Hey friends, welcome to Girls Night. I'm Stephanie Maywelsen and I am so happy that you're

here. Each week I have a girlfriend over and we talk through one of the biggest questions

we have about our lives as women. We're talking about friendships and faith and relationships

and self-confidence, about our calling in life and how to live every bit of our lives

to the absolute full. Life is so much better, and easier, and absolutely more fun when we

navigate it together as girlfriends and I cannot wait to get started. Our guest for

today's episode is my very best friend Kelsey Bennett. Kelsey's an amazing makeup artist

and she's the community coordinator for a missions organization I just love, experience

mission. She's also my person. I saved this in the episode, but if I had a board of advisors

in my life, I'm pretty sure Kelsey would be the chairwoman. She's just my favorite

person to go to for advice. She's my wisest council and she's my favorite friend to

laugh with. I am so excited to share her with you today. And I'm so excited about today's

topic. Today we're going to be talking about birthdays. Tell me if this sounds familiar.

Your birthdays coming up and you want to be excited. It's your day after all. It's

a day to celebrate you and to celebrate your life and to celebrate with your family

and your friends. But excited isn't always our primary emotion when we think about an

upcoming birthday. First of all, there are so many questions that come up when it comes

to our birthdays. How do we celebrate them? Do we plan a party for ourselves? Do we wait

for someone else to do it? Do we admit that we want to be celebrated? Do we downplay

it? And if we downplay it, do we get to feel sad and disappointed when the celebration

doesn't feel as big, as personal or as special as we were hoping it would? Birthdays also

bring up a lot of other things for us. They're a reminder of the passing of time, a check

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