My life so far: 29,220 days and counting.

Remember the Reader’s Zoom this Saturday April 11!  CLICK HERE to copy zoom link or to sign in on Saturday morning. Dialogue and discussion with Colleen O’Brien, author of Baited, a thriller based in Glacier National Park. We will talk about Nature and Place as characters in our stories. Starts @ 9:00 AM/Pacific US time—you can do the math.

And on April 16, 2026, I turn 29,220 days old. You can do the math. It means I was conceived on a hot August day with the ashes of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the trauma of WWII, floating molecules in the breath of my young parents. It means I was born on a spring morning in Montana when millions of my grandfather’s bees were hurling themselves from hives to clover buds and war crimes trials were starting up in Europe and Japan.

These 29,220 days are the time blocks that built my life. I have awakened in any number of moods on these days. I have wasted days, raced unthinkingly through hours as though life was an endless Instagram scroll. I have been brought to my knees with grief and awe, flung myself passionately into love and writing and work. I have made mistakes, bad choices, unwittingly caused harm, and wished I could roll back time. I am walking a yellow brick road with most of the bricks behind me and a decade that curves into terrain unknown.

And here I am, turning 80 years old.

I enter this birthday with profound gratitude. Still here. Still healthy and cogent. Living with a beloved partner and

Ann & me among the 8 million protesting.

held within—and contributing to—a loving community. And I have the stamina to keep practicing my passion for stories, for writing, for creating spaces where stories can be respectfully shared.

 I’m starting a Substack column called Backstories, because at 80 most of my stories are back there, trailing behind me, swirling around me, awaiting articulation into the unimaginably huge conversation humanity is having at this time.

Standing on this threshold, I have the audacity to pray for 3,650 more days. Another 1/8 of life and, in my aging body and eldering years, I vow to live ever more consciously. I not only want my remaining days to count, I want to literally count them. I want to see each sunrise as a copper coin and to deposit that penny at sunset into a pottery jar marked “Prayers for Change.” Or maybe I can construct a calendar filling one wall where I cross off each day, noting some gratitude, no matter the internal weather of my emotions or the terrors of the wider world.

I am old enough now to know the preciousness of time. I step into this decade with a sense of accomplishment and a sense of purpose. And on the day I depart—whenever and however that comes— I want my last word to be “Thank you.”

April 17—my first day of being eighty.

I received this as a gift and no designation of who it might be from. Whoever you are, thank you. I will plant many more words in this vase.

If you want to help me celebrate, the best gift you can give me is to go online and deposit good reviews for any of my books! They don’t have to be long or intricate, a few words to encourage the next reader. “I read Seven Whispers 20 years ago and it’s still on my bedside table…”  Or, “Life’s Companion is my favorite journal writing friend and teacher.” Or, “My book club loved The Beekeeper’s Question. Don’t miss this story!”

All these titles are on Bookshop,  Amazon, and in BookClubs.com. Please love on Alyssa’s amazing audio in Audible or Libro or Spotify–wherever you have downloaded it. You can recommend it on Instagram and follow me @ChristinaBeeTrue and on Facebook as The Beekeeper’s Question by Christina Baldwin.

And Thank YOU for being part of my journey and letting me be part of yours.

Pray for PEACE. Pray for JUSTICE. Pray for the children whose days are just starting that they may live in a new world we insist into being!