Today is my 50th birthday and, oh, I had big plans for this day. I had planned to have sold my book, fixed my bad back, and bought a shack in the mermaid woods.
I’ve always carried out my plans, having learned super-early to transform shit into gold. But with respect to Elizabeth Warren, 2020 showed us we make plans, God laughs—and sometimes shit is just shit.
You’re thinking: No shit, Sherlock! But recent financial and physical hardships have taught me I was treating the Universe, Allah, HaShem, the Force, the Flow, the Morphic Field of Resonance, the Divine Feminine—whatever you call God—as Santa Claus. That my faith was contingent on the granting of my wishes—an un-evolved if common approach to spirituality.
The bigger truth is sometimes there’s no payoff to our shit except for the enormous payoff of accepting what is, rather than what we want. And the only agency we really possess is the choice of whether to embrace the divine mystery in its fullest, starkest form. Only then can we open the door to true magic, which is this beautiful thing called life.
So as I reach this milestone age, I admit I am knee-deep in disappointment and regret. But registering this shit allows me to also register the beauty I don’t need to dress up at all. My beautiful permakitten and city and solitude. The beautiful many who have reached out with gelt, gifts, and good advice, company, and wishes—not just today but over the last 50 years. In this morning’s meditation I flashed on my Grandma Alice—a 
green witch who died a day before my 18th birthday and has protected me ever since. Just then, a green painting flew off my wall.
The point? We each live in a network of care and practical magic even when we can’t sense it, and it supports us even when it can’t stop bad things from happening. So as I transition from puella to space crone—from starry-eyed young woman to middle-aged broad living in the stars–let me say the Stones were right. We don’t always get what we want. But we get what we need. I’m so lucky I get you.