How birthdays impact our mental health...thoughts from a licensed psychologist

Do you ever feel weird about your birthday?

Next week, I celebrate my last birthday in my thirties.

AKA my second covid birthday.

Otherwise known as, my 39th year of life.

Those of us who have celebrated a birthday since February or March of 2021 are going through our second covid birthday.

Last year, we told ourselves that we’d be able to celebrate as per normal in 2021.

The only problem is, the pandemic is still here, botching up everything and meaning that we’re putting off some of our plans and hopes for the second year in a row.

And this is leading to a strange sense of grief, perhaps grief that is buried beneath the surface, or sadness that rests on the tip of your tongue, difficult to fully understand or articulate.

What does your second covid birthday mean to you?

I’ve always had mixed feelings about birthdays. Maybe it started with my third birthday when my parents thought it would be a great idea to have a :::deep inhale::: clown as part of the day’s festivities. Perhaps it was then when I started associating birthdays with scary, not-good things. (The pictures of me shrieking and flailing away from the clown’s arms in terror, however, are pretty hilarious, and perhaps not surprisingly, are deeply etched in my memory and come to mind whenever I’m within visual range of one of the well-intentioned, heavily made-up horrors.)

In the birthdays since the clown incident, I’ve struggled with comparing myself to others my age, often feeling entirely inadequate in some sort of messed up “accomplishment Olympics” that no one is paying attention to but me. Can anyone else relate?

Birthdays, if we allow them to be, can do some serious damage to our mental health. They can be a time for not feeling good enough, a time for comparing our non-existent life scorecard with others our age, or a time to reflect on the ways life or other people have disappointed us.

Ugh. Not exactly inspiring, is it?

As human beings, we are experts in bringing meaning to everything.

A red flower of a certain variety means romance.

A clear, hard rock with a level of rarity means valuable.

A piece of fabric with some stripes and stars can mean something entirely different depending on who you speak to.

Whether we realize it or not, each and everyone one of us has a meaning we connect with our birthday.

Try it for yourself. Fill in the blank: “Birthdays mean _____________.”

What did you write in the blank, and how do you feel about it?

I used to fill in the blank like this:

• Birthdays mean: disappointment.

• Birthdays mean: feeling not enough compared to everyone else.

• Birthdays mean: having to celebrate publicly in a prescribed way.

I don’t feel proud to admit this.

But here’s what I’ve come to understand.

We always have the power to fill in the blank differently.

We always have the opportunity to redefine what something means to us - a day, an experience, a difficulty.

We have the power to choose the power we give something in our minds.

So, here is my birthday declaration on this awkward, not-quite-a-round-number, second covid birthday:

• Birthdays mean: a chance for self-reflection, not self-destruction.

• Birthdays mean: I have the power to choose what I want to experience and how I want to feel today and always.

• Birthdays mean: an opportunity to focus on the wins, not the losses.

• Birthdays mean: another year of life is a gift, even if I’m not 100% where I want to be.

• Birthdays mean: I am a work in progress, and I choose to celebrate the progress.

Do you want to change how you see your birthday? What else would you add?

Wishing you to feel empowered enough to fill in the blanks however you wish.