – just the simplicity of being present.
It is so great to celebrate ourselves and the way we live – and that word celebrate certainly has a lot of connotations and associations! My version of celebration now can be going for a walk, or cooking a delicious meal that I know my body will love – or even listening to some awesome music that my body loves to listen and move to. It’s so great to be able to celebrate in this way now as opposed to how celebrations used to be for me – chocolate, cake, chips and alcohol if the timing was ‘right’. I too, like you Anonymous totally love my new version of celebration!
Great point Amelia – ‘that word celebrate certainly has a lot of connotations and associations!’ It really does mean very different things to different people.
It is like the word celebrate has been mis-interpreted, or there has been a mistake with the translation.
What an awesome blog, it seems that the meaning of celebration has been changed over the years to mean getting drunk/wasted. Thank you for bringing it back to the true sense of the word and showing that we don’t have to wait for a birthday or special occasion to celebrate ourselves.
Very inspiring Anonymous, enjoyed reading how you now celebrate you and the love that you are.
What a joy it is to read your blog … and the life changing choices you have been inspired to make … You are most definitely worth celebrating in the fullness of you … not dulled down by drugs, alcohol, the heaviness of expectation … it is your re-newed lightness of being that comes through here most divinely.
Absolutely Beauty-full such a great sharing. What a transformation!
If any of us could really truly feel the harm we do to ourselves and others when we get ‘wasted’ we would never ever do it again!
Yes, but sometimes we are so lost in it all that we are not even aware.. that was were I was at. So glad that it is a thing in the past.
What a difference in birthday celebrations. Your blog has inspired me to celebrate my self more, not just on my birthdays, but to celebrate me every day of the year.
Wow Anonymous, you describe the party scene so well, as if I was actually there, which of course I was, I can remember how I used to be swept away in the consciousness that you have to drink to have a good time, and when the drink stops the party is over. I used to do anything to keep that party going, as when it ended it was back with a thump to the reality of what I had done to myself and the carnage that had ensued. It was lovely to read of your contrasting 34th birthday, a scene I am now more familiar with and from which I would never return back to alcohol.
Yes, Stephen, carnage is a good word for what we do to ourselves when we get wasted. And we can get caught in a vicious circle of then numbing ourselves from the pain of the carnage, which leads to the next blow out. It is really inspiring to read how Anonymous has stepped off that cycle through being more responsible for herself and her body, and to feel how life changing that has been.
SO true you never want it to stop as you don’t want to see the carnage!
I remember – well, don’t remember so well… many hazy, alcohol fuelled and filled birthdays, both my own and others, in years gone by. None of them feel as yummy and truly warming from within, as the 34th celebration you’ve described anonymous. A celebration that was about far more than your birthday coming around once more – a celebration of the richness you clearly now live in your life, where getting wasted is no longer what a ‘special occasion’ is about, or indeed any day by the feel of what you’ve shared.
This is truly miraculous, when such a change has become so rock solid in one’s life. Without such a change, where and what are we left with?
Reading your blog, I am left appreciating how things are for me now also – so undoubtedly and monumentally supported and inspired through my involvement with Universal Medicine as well, that I wouldn’t give up on this amazing feeling of real joy in my body and being that I feel every day now in my life, for anything. An awesome blog, anonymous. Thank-you and woohoo for you!
The contrast between how you felt then about looking in the mirror and how you feel now is stark and awesome. I realised a while back that I didn’t truly look at myself in the mirror – I was only ever looking for anything out of place, whether my make up was right etc. Looking in the mirror and actually saying hi is really powerful and it’s awesome to read your journey to that. Isn’t it weird that getting wasted is so celebrated when it leaves us so drained and disconnected? It’s also interesting that alcohol/drugs fool you into thinking you are connecting with people, but how can that be true if you aren’t actually yourself when you’re wasted? Whereas it comes through loud and clear that your Thai birthday meal was all about connection. Thank you for sharing this.
‘I realised a while back that I didn’t truly look at myself in the mirror – I was only ever looking for anything out of place, whether my make up was right etc’ – That’s SO true Jenifer! I’ve never thought about that before, but can totally relate – when I look in the mirror I’m always looking for something wrong, like a piece of hair out of place, a spot, tired eyes, overgrown eyebrows etc.; it is very unusual for me to look in the mirror, and simply look at me.
I can relate to that… looking into the mirror to find the faults instead of looking into the mirror and admiring the beauty.
WOW. That is beautifully simple, and I can truly feel your own self nourishment.
yes it is amazing isn’t it the changes that can take place within 4 years just by saying no to self abuse and changing our outlook to truly love and support ourselves, and when one person says no to the ‘norm’ it inspires others to also look after themselves and before we know it we will all be part of a much more healthy loving society. The changes we want to see indeed start with ourselves.
Anonymous, you are right, we can celebrate ourselves everyday in every small thing we do for ourselves and not be afraid to look at our beauty in the mirror. And how wonderful that your re-connection to the true you was reflected back with your amazing birthday party at the Thai restaurant. I love your sharing, thank-you.
‘We can celebrate ourselves everyday in every small thing we do for ourselves and not be afraid to look at our beauty in the mirror’ – Gorgeous Sandra, I find that even the simplest self-caring activities like painting my nails or having a bath can be ways of celebrating myself.
You are right Susie it can be the simplest of things that we can do to celebrate ourselves, lately a couple of times a day I have been massaging my nails using a lovely oil. It is a small thing but one that has reminded me of the tenderness and loveliness I hold in my finger tips!
What a contrast, and you make it sound easy and natural to have made the change, which I’m sure it was, and still is in so many ways. But I also know that it takes commitment and has many challenges as there is so much in society that tries to keep us in the self-abusive, party, party, party mode. Good on you for making all the little steps, committing to being true to yourself, and letting go of the glamour and illusion of that old way of being.
“Celebrating me can be done in the most simple of ways”. This line says it all I feel and the incredible journey you have shared with us – thank you anonymous.
Wow, what a turn around, the two shared examples couldn’t be more different. Thanks for sharing! Simply beautiful to read your description of your 34th birthday.
How beautiful that you made it about celebrating you and had no expectations of others. A truly inspiring transformation in just 4 years. Thank you so much for sharing so honestly and depicting your past celebrations so graphically and acknowledging how you didn’t want to look in the mirror because deep down you knew the reflection you saw would be too painful.
Your blog is a reminder for me to appreciate where I have come from and how ‘wasted’ I used to often be, not necessarily through drugs and alcohol (although sometimes yes) but just from abusive behaviours and completely checking out. Universal Medicine has opened up my heart again, for myself and others.
Janet, I can relate. I don’t get wasted from alcohol anymore, but there are other ways that I can check out so easily.
I found myself over eating a lot lately, and although it is not alcohol, it can have a similar effect in my body, as in it gives me that numb feeling.
This blog is so wonderful to read anonymous, ‘I can see now that the party I had when I was 30 was about my trying to please others. It was ‘normal’ – socially acceptable in the way parties are these days.’ Reading this makes me aware that parties I have had in the past have always been about making sure everyone else has a good time and that the party looks good – lots of people, lots of food etc…so I look like I’m popular, rather than simply celebrating me and having a birthday that I want to have, I feel inspired to change this next birthday and feel what it is I would truly like to do to celebrate me.
This is great anonymous isn’t it wonderful to be totally free of all that stuff that helps keep us from truly being ourselves. I remember looking in the mirror when I was wasted and not knowing the person staring back at me. Thankfully that is all in the past thanks to unconditional love and support with no judgement from Serge Benhayon.
What I realised when reading this blog is how much we are conditioned into thinking what a party or celebration needs to look like even though deep down we know it does not feel right. Amazing anonymous to see that you have shifted from doing what you think you should do to actually just doing what you really wanted to do for your birthday.
What a great way to celebrate a birthday, or as you say anonymous, celebrating me everyday is even better!
Yes, I can remember feeling the need to get drunk when I had a birthday or celebration of some sort. I would invariably miss out on much fun because I would end up feeling ill or falling asleep in the corner somewhere. Then the horrible hangover that took me days to get over. These days, how ever I choose to celebrate, what’s nice is that I don’t miss out on any fun because I no longer drink and I feel great the next day because there is no hangover to deal with. The idea of celebrating myself is something that I too have started doing.
The power of being totally claimed in now knowing who you are is so strongly felt in this blog. Thank you for sharing your re-awakening with us.
How gorgeous to read how much you have a changed in four short years. This is something definitely worth celebrating.
Anonymous. I love it when you say ‘Celebrating me can be done in the most simple of ways. I can celebrate me every day, for the small things. This is the essence, we don’t have to wait for special days, everyday is special and a gift.
Thank you, anonymous. It’s funny how we ‘celebrate’ often involves unloving choices which we wouldn’t usually make –drinking and eating excessively, and taking drugs.
Great point Fumiyo – often our idea of a ‘celebration’ includes doing things we would not usually do, and know are unloving for our body.
So true Fumiyo. Highlighting how much celebrating ourselves is not a normal part of life. And designated to only certain times of the year etc. How wonderful to be developing and growing love and appreciation in my life that everyday can be a celebration.
Inspiring to read Anonymous, that celebrating your birthday has changed from getting wasted to celebrating you in your full glory and this all because of you making the choice to follow your feelings on how YOU would like to celebrate your birthday and not how a birthday party should be like nowadays.
Gosh, I remember many such moments, and who needed to wait for a birthday? How horrible those occasions really were. Your description of avoiding one’s gaze in the mirror is spot on. A cursory, superficial check was all that could be tolerated, so I could continue on in the same vein… only to feel it all the next day. Devastating, and a hollow experience all ’round.
Yes Victoria I have had that experience of not wanting to meet my gaze in the mirror for too long because I did not want to see how miserable I truly was.
Yes, indeed Victoria, our relationship (or lack of) with the person in the mirror is very telling. I know that I avoided looking in the mirror for a long period of time, because I knew that I wasn’t living all the truth I knew, and I could not deny it when I looked into my own eyes.
What an inspiring and refreshingly honest blog! While my experiences on my birthday (or any other occasion) have not involved drugs or smoking joints, there were many occasions when this involved alcohol, and while I may have considered it was fun at the time, in truth it never felt great in my body and if I am honest was my way of getting some relief from life. In the past 4-5 years, my birthdays have not involved alcohol and it feels great, not only for me but for those I am sharing the occasion with. What it boils down to for me is also learning to celebrate ‘me’!
Yes I can relate Angela – for the past 12 years alcohol has played no role in my life or my birthdays – so refreshing to be present to self, isn’t it?
Amazing transformation from your commitment to different choices Anonymous and so inspiring to us all–how celebration is every moment of every day, that’s how life is, one celebratory constellation!
This line struck me; “I can see now that the party I had when I was 30 was about my trying to please others.” – it got me thinking…why do we, as friends who love and care deeply for our friends want them to annihilate themselves instead of celebrating themselves on their birthdays? The same goes for us. Do we just allow ourselves to get swept away by the ‘norm’? Is anyone really enjoying themselves in these birthday obliterations (of which I too have had)? If we use our birthday as the beginning of our next cycle then surely this calls for some reflection as to which foot we are setting off on for the next round and on which foundation we stand, if indeed we are even standing!
Yes Liane, it is for sure a strange human condition that we take such pleasure in getting each other so drunk that we can’t speak or stand. This is then seen as good fun, I used to partake in this but would always cringe and squirm at the level of danger I put my health in and that of my friends. The next day was always something to endure, where only sleep and time would eradicate the effects. What an absolute joy to make the choice not to do that anymore.
I can really relate to your 30th birthday party and yes what a waste indeed. What an incredible turn around in just 4 years to be just heading out to a restaurant to enjoy your birthday with no expectations and no desires to check out with alcohol and drugs. Since I have been attending Universal Medicine workshops, facing and healing my hurts and neediness, every birthday has become more and more simple and more and more beautiful. What a glorious marker of the progress you have made in restoring self respect and self worth and enjoying such a beautiful evening with true friends.
It sounds like you really have come along way in the way you celebrate, it’s pretty extrodinary the change!
What a most joyful way to celebrate one’s birthday and as you say everyday is a celebration of one’s beauty. Congratulations.
What a beautiful way to celebrate your birthday. Such a contrast to the painful and desolate ‘celebrations’ of the past. Although getting wasted was never my style I can relate to being ‘out of it’ in the past, and also of feeling empty at parties, or simply avoiding celebrating myself at all … each choice equally sad in its own way.
I felt deep sadness as I read your description of your 30th birthday, because it is true so many young people are living like this not just on their birthday but every week! Devastating how they are choosing to waste their lives, as life is so precious. How beautiful the change you have made for yourself now at 34 yrs old- this is truly to be celebrated and appreciated.
Yep, I agree. So many times if I have asked someone how are they going to celebrate their birthday the answer would be ‘get wasted’ or ‘it was great I got completely wasted.’ that speaks volumes in how we actually feel about ourselves and the life we are living, and many people see that as normal. I used to be exactly the same but thank God I have the strength and self love now to not follow the crowd and celebrate me in a way that is loving, joyfull and in line with how I feel about life and myself.
What a turn around. I loved how you knew what you wanted to do on your birthday and let those around you know should they wish to join you. So many make plans to fit around others which can add a lot of pressure to an otherwise simple enjoyable occasion.
Yes I loved the fact that there was no expectation and it was fine if many people came or not “I had no expectation of anyone to come; I just knew that I was going.” Making loving choices and appreciation of self in itself is enough and everything else is a bonus.
So wonderful to read and feel the true change and joy you have brought to your life – and the fact that as you celebrate You, you are naturally celebrating everyone else!
I really enjoyed feeling your celebration of yourself, Anonymous, and that this is something that you now hold within you every day – thank you for sharing your ‘turn around’ story.
Dear Anon, I can relate to every word you have written and i applaud your honesty. It took me many more years past 34 to wake up to how i was treating myself. These days birthdays and any other days are all about noticing the simple things that support love and life. Thanks for sharing your story.
What an intense contrast. I can relate all too well to the wasted scenario – actually really confronting to reflect back on – and seems a million years ago and unimaginable to the life I have now. Birthdays, new years, and so called ‘special’ occasions once got loaded up with expectations and the chance to totally indulge in a host of self trashing behaviours, over eating, drink, drugs and blurred stumbling lost days….could not be further from celebrating in reality. Now with the wasted days long gone and with the clarity and freshness there is a joy and flow everyday that is gorgeous to celebrate.
Sounds like a beautiful birthday. A very different change around from your life before. I know in the past my birthdays have been about pleasing others. I’d want to go to a certain place but then I’d get protests or ‘what about this’ and so change it. The result was often complication and drama. This birthday was different though. I ended up just doing what I needed and the results and the presents I got were fantastic.
What a wonderful change, from ‘wasted’ to’ celebrating your true beauty’ simply divine.
A great blog that shows very simply how much we try to avoid seeing the results of what we do to ourselves. I love the way you described that moment of not wanting to look at your white face in the mirror…not wanting to see the wastage and devastation.
This applies to so many things that we do not want to see. At the end of my degree (something we have been told to aspire to) I was thin, hunched and with worry etched around my eyes. I did not want to look deeply at that, otherwise I would have to see that I had ticked the boxes, but lost myself in the process.
But it is only when we see what we are doing that we can say “no more of that!”
Your 34th birthday was beautiful because you looked at what you were doing, and the results. That is true freedom, to choose something else altogether.
Thanks for expressing that Rachel. I sometimes feel like that as well at University, like I am just ticking boxes, but not really making a difference. I can feel how it’s like I just wanted to fit in at school but now it’s on a much subtler level. It’s easier to hide at University because the energy that is there is so strong. Lately I have been feeling liberated when I walk around University knowing that I don’t belong there and feeling like I am just going to bring MY truth to what I do and not compromise ONE bit. I am still working on this though.
Yes, so true…. we have to be willing to see what is going on and then make choices to change it if we don’t like it.
Definitely Rachel – I think there are many people that can relate to the feeling of ‘ticking all the boxes’, but looking in the mirror and seeing someone who is checked out, exhausted, depressed etc.
What a turn around Anonymous to have come from allowing yourself to be “wasted” to now celebrating yourself as you and truly enjoying your birthday. It really is a waste to spend life in that wasted state. Reading your blog bought back memories of the way I used to spend most of my days and nights. I recently celebrated my 70th birthday starting with an early walk on the beach with friends and then breakfast at a beautiful cafe. It was amazing to allow myself to just be me and truly connect to others. I too have been inspired and supported to celebrate me by Serge Benhayon and the practitioners at Universal Medicine clinic.
What a change in such a short time, thank you for sharing these two different worlds from self harming to self loving and deeply honouring and cherishing yourself.
How lovely it is to know what you want, and to have the confidence to choose it, and not to choose to have a drunken party just because that is what people do. I wonder how many people at your 30th birthday really believed that they had a great night, and how many, if they were honest with themselves, would have preferred an evening like the one you had to celebrate you on your 34th birthday?
What amazing changes you have made in your life! When we let go of our ideals and beliefs as well as our need to please others, we get the opportunity to make more loving choices for ourselves. This inspires others and gives them a chance to make the same changes should they so choose.
This is fantastic Anonymous. I really love “I had no expectation and no need for it to be anything “ and “I was shown something beautiful – me”. I fully agree with “Celebrating me can be done in the most simple of ways. I can celebrate me every day, for the small things.”
Why wait until we have a birthday to celebrate ourselves – once in the year… I love how you said; Celebrating me can be done in the most simple of ways. I can celebrate me every day, for the small things. That sounds like fun…
What a huge change of lifestyle…I am sure your body is very much appreciating the way that you celebrate now…how different it must feel waking up each day. A big congratulations all round.
A beautiful sharing around birthdays, and how simple but truly honouring and appreciating of you your celebration was. No fuss or grand affair, just absolute enjoyment of you, because you’re worth it.
We’re all a living aspect of God, who’s not worth celebrating?
There is a lot of expectations around what a birthday should be, that often leads to a feeling of disappointment the next day, a sense of “its over, was that it?”. What I have been learning to appreciate, is the simplicity of a birthday spent celebrating myself with close friends, no drama or extravagance necessarily needed.
What a precious gift you have given yourself (and allowed yourself to accept) – the gift of self love. Now that’s worth celebrating.
I love how looking in the mirror simply reflects back to us how we feel…what a beautiful marker this most recent birthday was for you. There is no turning back from here:))
Yes, looking in the mirror these days is so much fun! I never could have imagined wanting and enjoying looking in a mirror. I used to never like my photo taken either and these days I am quite comfortable being in front of the lens instead of only behind it.
What a massive turn around from the choices made just a few years back. It is amazing what can happen when you start to look at all those choices that ill-affect you and decide to change them. Looking in the mirror at your party and celebrating your beauty was so sweet to read. This is you seeing you through clear eyes, something that is possible by choosing not to engage in those ill behaviours like pot smoking, alcohol drinking etc. What a transformation.
What a change… a most rewarding one at that. How very beautiful to celebrate you in such a way.
Wow what a huge contrast, so different in such a short space of time, well done.
I never did drugs but said yes to alcohol which always felt just horrible in my body so that even though I began to have less and less of it, it would have exactly the same devastating effect. Eventually even only a small glass of beer would make me racy and unable to sleep that night and give me a hangover and feeling off all the next day. Felt like such a waste, and the word ‘wasted’ you use describes it perfectly.
Most of the common slang words associated with having drugs and alcohol have quite a ‘heavy’ or ‘used/abused’ connotation, just like the term ‘wasted’ used here. I just think of words like: shot, stoned, smashed, or drunk, p***ed, plastered, blotto. All these terms have a sense of not being present or having no energy. Such a waste, and society knows so.
Yes, but people still use them in their everyday language and celebrate the fact. I was on a tour yesterday and the guy was showing off by saying that you hope that there is no fire on a Tuesday as the voluntary fire men all get together on Tuesdays to get smashed. The tour guide was saying this as if it was a great thing and cool, yet I was shocked.
Many of us have said yes to alcohol and not really appreciating the effect it has on our bodies. The throwing up is a way our bodies expel the alcohol we have drunk, and the next day when we wake up we feel absolutely ghastly and it takes a few days to fully recover. We really have little idea of the effects that alcohol has as it is our drug of choice we don’t want to question the damage it is doing to our livers just for a starter as it is the liver that bears the brunt of the alcoholic assault.
From one evolving student to another- you are truly awesome and what you have expressed here is the magic of God in action. Thank you for sharing.
You sure have inspired me Anonymous and I know it would not have been an easy road coming off that lifestyle and getting to be the real you.
This is incredible and brings confirmation that it is possible to change our addictive behaviour and move away from alcohol and pot smoking forever.
What made me laugh is how you described the all day joint smoking birthday celebration as a “successful party”.
True success requires no mind altering state and no poison inside your body and thank God you found real success.
Great point Bina, love it. It is a very telling statement when we consider that harming ourselves to that degree is a “success”. I can hear it now, people saying “great party, what a success”.
These days a great party is one where all the guests leave completely sober, having been well fed with nourishing foods, well watered with water (!), loved and enriched by the company of many beautiful people. That to me is a truly successful party.
I agree here, I used to celebrate my birthday was to panic about the entertainment having family and guests in the house. I always wanted to present a total clean and tidy house with a fake nice family, all just show. The cooking and baking and preparing and cleaning and looking good in all this was a challenge, but I did ask for it. At the end of the day I was exhausted and not able to do anything. And I felt a lot of sadness because I had again allowed this to happen. Underneath I always knew that this is wrong and not true, this game of being a perfect mother and wife. But this life is over – thanks to Universal Medicine I am enjoying being me!
I agree, well fed with nourishing foods, well watered with water, loved and enriched by the company and conversations shared, now that is a truly successful party… I had one last month and it was awesome!
There has been an amazing transformation in how you celebrate your birthday. It was beautiful to read how you came to the realization that ” Celebrating me can be done in the most simple of ways. I can celebrate me every day, for the small things.” Celebrating and appreciating the true you sounds more joyful than any alcohol and drug filled party.
Beautifully and simply written thank you for sharing
True celebration and appreciation = simplicity, playfullness and a whole lot of fun. Far from the ‘fun’ of getting wasted.
Anonymous. What a transformation you have made in your life in the past 4 years, and a great 34th birthday party, with no drug or rock and roll, just lovely people celebrating with you, and delicious food to share.
I found tears in my eyes as I read the description of your 30th birthday, as I know it is the way so many young people are living, and the word wasted is such an accurate description of the waste of young vibrant lives; and I felt more tears when reading your 34th birthday celebration, only this time tears of joy for the beauty and simplicity of it. I never did drugs or alcohol, but I did try hard to please other people, whereas what you describe here makes it very clear how it is all about celebrating and pleasing ourselves, we do not have to entertain others, but as you say, merely turn up and be ourselves.
This is such a beautiful way to celebrate, with simplicity and no complication, just getting together to share a meal and having a real conversation. I love it.
That’s pretty cool, “Celebrating me can be done in the most simple of ways. I can celebrate me every day, for the small things.”. What I got from reading this was that I don’t have to wait around for a special moment / day / event or ‘wait until the end’ to celebrate me or acknowledge how I feel. Why wait when there is already something within me to celebrate?
I agree Leigh, we all so love celebrations, and yet we box them in as only being on certain days of the year and on ‘special occasions’. Me and my friends have gotten into the habit of throwing mini celebrations whenever they come round for dinner, and it so much fun!
Celebrating the small things makes life a lot lighter than saving it up for that one time in the year. It makes me wonder if that is why we have so many ‘special occasions’ throughout the year? Christmas, Easter, New year, birthdays – not even counting all the other cultural and religious celebrations. All grand and ‘special’ events – there is a part of us that wants to celebrate but what if our take on celebrating has gone awry? As Anon has shared ‘celebrating’ can and is often tied to ‘getting wrecked’. Are we making these outside occasions or dates on the calendar much more worth our time and effort to perfect than to celebrate what is already within us every day?
I wonder if it comes back to a self worth issue. If we felt worthy, we would be able to celebrate ourselves everyday and not need a holiday as such to give us an reason to stop and celebrate.
Thank you for sharing your experience of a true celebration of you.
Happy Birthday and I hope many more to come like your 34th! Lovely simple story.
Years ago I used to have friends around for dinner on my birthday, and that was the best fun, but when I moved to Melbourne where the culture of drinking was so strong, I would be taken out to a pub or restaurant to celebrate – and even though I didn’t like alcohol that much I would have the celebration drink or two – leaving me sick and dizzy. Even the next morning I’d still be feeling exhausted, trembly, and sick – crazy way to start the next year of life. This culture has become ‘normal’ – but it is so strange that ‘normal’ is something that feels so yuck. Now I don’t drink at all and I’m the one considered strange, but nothing beats how I feel the next morning !
I can relate Annie, whenever I drank alcohol it would make me feel quite terrible, and now I am the strange one that doesn’t drink. The culture of drinking being normal is quite full on, and the pressure to drink is massive so I am always pleased to hear of more people breaking the trend so to speak, and choosing what feels right for them and not just drinking to be socially accepted.
What you say is true Anne – we have normalised it. Yet what we are really doing is consuming measured doses of ‘approved’ (and some not so) poisons. How have we all agreed that this is OK? And what are we seeking to escape when we do it? That’s the real question!
Add to this also how ostracising it is when you choose not to drink – some people are horrified, others take it as a very personal affront, as if not drinking is a grave threat… to something – friendship, the fabric of society, our ‘nationhood’? Reactions can be quite astounding, a sign of how deeply entrenched alcohol is. It must be difficult also for people who come to western societies for the first time from parts of the world where alcohol doesn’t feature.
Very true Victoria. I gave up drinking a few years ago and some of my friends found it very challenging indeed, asking me questions like “how would I cope at a social event if I wasn’t drinking” and then telling me that I was “missing out”. Missing out on what I wondered, the hangover, the post party slump or talking to God on the great white telephone? It must be a very odd culture to those who don’t poison themselves with alcohol and one that really does not do the reputation of the western world any good at all.
I can relate Annie. I also used to drink mainly because it was expected and the normal thing to do. I remember not being able to handle alcohol at all and quite small amounts would have a extreme effect on my body and mind. Unfortunately it was quite a few years before I gave up. I don’t drink at all now and I have never felt more me.
Yes, I can relate to what you have written Anne. I thought for years that having a birthday meant a good excuse to drink alcohol and indulge in types of food that I wouldn’t normally eat etc. There was total disregard for how I felt the next few days as my body had to cope with the effects of what I had done. It feels so different now that I choose to not drink and to stick to a diet I know suits me, and I know my body is definitely grateful. Looking back I can see that I had learned to override what felt right for my body for years just to conform and fit in socially – what a trap!
Anne I agree with you, Going to the USA for the international sales meetings everyone is invited out for dinner and then down to the local bars to drink. I would leave after the dinner and go back to the hotel. I was the odd one out. The next day people were missing from the sales meeting, some would come in clearly hung over from the night before. There were some who would come up to me to say I wish I had been sensible and gone back to the hotel. But the next night they would all do it all over again. The lure of free alcohol and to be able to drink as much as you could was too tempting for many people. Also there was the need to fit in which was very strong and not to be seen as the party pooper which I clearly was.
It’s astounding that we can refer to the first scenario as a celebration at all… and yet, I remember many birthdays, Christmas days, New Years Eves and other alcohol-fuelled ‘celebrations’ that I had accepted as a ‘normal’ way of celebrating – always at the expense of my body.
I am so grateful that I now know what true celebration is, and I can live it every day, by celebrating myself and honouring my body in all I do. Celebration never felt so good.
Wow – pretty amazing change in just 4 years time. I too recall parties like the 30th one you describe (ugh) and really appreciate your honest description of that, as well as how different – and truly celebratory – your 34th birthday was.
I can just imagine the feeling of waking up the next morning and being amongst all of that mess. It would be horrible! Its awesome to hear that you celebrate You for You and don’t need all of that stuff that takes you away from yourself. Ill party with you any day!
Yes Harrison, the mess, the smell, the headaches, the low after the high. Something I never want to experience again.
This is something certainly worth celebrating, not having to use anything outside of myself to reward or confirm myself and the ability to recognise that all these other artificial things only provide temporary lifts or highs always and accompanied with the inevitable lows.
I agree Jenny because when you wake up from a party that was fuelled by alcohol, not only do you feel ghastly but all the problems or issues are still there with you they do not go away, in fact they can feel even worse because one of the many the downsides to drinking alcohol is the low that is experienced as you say, because of the high sugar content from the excessive alcohol intake.
Yes it really does expose the lovelessness when one has to face after a night of partying. How amazing to be choosing to celebrate stone, cold, sober instead of stoned! What a difference the next day feels like, smooth, joyful and fresh. A real treat in all senses of the word.
Me too – never again! It is now a very very long time ago that I chose this. I am so glad this is so totally and completely over.
Yes, one poison first numbs us as desired but then makes us sick so we use a second poison to numb us against the sickness and we use the first poison to beat the befuddledness of the second and introduce a third one (smoking) to at least feel something. Lurching from short buzz to heavy discomfort backward and forward.
What a turn around! A much healthier and joy-full way to celebrate you, on your birthday and every other day.
Yes what a turn around from joints and alcohol to a joyful celebration for self. I absolute love this open sharing of your changes, it must have been a big difference to feel the love in your body with your decisions to not wanting the waste of time anymore. Life becomes more joyful and purposeful once we allow love as our priority.
What a delight to read and what a difference in between your 30th & 34th birthday parties. I agree it is way more fun being sober and waking the next morning feeling fresh and lovely with no ill affects from the night before.
Yes that is truly treating and celebrating yourself, to wake feeling refreshed and full of beans after a beautiful celebration with friends.
Yes I agree, it is a strange concept Ariana. I am often struck by the comment “go on spoil yourself” or “I am going to spoil myself” often made when we are thinking about doing just that, consuming something that is going to spoil us. Why do we do that? I am finding out these days that the less I spoil myself, the better I feel, so the desire to alter my state of being diminishes. I have at long last, learnt about the real treats, the treats on your list and they stand head and shoulders above the ‘spoil yourself’ ones.
Thanks for sharing that word “spoil” Rowena. It really has an interesting meaning.
I have seen this with children and Grandparents… as if it is their right to spoil the kids, but there is no love in feeding the kids foods that are actually bad for their amazing little developing bodies.
Yes, treats can come in many shapes and forms…. I am off to treat myself to a walk on the beach with the dog!
I agree Sandra. It is so much more fun waking up sober and remembering the night before and the loving connections and conversations that bring us together. I absolutely love my sober life. It is more rich and full in so many ways.
What a magical celebration for yourself and a true reflection to everyone else to celebrate all that we are, because we are all amazing.
Definitely – this provides an amazing inspiration for everyone else to celebrate themselves in a way that doesn’t require wrecking their bodies in the process.
What a fantastic transformation. It is evident from your blog that you are finding so much more love in your life from your choice to make these significant changes. This is truly awesome.
Awesome insight into your way of partying and drug taking days etc. I like your openness and honesty. Can relate to some of it too. So great you can genuinely celebrate yourself now.
What a huge change you have made in your life, and how loving and supportive the changes are for the children. The way you described looking at yourself in the mirror shows a huge shift in your confidence and appreciation of yourself, as well as your vitality and health. I am about to celebrate my birthday, and I will take a cue from you, and make sure I appreciate myself, not just on my birthday but every day, as you are doing.
It’s great to read how much more content you are with yourself and how you recognised the harm of what you were doing to yourself with the way you used to celebrate your birthday. Serge Benhayon, Natalie Benhayon and the Universal Medicine Practitioners have been a great support for me also in breaking old patterns in a way that is transforming my life.
Contentment is one of the most difficult things to find in life, but I’m with you Shevon, with the support of Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine, re-connecting to that inner contentment that we all crave is entirely possible.
I had a laugh reading this because it was my birthday a few days ago on a Sunday and I worked solidly all day. I was working on a project that really needed attending to and doing what was needed was actually the most joyful thing for me to do. I don’t treat birthdays, Christmas, Easter or any of those days different to any other day why would I? Every day is special to me and as you say I can celebrate me any and every day.
So true Nicola, and I could treat every day as less if I make just one of the days more important and special in comparison to the others. What a waste, everyday can be as amazing as we wish to make it.
Yes, every day is pretty amazing. Suddenly there is little or no need to celebrate particular days. We do acknowledge birthdays and mention it to each other in a beautiful way but there doesn’t seem to be any need for more.
I agree with you Christoph, I don’t feel any need to celebrate any particular day unless it is a opportunity to have a lovely gathering and meal with people.
Yep that sounds exactly wonderful for me too – to just celebrate when it presents itself – relaxed, easy, joy-full and with no expectations.
Beautifully said Christoph – the ‘need for more’ has vanished, making every day equally joyfull.
You’re right Nicola. We treat these holidays and ‘special days’ as a reward… for what, time served? Getting through a long stretch at work? People who do shift work in essential services have long had to hit the notion of what constitutes ‘time off’ on the head. The approach you describe feels like a balanced and sensible one.
I enjoyed reading your comment Nicola on your working birthday and love what you say, “doing what was needed was actually the most joyful thing for me to do”. Exactly, and why wait to celebrate me on a birthday when I can do it every day?
I love how you make your birthday a normal day without need for any special attention. As long as you are with yourself and enjoying your own company, you will have a great day.
It is an awesome way to live, Nicola! Why wait for a whole year? Lets celebrate every day,in our unique and yet simple way.
Very true Nicola and what a joy it is too, when we un-hook ourselves from these annual celebrations and make every day an opportunity to appreciate and love, not only ourselves but others too. Each day is precious and special mainly because we are in it!
Isn’t it Ariana…..what a gift to see life this way.
Sometimes those are the best celebrations when we don’t make it more special than any other day. Me and my partner tried to arrange Valentines Day – dinner out and all that. I end up with food poisoning and we had to cancel the reservation. So instead we made the day about being with each other rather than making the day bigger than us as it was a beautiful day together.
What a lovely way to celebrate you – everyday and it’s so true that the way most people celebrate is not celebrating and all its so very very harming. We should call it harming not partying.
Amazing to read the transformation – a celebration of oneself on any day at any time is certainly the best gift you can receive.
Agreed Lee. This is an incredible transformation. It definitely shows us what is possible.
Yes the lifestyle of using drugs and/or alcohol is so harming on the body and on our well-being. Calling it harming and not partying is really confronting but only brings truth to it. It explains why people who drink or use drugs don’t want to do so around someone who isn’t doing that. I’ve certainly experienced that lifestyle before, so cannot judge another for it. I can understand though that there is an emptiness in doing so, which feeds more of the same emptiness. Getting “wasted” really is a “waste” of time, money, energy and our precious bodies.
I agree Simone, it’s amazing to read how a person celebrates their life everyday, in a way that doesn’t harm them or leave them so intoxicated they can’t stand. Defiantly up for redefineing partying.
It used to shock me when people talked about getting ‘wasted’, ‘wrecked’, ‘bombed’, ‘shot’, ‘trashed’, ‘plastered’, etc. How come people could actually say those things and go ahead and do it, apparently pretending that it’s OK even though the very words are a clear admission of what they are doing to themselves? There were times I was criticized as abnormal and ‘no fun’ for not wanting to partake, or having just a little and stopping early, when my friends were on the ‘wasted’ path. But guess who they came to when they needed support to clean up their lives and regain control?! Everyone is conscious of the choice they have whether to take the self-abusive, socially harmful road or the healthy, self-loving and all-loving road. Glad you made the latter choice!
So True Dianne, we are always consciously aware of what we are doing to ourselves. I often hear people saying they want to “get out of their heads” which to me makes no sense as if you just wanted to stop thinking, surely that is the same as just going to sleep? Unfortunately with so much hurt many of today choose to spend their birthday “out of their minds” than in their body’s feeling the amazingness that they are
It’s true Dianne, I too have wanted to get ‘stoned’ and ‘smashed’. The words do say it all, but the big question is why, why should grown up, ‘intelligent’ people want to do this to themselves? It was not until I met Universal Medicine that I could truly answer this question for myself. I know now that it arose from a deep self loathing and buried hurts that years of tender esoteric healing have supported me to feel and heal. Choosing the self loving and all loving road these days is an automatic choice rather than a choice I previously felt unworthy of. Feeling well, vital and joyful is now an option I naturally deserve and readily choose every day with absolutely no desire to return to the old self destructive behaviours in any shape or form.
Yes, indeed, Dianne and Rowena. When the tension and feeling of hurt is so great, asking for support is super important, or else we follow the usual trend of getting wasted and taking ourselves out of the equation so as not to feel anything. To reach a point where we ask ourselves why we are intent on deliberately abusing and destroying our bodies, is the first step in being able to turn things around.
Good point Janet, often our self worth is so low that asking for help is not an option. We can get stuck in a downward spiral, knowing that our problems are exasperated by our self abusive choices and then feeling we don’t deserve help. It’s a big question to ask, ‘why I am going to such extremes, what am I not wanting to feel?’. It has been such a deeply supportive question that has enabled me to get behind some very deep seated habits. And once I did it gave me an opportunity to release the hurts, heal the wounds and take another step closer to reconnecting to my true worth and inner beauty.
True Rowena, all they are is deeply ingrained habits and once we make a commitment to change we can dig ourselves of the groove and truly ditch these habits forever, as we are not our habits, although we can let them own us. Coming to this realisation has helped me enormously too and I no longer choose to limit myself by going back into old patterns of behaviour and habitual responses that I have chosen in the past.
It is not always so easy as just changing your choices or asking for support. I know for me that to ask for support, I would have to get honest and also deal with the shame of it all… and sometimes that felt like too much.
Great point Rowena. Can we make the choice to not ‘get smashed’ if our sense of self worth is so low that that there doesn’t seem to be any other option? It seems to me that the start to changing this so that the choice can be made, is by admitting to ourselves that getting smashed is self-abuse and that we no longer want to do this to ourselves.
I agree with your expression Dianne – and in the end it all comes down to a choice.
I know from experience that sometimes we don’t even realise that we even have a choice. I am not blaming anyone for this, but when everything around you confirms that way of living and there are no other role models, you think it is normal. Sometimes you may feel (in a moment of not being completely numb) that there must be another way, but if you don’t see it, its easy to give up.
The way of drugs and alcohol is so common in society – but certainly not normal. And it is getting worse. I hear more and more stories of people using Ice, and basically becoming psychotic very very quickly. This is not normal and certainly not a celebration of any sort!
It sure is not normal, and is VERY COMMON, but it doesn’t even shock people so much these days, or it kind of is accepted even if it doesn’t feel right. It’s as if no one knows how to deal with it, so they hope someone else will.
No it is certainly not normal Marianna, but unfortunately it seems to be widely accepted. An entire world numbing itself, the question is what are they running away from? Themselves maybe, and the fact that they cannot bear to feel their hurts and choose instead to check out and pretend that their ‘problems’ will just go away. Just because they can’t feel them doesn’t mean to say that they don’t exist.
So well said Dianne. Exactly by the words used ‘trashed, wasted, plastered, bombed’ etc it is an admission of the harm people do to themselves when they choose to so called ‘celebrate’. You are totally correct, we all do always have a choice and it is awesome Anonymous chose the latter path.
Reading those harsh and self abusive words Dianne Trussell and feeling the impact of them, is indeed enough to stop oneself in one’s own tracks. When we are on that destructive path, our self awareness and self loathing is at an all time low and we don’t even feel it – or do we? It is so common place to disregard this miraculous body we have. I have learnt to appreciate the wonder of me so much more and am committed to my relationship with me thanks to Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine. We can’t stop sharing how precious and significant we are, until everyone feels it in themselves and can automatically appreciate that preciousness in another. Celebrating ourselves is a wonderful start!
Awesome, I can definitely relate. I loved the way you explained that being able to appreciate your own face in the mirror on your most recent birthday was a beautiful gift. I can feel that this gift is something you also give the world, not just on your birthday, but every day.
I agree, this gift keeps on giving as does the insight that ‘getting wasted’ is something we do, because it’s assumed that’s what we do… I love how simply you made a choice to make life about connection and others joined you.
Yes this struck me too Joel, and if no one showed up for the meal, a date with yourself on your birthday would be a loving way to spend it! That is how much we can truly appreciate who we are, to ourselves, first!
Yes there is such a culture around partying in that way, to get drunk, out of it or wasted. I never thought that I could have so much fun without any stimulants, downers or uppers, but now I know I can and its great. And the consequences are waking up each day with a radiant face to greet the world with, is as you say Leonne and Joel, true gift to give everyone everyday.
Waking up and knowing that you will never be hungover again is an incredible feeling that I love, that most days I wake up and love what is ahead of me for the day, that I want to be part of it, that I love getting ready for the day, looking in the mirror celebrating me is a much more wonderful way to spend your days compared to the alcohol ‘fun’ I had in the past, wins hands down.
I agree Vanessa, it feels amazing to know I will never be hungover again, it’s such a relief not to be harming my body with toxins in order to have a good time.
I am with you there Vanessamchardy, waking up and loving what the day has ahead of me, wanting to be a part of it, and enjoying it is how I live these days and it is so worth celebrating. Much better than dreading the day, or work and making it worse than it actually is.
And the added bonus to no hangover, is no more bleary eyes, no more sick to the stomach feeling and wanting to eat more, no more wasting days curled up on the sofa and no more extra work for my body to rid itself of the poison. No alcohol has passed my lips for almost 4 years and I feel better than I ever have. I agree Vanessa, celebrating me is a wonderful way to spend the day, and so much more fun.
Well said Vanessa – and very relatable. A friend recently asked my why I’d never drink again. As I told him I found him nodding and then opening up about how terrible he feels the following morning, even after a few drinks. Time for a long look in the mirror 😉
I really loved that in celebrating their birthday for them they chose a restaurant they wanted to go to and sent a text around to friends inviting them if they wanted to go and then went there. There was no expectations from anyone it was really simple and regardless of anything or anyone that is what they were going to do. Very inspiring .. with no attachments.
Yes that is very true Vicky, I often have found that if I don’t have any expectations, and honour my feelings in the moment, then things seems to work out perfectly, just going with the flow does work. And if things don’t work out I know that I have had some kind of agenda going on.
That is a great reminder to keep things simple and easy .. if it is simple and easy it flows; the minute we get ourselves in the way and make it complicated it doesn’t happen!
Great reminder Sandra – “…if things don’t work out I know that I have had some kind of agenda going on”. It is well to remember that so we can look deeper into the hidden aspect.
Leone I agree. To be able to look oneself in the mirror and love what we see is so amazing and something we bring to everyone every day.
I’m reminded of my responsibility to love myself and know there are times I am critical when I look at myself in the mirror. This article is a great inspiration to turn from avoiding me to appreciating me and celebrating me everyday!
That what I’ll be wishing for on my Birthday… wait a minute I can get that any day.
That’s lovely Luke, and absolutely right, we are worth celebrating every day.
Exactly Luke, why wait until your birthday to celebrate you, with you.
Love it Luke
Perfect Luke!
Yes, there is nothing better than being ourselves, all the time. Birthdays then become irrelevant – I feel great, what else could there be?
That feeling of “being in love with myself” feels light and joyous and a true cause for celebration, and that feeling becomes infectious and spreads for others to feel, so one big party and no one ultimately loses out!
that’s funny Luke!
So true Luke – as can we all 😉
Yes, ain’t it awesome when we realise that we can celebrate ourselves, each and every day and that no one day is more important or more special than another.
This is so true Leonne- it is a daily gift to look at ourselves everyday when we are in front of the mirror, and one that I love giving myself each day. For me it has not only supported me to build appreciation for myself but it has allowed me to be able to meet others with that same level of engagement. In the past I never really looked at ME in the mirror , only the external parts of me that the world saw, and at this time, the way I engaged with others was in a very ‘darty’ way. At that time, I found it difficult to even hold eye contact with people, let alone look deeply into their eyes and allow them to look deeply into mine.
I remember Johanna that up until the last several years, I could never look people in the eye. I was always uncomfortable with this that I would look at their lips instead. I now love truly meeting people and looking them deeply in the eye. I know that I am only capable of doing this now because I have met myself.
That’s an interesting point johanna08smith about how you looked at your self was also reflected in how you could look at someone else. Thanks for sharing. I will have to have to watch how that plays out for me.
Johanna your description of looking in a ‘darty’ way at people was exactly the same for me. My eyes would flit from the person I was talking to, to the background behind them and then roam around, flitting momentarily back on them. I have found that I am now able to rest my eyes on another’s eyes, although occasionally when I am feeling uncomfortable then I still find it hard to hold steady eye contact. I have found recently that I have looked very deeply into my own eyes in the mirror and felt myself to be very beautiful indeed.
How wonderful to be so embracing of the love that we are we – cannot but share it with everyone we meet. What a beautiful way to live and celebrate!
I relate to this blog too. I used to think that a good celebration was judged by the severity of the hangover you had the next day. The more hung over, the better the party must have been…awful. One of the things that I noticed is that there is actually a shame that we carry in getting wasted – doing so in the past prevented my from connecting with people that I actually loved dearly because I didn’t want them to know what I was doing (like I could hide it )! It is so wonderful to not have that thing to hide and to be able to be open and honest, and stand tall in who I am!
In affect, every day is a new birth day, another chance to make more loving choices for ourselves and to celebrate and appreciate who we truly are and keep appreciating the reflection that we get back when we look in the mirror.
Very true and always good to remind ourselves this…just as we have an opportunity to make the loving and serving choice thousands of times a day.
Hi Leonne,
I just re read your comment and really appreciated it and understood what you have written. When we hide from our own reflection or do not like what we see, this is what we are also showing and sharing with the world. Yet when we shine and glow, this too is what the world gets, and we all know how powerful and inspiring it is to be around someone who is just beaming!
What a transformation for you and a celebration of you, a simple act of appreciating yourself and your body – how beautiful is that, congratulations… I feel you celebrate your birth each day and making every day a holy day.
I love that sentiment Susan, “making every day a holy day”, connecting to that feeling of “holiness, or sacredness” within is awesome and makes every day worth waking up too, it feels delicious.
I agree Susan, we can celebrate ourselves every day, and it doesn’t require anything special – it simply requires us being ourselves, or as Anonymous puts it… “celebrating me”..!
That’s right, it doesn’t require anything special, just appreciating every little self-loving thing we do for ourselves… well I suppose you could say that doing that IS rather special, and should be celebrated.
I have spent too many years being my own “personal party pooper”, but thanks to Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine I am beginning to appreciate me, and in the appreciation of me I am truly learning to appreciate others too. Let’s all celebrate us together!
I just felt to reply to my own comment here, and appreciate myself 🙂
Here’s to not holding back or hiding anymore and appreciating ourselves for where we are at, and how far we have come and the possibilities of what can be achieved if we truly start get real and commit …
People think “your dreaming if you celebrate yourself everyday”
Well this blog says, watch me! 😛
In the most respectful way of course 😉
Luke, you go ahead and celebrate yourself… you’re awesome.
Life does really become a celebration the more we connect to the love and grandness that is inside, it just happens that way. Life can truly become just one big smile.
Good on you Luke! It is great to read this and hear people starting to look at life with more love and respect and knowing that it starts from within first.
Yes, watch me as you are just like me and we can all make the same choices or not.
I love the way in which you contrast your life now with what it has been in the past and how honestly you share this. It is a testament to the joy and life you have found since feeling the beauty and love that you are. Your sharing this with others, inspires us to connect with the love and beauty we ALL truly are. Thank you
I love that too – ‘celebrating me’ – just beautiful.
And every day, thats gorgeous.
I agree this resonated with me. ‘I was shown something beautiful – me.’ Something we can all celebrate everyday.
Beautifully expressed Bernadette, very inspirational sharing, thank you claimed beautiful woman in the picture
Can’t agree with you more Bernadette. This blog left me feeling truly connected to the beauty that resides in us all equally so. There is the true celebration for each and everyday.
Yes Bernadette, I agree that is really a high contrast how Anonymous had changed and that makes it so inspirational for me. And therefore I like to join in to celebrate us all – in every single moment of our day.
I agree Bernadette, and it also shows that no matter what choices we have made or perhaps will make, the choice to change is never out of reach and the results speak for themselves.
So true Rebecca, the choices to change are never out of reach and everyone can do it. It is the will that has to be there in the first place and the awareness that something needs a change.
And this required honesty and self responsibility.
That’s right Monika, with the will and the awareness there is nothing stopping us in making those loving changes that we know we can make, with a little commitment to ourselves, slowly but surely.
That is the big take home message for me from this blog. No matter how far we appear to move away from the truth of who we are, we can always come back and it can be quite simple. What this blog highlights is this has to be from rekindling love and care for ourselves, not just wanting things to be better. It also confirms something that Serge Benhayon has presented over the years. Although those caught up in drugs or alcohol seem the most lost, they are actually more honest than many of us who appear to have the answers.
I love what you have pointed out here, because those that do get caught up in drugs and alcohol, you can see it, and there is a real honesty there. No hiding or denial as such yet there are many other ways that we can get lost and some are a lot more hidden and people even champion them as successful yet they often don’t really feel that way underneath the mask.
It is a major contrast isn’t it!! It is a testament of joy as you say, where as previously it was something very fake and artificial! Joy never leaves you with a hangover!
I so don’t miss the fake and artificial or try hard.. and yes, there is no hangover with joy, there is just more joy.
Anonymous, I just love your blog. I love what you say “But this year it was really just about celebrating me. I had no expectation and no need for it to be anything and because of that, I was shown something beautiful – me.” How wonderful for you to be celebrating yourself and how far you have come. Absolutely awesome. I salute you and your birthday celebration. How different to that of 4 years ago.
Yes Beverley, huge transformation in 4 years. Definitely time to celebrate.
This truly is a HUGE transformation in such a short period of time. The beauty in all of this is the commitment made to continue honouring yourself and that is what makes the transformation a solid foundation to build on.