I made it another year. When we’re children, birthdays are joyous celebrations of our existence. If we’re lucky, our friends and family shower us with love and appreciation in gladness that we were born.

As I age, birthdays are still celebrations that I exist and that I was born, and I am lucky to have friends and family who shower me with love. I still love birthdays despite being a grown almost-50-year-old adult. There’s been a shift in recent years, though, where I know the clock is ticking down instead of up. The celebration of my existence is not so much “Yeah! I exist!” as “Yeah! I’m still here!”

Sometimes on my birthday, I like to get out my tarot deck and pull 13 cards for the year to come: one card for each month, and one card to represent the entire year. I think I skipped this last year, but I lit a candle this morning and pulled cards today. This is kind of a big year. It’s the final year we have a child at home. My husband and I have been married 25 years, and we have spent the past 20 of them raising our kids.

The tarot card I pulled to represent the coming year is the final card of the tarot story: The World. The World card represents closure. Completion. Wholeness at the end of a major journey. The symbols in the card represent balance and harmony, the indestructability of knowledge, and being at ease with yourself after the journey you’ve been on. It’s a beautiful card, possibly my favorite in the tarot deck, and is an auspicious one for a big and emotional year ahead.

I’m still here. I look forward to this year with our daughter, and I’m glad our son is within a couple hours drive. I am paying close attention to health and nutrition and fitness so I can enjoy our time with them, so I can be around for another few turns of the wheel, and so I’ll be ready whatever our next life journey will be.