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10 Women Get Real About Turning 40

Is it as bad as you think? Spoiler: It's so. much. better.

by Lindsay Tigar | COMMENT

PHOTO 1/11

"I didn't realize I'd start getting called 'old.'" After the age of 37, Karen Dowing Horiz, soul mission facilitator at Your Soul Mission, stopped giving weight to her age, and instead, based her perception of getting older on how she felt. Even so, as 40 inched closer and closer, she was curious if this entrance into a new decade would be as life-altering as many thought it to be. When she made it to the be 4-0, though? She said very little felt different from turning 30, except she was happier and less stressed. Surprisingly though, it was how other people responded to the year she was born that caught her off guard. "So many other people would say how 'old' I was getting. It was weird. Friends and family seem a lot more focused on my age than I was. I think it is their realization of knowing someone since childhood who is now turning 40, that made them feel as if they were the one who were old. I don't feel that way, and I don't use that term to describe myself at all," she shared.

Image via Irene Tse Photography

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