What Diane Keaton Taught Me About Turning 40

I’m turning 40 on Sunday.

And in a lot of ways, I’ve been treating these last few days the same way I treated my last days before becoming a mom for the first time — like an ending. Like a chapter of my life that’s about to close for good.

That may sound dramatic. Maybe it is. But it feels true.

I created The Next Phase podcast to celebrate this season — the messy, powerful, beautiful transition into midlife. But celebrating doesn’t mean it’s not complicated. Aging comes with a kind of mourning — for who we were, for what we thought life would look like, for all that early energy and possibility.

When I think of my 20s and 30s, I think: youth, excitement, beginnings.
When I think of my 40s and 50s, if I’m honest? I think: hormones, bills, back pain, earlier bedtimes, and that try-hard “cougar energy” none of us want to admit we’re afraid of.

But more than anything, I think about one word: relevance.

Am I still going to be relevant?
Or am I slowly becoming invisible — buried under responsibilities, logistics, and the grind of everyday life?

That’s the fear nobody really talks about. Not wrinkles or gray hair — invisibility.

The Women We Grew Up Watching

In my 20s and 30s, I was the kind of person who could walk into a room and light it up. I’d talk to anyone, make a new best friend in line for the bathroom, dance until closing time.

Now? The only line I stand in is at Target. And there’s not a lot of room for “the party” anymore.

It’s easy to feel weighed down by all the doing, and somewhere in there, I realized what was missing: permission.
Permission to define my 40s in a way that feels like me.
And for you to define yours however the hell you want to.

So I started asking: Why do we associate our 40s with dread?

Sure, there are real things — aging parents, hormones, exhaustion. But there’s also cultural programming. Think about how we were taught to see women in their 40s.

She was Kevin’s stressed-out mom in Home Alone, always running, never resting.
She was Angelica’s mom in Rugrats — busy, detached, exhausted.
She was Roseanne Barr — the mom who’d stopped pretending everything was fine, but also stopped trying altogether.
And she was Leslie Mann in This Is 40 — spiraling about her birthday, denying her age, and wondering if everything good in her life had already happened.

These were the women we grew up watching — exhausted, overlooked, holding everything together for everyone else while losing themselves in the process.

And I can’t help but wonder:
Did we internalize that?
Did we decide, without even realizing it, that this is what middle age looks like — so this is who we’ll become?

Enter: Diane Keaton

Then something shifted.

It was 2003, and my mom and I went to see Something’s Gotta Give.

For the first time, I saw a woman in her fifties not as a punchline, not as a background mom, but as the main character.

Diane Keaton was everything I didn’t know I was craving: confident, magnetic, creative, and funny. She was sexy without trying. Powerful without being intimidating. And she had wrinkles.

She made getting older look alive.

Before her, we’d been taught that a woman’s desirability expired sometime in her 30s. But Diane flipped that script. She made aging look aspirational. She made vulnerability look like strength.

As many of you know, Diane Keaton passed away on October 11, 2025. And it hit me harder than I expected — because she represented something that transcended age: energy.

We all have it. Most of us just lose it — or stop protecting it — as we get older. She didn’t. And it showed.

Seven Things I’m Taking Into My 40s (Inspired by Diane Keaton)

1. Don’t Play It Cool

When Diane walks into a room, she commands it. Not because she’s conceited — in fact, she’s famously self-deprecating — but because she’s excited to be there.
She’s not playing it cool. She’s not holding back. She’s like a kid — over the moon to be part of the moment.
To show up with that kind of energy, you have to choose where to put it. You can’t be that excited about everything, or everyone. You have to protect your spark so when you show up, it’s real.

2. Be Weird

I’ve always been a little quirky. But it’s easy to hide that when you’re trying to fit in — as a mom, a business owner, a grown-up. Diane never apologized for being weird. She told Katie Couric that casting directors once called her “too kooky.”
She owned it anyway.
That’s what I want in my 40s — to stop sanding down my weird edges and let them shine.

3. Stop Rushing Everywhere

Diane Keaton moves through the world like she’s got all the time in it.
She pauses before she answers, she thinks before she speaks.
Meanwhile, I’m the queen of rushing — apparently even when I think I’m not. My daughter recently told me, “Mom, you still have that rushing energy.”

I don’t want that anymore. I want to stop living like the house is on fire.

4. Stop Apologizing for Who I Am

When Meryl Streep introduced Diane at her AFI Lifetime Achievement Award, she said,

“There’s nobody who stands more exposed, more undefended, and just willing to show herself inside and out than Diane.”
That’s how I want to live.
I want to make it easy for people to take me or leave me — because the ones who take me are my people.

5. Rewrite the Rules of Aging

Diane adopted her first child at fifty. Yes, she had Hollywood privilege, but still — she decided, why not now?
What am I not doing because I’ve decided it’s not “allowed” at 40?
Starting this podcast, maybe. Some people might call it cringe.
But that’s the whole point. We get to rewrite what forty, fifty, sixty are supposed to mean.

6. Please Yourself First

When Ellen DeGeneres once told her she’d be a great interior designer, Diane said, “No — because I like pleasing myself.”
It was funny, but also profound.
We’ve spent so many years pleasing everyone else. What if our 40s were for pleasing ourselves more — for creating lives that actually feel good to live?

7. Have a Huge Appetite for Life

In a 2012 interview with AARP, Diane said:

“I never understood the idea that you’re supposed to mellow as you get older. The goal is to continue. To feel the world. To explore. To take things far. To risk. To love.”
That’s it. That’s the energy I want for my 40s — to wake up hungry for life again.

The 40 Club

That’s my list.

Thank you, Diane Keaton, for giving me permission to enter my forties this way — for showing us how to age not just with grace, but with energy.

The next time I talk to you, I’ll officially be forty.
And I’m so happy you’re here at this turning point in my life.

I’ve been thinking we should start a club — The 40 Club.
And when you join, you get a party horn and a really fabulous hat — a Diane hat, obviously.

I’ll be celebrating with three of my best friends in North Carolina — renting a house, sitting in a hot tub, and talking for hours about life. We’ve known each other since seventh grade, and we’re all turning forty together.

I can’t think of a better way to step into this next phase.

Here’s to aging with energy.
Here’s to weirdness, curiosity, and staying awake to our own lives.

Until next time — I’ll see you in the next phase.