Normalize Prioritizing Time To Celebrate Yourself
Normalize prioritizing time to celebrate yourself.
As someone who genuinely loves celebrating others and who spends the majority of my time creating to amplify and help others, I've often struggled to do the same for myself.
This year, for the first time in many years, I made an intentional shift by finally choosing to celebrate my birthday, and it turned out to be incredibly healing.
Pausing to reflect on another year of my life gave me space to honor how much I've grown, cherish time with loved ones, and focus on gratitude while setting new personal goals for the year ahead.
I'm just immensely grateful to everyone who made me feel so seen and loved this birthday month. It was, without a doubt, the best July I've had since 2016, and that's all because of the incredible people in my life that I'm so blessed to know.
Birthdays have always been a time of reflection for me growing up. My family would get me a new Indian outfit, and we’d go to the temple together as a family and have prasadam for breakfast. Then my mom would cook my favorite food for lunch, and then we’d go out to dinner. Since it’s in the summer, birthdays were usually only with my family since we’d either be home or traveling together. If we were in India, then my extended family and cousins who were in Hyderabad would join too.
As a teen who was sent to boarding school for a few years, birthdays were spent with my fellow classmates and teachers, often along with other students who had July birthdays. It was the one day I didn't have to wear any uniforms and could wear anything within reason that felt authentically me. I could request a cake flavor of my choosing, and it was quite the contrast to when I went to school in the US and never got to celebrate with classmates due to summer holidays.
After boarding school, I spent a lot of time alone through high school as my parents travelled and my brother was in med school, so I preferred being alone on my birthday with the occasional small group friend outing for dinner. But honestly, sometimes I just loved taking a day for myself, going to temple in the morning per tradition, and then napping, gaming, reading, watching a movie, creating, and really just existing in a cozy way in complete solitude. It was around this time that I started creating vision boards during my birthday month, too. In fact, I'd continue to create my annual vision board during my birthday month until I found the love of my life, Adam, and we began sharing this wild human experience of life together, so we started a new tradition of creating our vision boards together each January instead.
There were a few birthdays that stood out: my 1st, 13th, and 25th. The first being for the family that I don’t remember, but have seen plenty of photos and videos from. The 13th was kind of like my debut to everyone my family knew in India (honestly felt like a mini Indian wedding reception where only I was the star), and while I appreciate my parents for all they did that day, it was way too much for an introverted me at the time. Love the custom gold dress I wore, though. And people I had never met kept giving me envelopes of money, so as a teen, I was ecstatic about that until my parents took it to save for the future. 25th was celebrated at Faluknama Palace after accomplishing a personal goal of mine. It was kind of a throwback to my birthdays with the core 4 of my family, but now for the first time as adults. It was the last time the 4 of us celebrated something like this to this day, as our schedules and lives took us to different parts of the world, so I’ll always hold it near and dear to my heart.
At this point, Adam was in my life, and we were long-distance for the 25th, so my first birthday with him in person was when he surprised me for my 26th. I got up early and went to the temple by myself per tradition. Then, later, I changed out of my new sari (which he saw me in for the first time) and went to brunch with Adam. Little did I know that while we were gone, he gave my key to his family to surprise me. The only other time I was surprised for my birthday was once in college when friends snuck into my dorm room as I was coming back home from my 21st with my family at home in between Summer 1 and Summer 2 semesters. That year was actually a notable one too, as I went to Louisiana to celebrate with some college buddies, but that’s a story for another time.
Anyways, back to the 26th, we got back from brunch and Adam’s family had decorated my place, with my first ever piñata that was an elephant because it’s my favorite animal, but I didn’t have the heart to hit it. Still have it to this day, though, and it always brings a smile to my face. His sister, who is a phenomenal baker, made me a cake, and everyone from his mom to his aunts to his grandparents got me gifts. Other than my new Indian outfit each year, birthday gifts weren’t really a thing, and to this day, I love giving gifts more than receiving them. All this to say, I was very overwhelmed and shook, but also felt incredibly loved as each gift was so intentional based on what they knew about me after just a little over a year of knowing them.
Since my 26th birthday in 2017, I've had to navigate more than I've ever had to.
It was just earlier that year that I moved out on my own for the first time as a first step to breaking generational trauma on my healing journey.
I had a corporate job that I was about to leave in about a month (didn't know it at the time, but the job was burning me out) due to a toxic supervisor and work environment.
Took huge risks and started 2 businesses that are thankfully still in existence today.
Survived the pandemic years on all fronts despite all kinds of losses (loss of loved ones, loss of business, loss of long friendships, and other types of losses that I'll keep to myself for now).
I mention these because since 2017 until now, 2025, birthdays kind of became a blur that I wanted to quickly be over. There were a couple more with Adam's family, but for the most part, I spent the day and month alone (+Adam since we moved in together) where I'd do things like creating, gaming, cooking, watching 90s Bollywood classics, and sleeping in. Somewhere along the way, my faith dwindled as I navigated life's challenges, and I stopped going to temple as well, with 2017 being the last time until this year when Adam & I visited the Malibu Hindu Temple together the morning of my birthday. After which we had a long work day in LA, and a fun mid-summer night evening at Santa Monica Pier together.
Since finally launching A-Game Creations' website on Diwali in 2024, I've made significant changes by overcoming challenges, breaking more generational traumas, accomplishing goals decades in the making, and trying to not let anything or anyone dim my light, and as scared as I was, I took that energy into my birthday this year as well.
This month, especially, was one for the books as we filmed our first project in Hollywood and had some incredible experiences that still feel surreal, but ultimately I filled the majority of the month with rest, reflection, and for the first time in years celebration by doing things that bring me joy outside of the comfort of my place. I've cried more than I'd like to admit, and I'm finally starting to realize that not only am I a very sentimental person, but I no longer think being sentimental is a weakness. I'm not too emotional just because I speak very bluntly about what's weighing on my heart. There is nothing wrong with feeling so deeply. My feelings are valid, and if I remember things so vividly, even if they might be considered minuscule details for someone else, that’s okay.
In fact, being sentimental has made me an excellent storyteller and creator that people hire to help share their stories. The life I live today is because I was a sentimental kid who has been documenting my journey since middle school. What started as journal or diary entries with photos, videos, and saving things that illicit an emotional response out of me for years, as well as creating to help process life events, has been a part of me for over 23 years, and without knowing it, I've been creating to heal this entire time. It’s helped me find clarity by becoming more self-aware, and it’s made me a better creative, but more importantly, a better human.
While there are still a lot of challenges and things I still need to work through, I’m beyond grateful for where I am today. I'll always be a work in progress, learning and creating every step of the way, but now I'll remember to celebrate myself too, because I'm worth it. I don't know how many years I'll have left, but like this reflection about birthdays, I'll continue to be vulnerable, share my journey, and always prioritize time to celebrate myself.
If you got this far, thank you so much for reading. I hope you take a moment to celebrate yourself, too.