It’s been an emotional start to the year.

After dancing into 2025 with bubbles and my boyfriend, 1 January began with a hike up my favourite peak. Photos were taken, the awe of the spectacular surroundings soaked in—ooohhhs, aaaahhhhhs, and views for days.

Then came the descent.

Down the mountain… and down my mood.

 

It’s 2025.

The year I turn 40.

 

Forty.

That mythical year I used to imagine when I was 30.

 

Back then, I held a quiet certainty about what the next decade would bring: a home, a husband, and at least two—probably three—children.

 

Mountains are where heart-to-heart conversations thrive. As I scrambled down the hot rocks, the words tumbled out:

“F*ck. I turn 40 this year.”

 

He’s not a boy—he’s a man with a boyish spirit for fun and adventure. But a man, nonetheless.

 

“Forty’s still young,” he said. “And you don’t look anything like 40.”

 

The truth? I don’t feel a day over 28.

But the words came anyway.

 

“I don’t have the things I thought I’d have. The house. The husband. The babies.”

 

He was quiet for a moment. I imagine he was thinking, Oh dear…

 

My tears fell. I sniffed up a running nose.

 

He finally said, “Everyone has it differently. I’m 50 with two failed marriages—well, one and a half (don’t ask)—and a child who lives in another country. We live… and things turn out the way they do.”

And it’s true.

A few days later, I sat beneath the trees in a local park, holding back tears as I confided in my oldest, dearest friend. The one I’ve grown up with. The one who’s two years younger, who had the fairy-tale wedding (with its own private heartbreaks—because all that glitters isn’t gold). She has the husband, the home, the three kids under six. She had a little boy, tried for another, and got twins.

 

Twins! I’ve always felt I’d have twins.

 

And yet here I am, a few months from 40, boarding a plane, off on another adventure…

With the man of my dreams—who doesn’t want to do the kid thing again.

 

But I digress.

 

Back to under the tree.

I told her, “This is the year I turn 40.”

 

She smiled gently. “Ah, [your name]… but the life you’ve lived. The travels, the experiences—like no other.”

 

And it’s true.

But I never imagined it would be one or the other.

 

Homes and husbands can come at any age.

But it’s the tick-tock baby clock—that quiet biological programming—that’s got me so muddled up.

 

So here I am. I’ve got to lay it out, in black and white. Because I am in a predicament:

 

[  ] Decide and come to peace with “no.” Let go. Mourn. And make peace with a life that is full in other ways.

 

[  ] Freeze eggs. It’s a safety net, but with it comes the weight of expectation and hope. Am I just prolonging the question?

 

[  ] Decide to try. But not now. And the truth is, I don’t know if I’ll ever really want to.

 

“I beg you, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them.

And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now.

Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.”

—Rainer Maria Rilke