When Dana asked me to write a piece for this series, I was touched that she would think of me, and also slightly terrified. I would have to look at my current reality, and stop pretending time isn\u2019t moving at warp speed. At 39, I find myself a month away from being an empty nester (the tears well up just at the thought of it). I live in Southern California, and I am the mother of two incredible daughters; Karley (22) and Sadie (18). Karley very recently moved to Boston to start her career, and Sadie will be heading off to college all too soon. It is absolutely breathtaking how fast my girls grew up. I was a single parent since day one, no weekends off or support of any kind. As difficult as that could be at times, I\u2019m so grateful for it. It was twice the work,\u00a0but also twice the reward. And I now find myself at a place where I\u2019m figuring out who I am beyond that role. The question I am constantly asked these days is, \u201cWhat will you do with yourself now?\u201d. The truth is, I have no clue. I\u2019ll figure it out as I go. I\u2019ve been a mom for almost 23 of my 39 years. It\u2019s hard to imagine anything else. In many ways, my life will remain the same. The quietness will probably be the hardest to get used to, my house is always so full of laughter and music. Luckily, I have nieces and nephews that live nearby that will gladly keep their Auntie company. I also have a wonderful group of friends; smart, funny, successful women. We\u2019re all about chasing that illusive work\/life balance. Whether we\u2019re at an art show, a concert, dinner or just\u00a0singing karaoke at our local bar, we always have a great time. We laugh obnoxiously, flirt shamelessly and enjoy every minute of our very limited free time. I\u2019m looking forward to many more of those nights in the future. This is my life at 39ish. *Stay tuned for more posts in\u00a0this blog series celebrating our many different views of 39ish Life! Love more, Dana<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":512,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[23],"tags":[145,18,19,21,146,144],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.39ishlife.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/39ishMaggie.png?fit=714%2C502&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":false,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7h0AN-3c","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.39ishlife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.39ishlife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.39ishlife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.39ishlife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.39ishlife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=198"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.39ishlife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":523,"href":"https:\/\/www.39ishlife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198\/revisions\/523"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.39ishlife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/512"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.39ishlife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=198"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.39ishlife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=198"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.39ishlife.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=198"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}