So this weekend I have had my birthday. I am now 49 years old and I am incredibly grateful for that. I have always loved birthdays and I usually try to make mine last as long as I can. Since Claytie died tho, there is a level of anxiety that comes with the day – I am grateful to be able to celebrate a new number, I am really lucky – but at the same time I am so incredibly sad that Clayties numbers stopped changing at 46. It is not fair.

I have been super fortunate to be able to spend my birthday weekend this year at the beach with some of my favourite people. I watched the sun come up and faced it front-on in my birthday suit. Standing naked in nature is an incredibly liberating feeling I have done it several times now and I love it! I can tell you my kids are probably less fond of the evidence, but mostly they just laugh at me!

My girlfriends and I have walked in the sand, been thrown around by waves, talked about all manner of things, laughed, eaten and drunk way too much and I have enjoyed every minute. It has been a proper recharge for the soul. Sunrise has been different each morning, and I have loved them all. I think that watching the sun come up at the ocean is one of my very favourite things!- and I love the wild, windy, crazy days the best.

In the last week I also got a new tattoo… an Aboriginal art inspired dragonfly. It is my second dragonfly tattoo and it felt just right to get it done. Dragonflies signify change, transformation, adaptability and self realisation, all things that I have had to learn and implement in so many new and different ways since Claytie died. I have had to adjust my whole world in ways that I would never have guessed at, and I think for the most part, I am doing ok.

My life at the moment feels a whole lot like I am at a crossroad – there are a bunch of things going on for me, some good, and some not so fun. It is times like this that I particularly miss Claytie. He was always my sounding board for every decision, and while I have people I can talk to, it will never be the same. I have had to realise that I have to make sure I put myself first and trust my gut to know what’s right for me. That realisation that I am on my own, never gets any easier… my person is gone.

There isn’t a single day that goes by, that he is not part of, and I wish more than anything that this wasn’t the way our story turned out… but then I remind myself that in the grand scheme of things, I am not actually anything special, none of us are. This shit happens to people every single day. We are all going to lose someone life changing at some point in our lives. For some it is early and for others late. Some get a timeframe due to illness and for others like us it happens in an unexpected instant. It is horrendous any way you look at it, but it is life, and none of us are exempt. For me, that reminder helps a whole lot more with living than I would have expected.

I do the things that I have to do, so that I can do the things that I want to, and I do it because that’s what Claytie would have expected and done himself. It would be easy to curl into a ball and be miserable, but that is not who I am and it is not who Claytie loved. I live my life for both of us and I don’t ever overlook how lucky I am. I have a whole lot of things that I hope to be able to do before my next birthday, on my own and with other people. I am grateful for the luck that I have had and I hope that I continue to be this lucky.