It’s my birthday month, and that has had me thinking.
I’ve always been a bit old school about birthdays. One day has always felt like enough for me. A nice meal, a bit of time with people I love, and that’s it. No birthday week, no birthday month. Just a day that marks the passing of another year.
But this year feels a little different. I’ll be heading back to England a week after my birthday to spend time with family and friends, and I suppose in a very quiet way, I am stretching the celebration out without really meaning to.
It’s made me think about how much has changed in the way we celebrate things.
We seem to live in a world where everything has to be fitted in, squeezed between work and life and all the things we’re trying to keep on top of. Even the moments that are meant to be joyful can end up feeling a little rushed. Birthdays, Christmas, anniversaries… even weddings.
And I’ve never quite understood why we accept that.
Because celebrations aren’t interruptions to life. They are life.
They are the markers that tell our story. The birthdays that remind us we’re another year further on than we were before. The Christmases where families finally sit down together. The weddings that begin something entirely new.
And yet so often, by the time we get to the end of one of those days, it already feels like it’s over before we’ve had a chance to really be in it.
I think that’s why I’ve always felt so strongly about weddings needing time.
Not because they need to be bigger or more complicated, but because they deserve space. Space for people to arrive without rushing. Space for laughter that isn’t squeezed between suppliers and schedules. Space for a morning after where everyone is still there and still together and still talking about what happened the night before.
I never wanted the English Country Barn to feel like somewhere where one wedding is packed out and another is already coming in the gate. There’s something about that idea that never felt right to me. These are people’s most important memories. They shouldn’t feel like they’re on a conveyor belt.
And I think that’s where the idea of things like birthday weeks and wedding weekends comes from, whether people realise it or not. It isn’t really about extending anything for the sake of it.
It’s about giving ourselves permission to enjoy the moment we are already in.
To not rush the ending.
To let it unfold properly.
So perhaps my birthday month isn’t really a birthday month at all. Perhaps it’s just a reminder that the best moments in life are the ones we actually give ourselves time to feel.
And that’s something I keep coming back to more and more.
The good things in life don’t ask to be rushed.
They ask to be lived.
Teresa
