Dreading your next milestone birthday or watching loved ones struggle with aging? Tamar Hurwitz-Fleming brings transformative wisdom to ThirtyFiveSixtyFour about embracing birthdays at any age. As the author of "How to Have a Happy Birthday," Tamar challenges the narrative that aging means decline. At 59 and approaching her own 60th birthday, she shares honest insights about physical changes while celebrating the wisdom, confidence, and freedom that come with each decade. Karen and Tamar dive deep into birthday anxiety, the privilege of aging, and why your birthday is the most sacred day of your year—one that deserves intentional celebration.

Ready to transform birthday dread into birthday joy? Tamar reveals why half of us experience birthday anxiety and how childhood experiences shape our relationship with aging. From dealing with perimenopause at 46 to embracing gray hair and wrinkles, this conversation tackles the real challenges of midlife while offering practical strategies for celebration. Listeners discover why "aging is a privilege" isn't just a platitude—it's a powerful reframe for living fully. Tamar's personal stories, from a devastating 18th birthday to her best birthday ever in France, illustrate how taking charge of your celebration creates transformation. Whether you're planning a milestone birthday or supporting someone who is, this episode provides actionable wisdom for making every birthday meaningful.

Tamar Hurwitz-Fleming is a birthday coach dedicated to helping people harness the transformational power of their birthdays so they can experience more joy, meaning, and fulfillment in their lives. Growing up, Tamar had happy, sad and terrible birthdays until she realized that having a fulfilling birthday was entirely up to her. In her award-winning book, “How to Have a Happy Birthday,” and its new companion workbook, Tamar explores why birthdays matter, why they can be hard for us, and what we can do to fully put ourselves in the center of our day. 

In this episode:

• (00:00 ) Introduction to Tamar and the Art of Happy Birthdays





• (01:43 ) Tamar's Perspective on Turning 60: Embracing the Milestone





• (03:12 ) Why Younger People Struggle with Future Planning





• (05:59 ) Reframing Aging: Beyond "Over the Hill" Thinking





• (08:44 ) Social Pressures of Youthful Appearance vs. Natural Aging





• (12:47 ) The Mirror Exercise: Changing Self-Talk and Self-Image





• (14:14 ) Supporting Loved Ones Through Milestone Birthday Anxiety





• (17:04 ) The Visibility Myth: Who Really Sees Us as We Age?





• (18:50 ) Physical Health and Aging: Investment in Your Future Self





• (22:39 ) Perimenopause, Menopause, and the Journey Across the River





• (25:00 ) How Men and Women Process Aging Differently





• (28:11 ) Meaningful Birthday Celebrations on Any Budget





• (33:11 ) The Birthday Blues: Unmet Expectations and Childhood Wounds





• (36:34 ) Tamar's Origin Story: From Birthday Trauma to Birthday Coach





• (41:21 ) How to Acknowledge Birthdays: Phone Calls vs. Social Media





• (53:33 ) Connecting with Tamar and Birthday Coaching Services

Follow Tamar:
https://howtohaveahappybirthday.com
https://instagram.com/author.tamar
https://facebook.com/author.tamar

Resources:

https://www.amazon.com/AM-Club-Morning-Elevate-Life/dp/1443456624 

About:

ThirtyFiveSixtyFour is a podcast for listeners between the ages of 35 and 64. Available on all major podcast platforms, the show offers an engaging journey through the various challenges and experiences of midlife. ThirtyFiveSixtyFour presents a distinct departure from the traditional midlife crisis storyline. Instead, it champions the perspective that midlife should be viewed as a period marked by play, discovery, transformation and possibility.

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Episode Transcription:

Welcome to 35/64, a podcast for Middle Agers. In today's episode, I have the pleasure of welcoming Tamar Herwitz-Fleming. She is the author of How to Have a Happy. Let me tell you, you've got to listen to this full episode if you are celebrating a milestone birthday soon, forty, fifty, sixty. If you know somebody who has a milestone birthday soon, if your birthday is coming up soon, she gives the most practical tips on how to embrace.

[00:00:46 ] Karen: How old you are turning, how to have the birthday you want, and truly how to feel celebrated and loved and grateful, and the true privilege we have of aging. Welcome to the show, Tamar. It is so good to have you here.

[00:01:05 ] Tamar: Thanks Karen. I'm delighted to be here.

[00:01:07 ] Karen: I heard that you were just. Dying to tell us all about all the information that you've compiled with your research, your stories, everything about aging. I actually think that you are a perfect guest for this podcast because we're right in that middle age of 35 to 64, and you are a specialist in birthdays, different decades.

What it's like to age. I'm so excited to have you here. why don't you go ahead and tell us how old you are.

[00:01:43 ] Tamar: I am 59 and a half, and I'm turning 60 on January 9th.

[00:01:48 ] Karen: Oh, so you're coming up on a pretty big one yourself.

[00:01:51 ] Tamar: big one and I can feel it, and I can tell you I don't have any problem getting older. but 60 feels really big as a milestone, and I'm not dreading it. I'm embracing it. But I can tell you something that it's very different from 50. It's not middle aged anymore. You're entering your senior years, right?

Medicare, social security, retirement, and then looming right after a 70. So what I'm sensing is that there's certainly less time ahead of me. the clock is ticking and that's significant in life. when we're in our thirties, we feel like we have a lot of time ahead of us, and we do generally speaking.

But when 60 starts to approach, we realize, you know what? There's less time ahead of us. And so what that does for me. Is, it makes me wanna be more intentional with the time I have left to live this great life I have to the fullest, what's left on my bucket list. Not just places I wanna visit, but things I wanna do, things I wanna experience, the kind of person I wanna be.

And that's what Turning 60 is awakening in me, this urgency to be me as much as possible.

[00:02:50 ] Karen: Wow, okay. I love all of this. How do encapsulate everything you just said and bring that down to even the younger decades? So we feel that sense of urgency to embrace our dreams, become who we are. Or does this just take time? how do we do this at a younger age?

[00:03:12 ] Tamar: there's something that I recognized as a younger person, and I think this is true for young people in general. I remember when I was in my twenties, I was told to start a 401k account. put $50 in. I didn't do that. Retirement was way off in the future. I wish I did that That was not for all of you young people listening, do it. Do it right, get that compounded interest going, it's very hard for us. To envision our future, decades in the future. We don't think that way when we're in our twenties and thirties. We just don't. it's natural that we don't, we're younger, we're animals, human beings are animals.

We're younger animals who are focused on other things in life and much in the same way. At the age of 59, I'm not thinking about having kids anymore. I don't have kids. I was certainly thinking about that in my twenties and thirties, but age changes us. And what I've noticed is that age changes us in a variety of ways, and so this urgency that I feel being 59 and a half with 60 looming, I don't know that I felt it when I was 30.

Even though I was ambitious, I had dreams. I fulfilled many of them. I was a go-getter. It was a different quality because in my mind, I still had 60 years ahead of me. I planned to be here into my nineties. I don't even know if I'm gonna make it to 60. Who knows? We never kno