Welcome to birthday season!
As many of you know, birthday season is a BIG deal in my world. Our busiest months are September and October when we celebrate the birthdays of all our children and extended family members (including myself!) I have a container of decorations that I use year after year, hanging colorful streamers down our kitchen windows and placing birthday banners throughout the house. Bright balloon weights serve as centerpieces, their metallic shimmer adding a festive vibe to our celebrations. Traditions are significant, so each birthday morning the celebrated child or adult awakens to a birthday plate resting on a celebration-themed placemat where they then receive their requested birthday breakfast to start their day with a smile.
This year was exceptionally grand in birthday celebrations as I hit the motherload of milestones: my 50th birthday!
Unlike some who may bemoan the inevitable impacts of aging, I am so excited to enter this next decade, I can barely contain my joy! Seriously! I feel like I’ve been waiting to be 50 for the past 50 years! Don’t get me wrong, I had incredible adventures in my forties which included travel, career accomplishments, and watching my children grow from babies to teens to adults. I might even say that this past decade has been the most enjoyable with all the memories made. But now I am 50! Halfway to 100! The best is yet to come!
Ten years ago, when I turned 40, I celebrated my birthday by completing 40 random acts of kindness (RAKs) and blogging stories about each act of kindness, no matter how large or small. That project transformed my life as a kindness cultivator as I began to see the world through a lens of empathy and compassion. When the 40th act of kindness was done, I knew this had become my life’s purpose: to show love to the world through kindness.
Now here we are, ten years later, and the passion for kindness continues! It’s a perfect time to dive back into a year-long kindness project to make the world a better place as I lead, love, and learn. It’s in that spirit of reflection on the past and excitement for the future that I am kicking off my next kindness project: 50 RAKs for 50 Years!
Throughout the next year, I will document 50 acts of kindness to share with the world, as a living legacy of the power of kindness to transform the lives of others. In addition to writing blog posts and sharing photos and videos on social media, it’s my hope that you, too, might want to share stories of your acts of kindness, too!
If you complete an act of kindness, no matter how big or small, I want to hear about it! Here’s a link you can use to share your kind act with me (and others!): https://bit.ly/Share50RAKs This link will be open now through September 30, 2023, so feel free to use the link as many times as you like!
I’m excited to scatter kindness in such a monumental way again as I’ve seen first-hand the direct impact kindness has had on others. Three cheers for 50 years! It’s going to be an AMAZING journey ahead! I hope you enjoy the stories to come and may they inspire you to share kindness, too!
