How To Spend Your Birthday Alone & Still Feel Like A Queen
I have had quite a few disappointing birthdays over the years. Every time I planned a dinner or a get-together, I always seemed to be let down. Something unexpected would always happen that had me feeling some type of way. Friends canceled after they R.S.V.P.'d or there were arguments over the restaurant bill. I was even kicked out of my 23rd birthday party because one of my girlfriends' guests lacked V.I.P. etiquette at our joint birthday party. I just didn't feel seen or celebrated by the group of people I chose to be my friends at that time. To be fair though, in your twenties, what do you really know about true friendship? But still, I knew I deserved so much more.
After a while, my birthday became a day I didn't look forward to. I used fear of getting hurt or being disappointed as a guard. Honestly, I didn't start enjoying birthdays until my 27th birthday. I was in a new city, with a new group of friends, who made me feel more seen and appreciated than some of my lifelong friends I currently have. It wasn't until my 33rd birthday I decided to spend my birthday alone.
Celebrating my birthday alone was the most uncomfortable yet empowering thing I had ever done. Why didn't I think of doing this sooner? Now, every year I typically spend my birthday alone. It's not that I don't enjoy the company of my friends–I do. But over the years, I learned to enjoy my own company. I know that I could never let myself down. I know that I would not give myself less than I deserve. And sometimes, in the end, you have to be your own best friend. Word to Beyoncé, y'all. Sometimes, "me, myself, and I" win.
Here are a few things you can do on your birthday alone.
Write Yourself A Love Letter
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Writing yourself a love letter is the ultimate form of self-intimacy and self-love. What better way to celebrate your birthday than to shower yourself with words of affirmation? I started this ritual a year ago. And I will continue to practice this ritual on every single birthday. There is something about using words to embrace the woman you are. We as women don't do this enough, we don't give ourselves enough credit for everything that we are. It's time we pay attention to how we speak to ourselves.
On this birthday, be gentle with yourself. Write about your qualities, flaws, and accomplishments. Make yourself a few promises because you know you will never break your own heart. Remember, pen to paper always wins.
Buy Yourself Flowers
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You deserve flowers at all times. Don't wait for a guy or a friend to give you flowers. Especially on your birthday. Head to your local florist and create your own bouquet. Did you know certain types of flowers can enhance your energy? Carnations symbolize commitment while Freesias exudes positive energy to everyone around it. Pay attention to colors – red symbolizes power, life, and vitality. Yellow builds self-confidence and encourages optimism. Green represents tranquility and helps you stay grounded.
Treat Yourself To A Fancy Brunch Or Dinner
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Like Drake said, "Oh, you fancy huh. Nails did, hair did, everything did." Reserve a table for one at your favorite restaurant or at the new trendy restaurant you have been dying to go to. You don't always need a group of friends to make you feel special on your birthday. You control your feelings. And making yourself feel special is your power. So, get your face beat, put on that outfit, throw on those heels, and pull up to that restaurant with C-O-N-F-I-D-E-N-C-E. Don't give two fucks about the people staring at you just because you're sitting alone. They are probably admiring you anyways queen.
And if you'd prefer to do a quarantine-friendly version of this, prepare yourself a decadent meal or order in from one of your favorite restaurants. Treat yourself to a slice of luxury in the comforts of home.
Spend Your Day At A Day Spa
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Go ahead girl, and pamper yourself at a day spa. I mean, is there a better way to spend your birthday than getting your glow on? A fresh facial or clean skin just gives me all the feels. Book yourself a facial, massage, body treatment, manicure, or pedicure. If a day spa isn't your thing, try a Korean bathhouse or a Russian-Turkish bath. You can relax in different types of saunas, steam rooms, salt rooms, or aromatherapy rooms. Bathhouses offer all types of amenities and services for the ultimate day of self-care.
Wine Tasting
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Who doesn't love a good bottle of wine? Spend your special day in a beautiful vineyard and let your palate explore rich flavorful wines. While I have not done this for my own birthday, I did do a wine tasting safari at Malibu Wines by myself. I spent the day at this famous family-owned winery known for its scenery. I enjoyed picturesque views, feeding farm animals, and meeting new people. Of course, I enjoyed the wine, but I was in awe of the fact that someone owned 1,000 acres of land.
Travel
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Solo travel is life. Get you some sexy bikinis and take that solo birthday trip. Remember you are BAE. I took my first international solo trip for my 33rd birthday to Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. Mexico was a whole mood. It was tacos, tequila shots, and sunsets. On the eve of my birthday, I ordered room service; crème brûleé with a glass of Moscato. Just before midnight, room service delivered my decadent dessert. I brought in my birthday in the comfort of my hotel room bed.
On my 35th birthday, I flew solo to Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico was even better than Mexico. I met up with a girl I connected with over a xoNecole Instagram post about solo travel. We slid in each other's DMs. And on the day of my arrival in Puerto Rico, homegirl scooped me up from the airport. She then connected me with another girl who had the same birthday as mine.
Coincidentally, this same girl was also staying in the same boutique hotel as me, The Dreamcatcher. This had to be a universal sign because from that point forward it was rooftop dinners, champagne bottles, salsa dancing, and island hopping. We even went for a night swim in the ocean butt naked. It was Sagittarius season, and we were lit AF. Oh, and for my 36th birthday, I commemorated my first solo trip by returning to Mexico.
So, on your birthday, celebrate yourself, QUEEN. You are BAE. You are the most important person on your born day. This is a celebration of your life. It's your day to shine even brighter. Don't let anyone even attempt to dim or steal your light. No one will love you more than you do. No one will treat you better than you do.
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Camille is a lover of all things skin, curls, music, justice, and wanderlust; oceans and islands are her thing. Her words inspire and her power is her voice. A California native with Trinidadian roots, she has penned personal essays, interviews, and lifestyle pieces for POPSUGAR, FEMI magazine, and SelfishBabe. Camille is currently creating a life she loves through words, self-love, fitness, travel, and empowerment. You can follow her on Instagram @cam_just_living or @written_by_cam.
Beyond Burnout: Nicole Walters' Blueprint For Achieving Career Success On Your Own Terms
Nicole Walters has always been known for two things: her ambition and her ability to recognize when life’s challenges can also double as an inspiring, lucrative brand.
This was first evident more than a decade ago when she quit her job as the corporate executive of a Fortune 500 company during a Periscope livestream. “I’m not sure if there’s an alignment of [our] future trajectory. I’m going to work for myself. I'm promoting myself to work for myself,” she said at the time before flashing a smile at the viewing audience. As she resigned on camera, a constant stream of encouraging messages floated upwards on the screen.
By 2021, she’d fashioned her work as a corporate consultant and her personal life with her husband and three adopted daughters into a reality show, She’s The Boss, for USA Network. This year, she released the New York Times bestselling memoir Nothing Is Missing, written as she was in the process of getting a divorce and dealing with her eldest daughter’s struggles with substance use.
Convinced that there’s no way the 39-year-old has achieved all of this without intentional strategic planning, I asked her about it when we spoke less than a week before Christmas. I’d seen videos on social media of her working on 2024 planning for other brands, and I wanted to know what that looked like following her own year of success.
She listed a number of goals, including ensuring that the projects she takes on in the new year align with her identity “as a Black woman, as an African woman, as a mother, as someone who has lived a [rebuilding] season and is now trying to live boldly and entirely as themselves.” But, I was shocked by how much of her business planning also prioritized rest.
Despite the bestselling book, a self-titled podcast, and working with numerous corporations, Walters said she’s been taking Fridays off. This year, she doesn’t want to work on Mondays, either.
“A lot of us think we work hard until retirement hits. I want to progress towards retirement,” she said, noting that she’ll check in with herself around March to see how successful this plan has been. The goal, Walters said, is to only be working on Tuesdays and Thursdays by sometime in 2025. “It is intentionally building out what I know I would like to have happen and not waiting for exhaustion to be the trigger of change.”
"A lot of us think we work hard until retirement hits. I want to progress towards retirement... It is intentionally building out what I know I would like to happen and not waiting for exhaustion to be the trigger of change."
Walters said the decision to progressively work less was partially in response to her previously held notions about her career, especially as an entrepreneur. “When I first started, I thought burnout was a part of it,” she said. “What I didn’t realize is that even if you’re able to bounce out of burnout or get back to it, there’s a cumulative impact on your body. If you think of your body as a tree and every time you go through burnout, you are taking a hack out of your trunk, yes, that trunk will heal over, and the tree will continue to grow, but it doesn't mean that you don’t have a weakened stem.”
But, the desire for increased rest was also in response to the major shifts that occurred three years ago when she was experiencing major changes in her family and realized her metaphorical tree was “bending all the way over.”
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“One of the things we have to recognize, especially as Black women, is that there is this engrained, societal, systemic notion that our worth is built around our productivity,” she added. “That is some language that I think is just now starting to really get unpacked.” In recent years, there’s been an increased awareness of achieving balance in life, with Tricia Hersey’s “The Nap Ministry” gaining attention based on the idea that rest, especially for Black women, is a form of resistance. Even online phrases such as “soft life” and “quiet quitting” have hinted at a cultural shift in prioritizing leisure over professional ambition.
"One of the things we have to recognize, especially as Black women, is that there is this engrained, societal, systemic notion that our worth is built around our productivity."
If companies are lining up to consult with Walters about their brands and products, then women have been looking to her for guidance on starting over since she invited them to livestream her resignation 12 years ago. As viewers continue to demand more from content creators in the form of intimate, personal details, Walters has navigated her personal brand with a sense of transparency without oversharing the vulnerable details about her life, especially when it comes to her family.
The entrepreneur said she’d been approached to write a book for several years and was initially convinced she was finally ready to write one about business. “I started to do that, and then I went through my divorce. When that happened, I said, why would I write a book telling people to get the life that I have when I’m not sure about the life that I have,” she said.
Instead, she decided to write Nothing Is Missing and provide a closer look at her life, starting with being born to immigrant Ghanaian parents (“You need to know my childhood to know why I’m passionate about entrepreneurship.”) through the adoption of her three daughters and eventual divorce. Despite her desire to share, however, she said she felt protective of the privacy of her family, including her ex-husband.
When discussing this with me, Walters said she was reminded of a lesson she learned from actress Kerry Washington, who released her own memoir, Thicker Than Water, just a week before Walters’ book release. Washington’s memoir grapples with family secrets, too, specifically the fact that she was conceived using a sperm donor and didn’t learn about it until she was already a successful TV star. While Washington reflects on how the decision and subsequent deception impacted her, she’s also careful to hold space for her parents’ experiences, too. “A lot of things she said was that she had to recognize where she was the supporting character and where she was the main character,” Walter said.
This is something Walter worked to do in Nothing Is Missing when discussing her daughter’s struggles with addiction. “I was very intentional about making sure that I did not reveal more than what was required,” she said. “If I say something about someone’s addiction, I don’t need to go into the list of the substances they used, how they used them, what I found. [I don’t need to] walk into a room and paint a picture of what it looked like for people to understand.”
Walters said some of the most vulnerable moments in the book barely made a ripple once it was released. She was extremely nervous to write about getting an abortion, she said. But no one has asked her about this in the months since the book was released. Instead, people have been more interested in quirkier revelations, such as the fact that she once appeared on Wheel of Fortune.
“I have bared my soul about this thing I went through in my youth that has changed me for people, and people are like, ‘So how heavy was the wheel when you spun it?’” she said, chuckling. “It just goes to show that people never worry about the thing that you worry about.”
With the success of Nothing Is Missing, Walters said she still isn’t planning to release a business book at the moment. But, as she navigates parenting a teenager and two adult children while also navigating a relationship with her new fiancé, Walters said she believes she has at least one or two more books to write about her personal journey. “There is sort of an arc of where my life has gone that I know I’ve got something more to say about this that I think is important, relevant and necessary,” she said.
In just three years, Walters’ life has undergone a major transformation. There’s no telling what the next three years will have in store for her, but it seems likely she’ll retain an inspired audience wherever life takes her.
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Scalp treatments are the latest hair care trend on the market. Brands have been pushing scalp products as an added step to achieve healthy hair. For women with natural hair, it can seem like another step to our already vigorous hair care routine. But this isn’t just any hair step. It’s one backed by science. Research shows that scalp conditions impact our hair growth through oxidative stress. The skin condition is a disturbance between free radicals and antioxidants in your body.
Oxidative stress was understood to start on our face, causing aging, but it actually begins on our scalp, causing permanent hair loss. This is just one of the many examples of how an uncared-for scalp can rapidly cause more significant issues. Our scalp, just like our skin, needs a healthy routine to keep the skin at its best.
I’m on top of my skincare routine like my life depends on it. I’m constantly investing in skincare products, putting on face masks, and regularly visiting my esthetician to ensure this face is one point. When I was approached to attend a scalp consultation, I didn’t understand the need.
I wash my hair thoroughly once a week and definitely give my scalp the good scrub it deserves. However, my hair has been extremely dry due to the dry winter months. This has caused my hair to have severe breakage. Part of me wondered if it was because my scalp was dry, and after reading the studies just discussed, I figured following through with an appointment couldn’t hurt.
What Is A Scalp Consultation?
A scalp consultation uses a microscopic camera to look deeper into your crown. The consultation will focus on five areas: hair loss, sensitivity, density, dead skin cells, and thickness. Each section will then receive an overall score. The scores may vary depending on the care of the scalp area. Measuring these points will help you get greater insight into your scalp and hair needs. From there, your consultant will recommend products and a routine that will be kinder for your scalp. Getting a consultation is essentially getting to the root of your hair needs.
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My Experience
I went to the Act+Acre studio and trichologist-developed scalp brand to consult with founder Helen Reavey. She kindly welcomed me into her studio as if I were entering her home. Her warm embrace was comforting since I felt vulnerable about my scalp's possible imperfections. Reavey began by asking me if I had any scalp concerns and what my hair care routine was. I had expressed to her that my hair had been experiencing a bit of dryness.
Before I could go further, she gracefully reminded me that it’s quite normal to experience dryness at this time of year. Reavey mentions, “You may want to consider changing your hair and scalp routine for the season. It could help immensely.” I hadn’t considered the idea until then, but it made sense. If you change up your skincare routine for the season, why not the way you care for your scalp and hair?
Reavey wasted no time getting to the root of the consultation. She grabbed her scalp camera and began examining my scalp, which I could see through a monitor. I began questioning if I should have cleansed more or at least put a little dry shampoo, but then what would be the point of the consultation? I watched nervously.
To my surprise, Reavey described my scalp as being in fairly good condition despite having some dryness in a few areas. I was shocked! I responded, “I’ve been using scalp scrubs; maybe that’s been helping?” Reavey then explained to me that scalp scrubs can dry out the scalp and damage the skin. “If you wouldn’t put it on your face, you shouldn’t put it on your scalp,” Reavey said. I nearly had a flash of every scalp scrub article I had written, but before I could think further, it was time for my recommendations.
Recommended Plan of Action
Reavey showed me my scores, which were nearly perfect despite all of my anxiety. She recommended that I wash my hair bi-weekly and, in between, do a co-wash. I had meant to implement co-washing into my routines, and this was just a perfect excuse to start.
Then she packed me a goodie bag of the following products: scalp detox (because scrubs are now canceled), hair oil, curl spray, and soft curl, all found on the brand's website. I was immensely grateful as she explained how to implement each product into my routine.
She also gave me a showerhead filter as if the other goodies weren’t amazing enough. "Filtered water can help keep the hair moisturized and promote hair growth,” Reavey said. Living in New York, I’m lucky the water isn’t as harsh here. However, spending my college years in Florida, I know other states aren’t as lucky. Florida’s water had a huge impact on the health of my skin and hair, leading to intense dryness. Despite now living in New York, I was grateful to receive a shower filter. The product I received will be available for others to purchase in the first week of February.
Would I Recommend It?
I would absolutely recommend getting a scalp consultation regardless of whether you are having scalp issues or not. The scalp is an essential area in our body that gets neglected often but can cause significant issues if not cared for. Your scalp deserves the same tender, love, and care you would give to your skin.
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