Stephanie Farley

WHAT DO YOU LOVE MOST ABOUT BEING YOUR AGE?
When I hit my 30s, I felt like I’d finally made it. My 30s felt so much better than any other decade and my 40s have been even better. I think there’s a relaxing of the anxiety you have trying to please everybody. You realize what’s important or where the priority should be. There are a lot of things that I don’t worry about anymore. I spent a lot of time and effort trying to appease other people, and I no longer feel the need to do that. I think this age is where I enjoy life for myself and not necessarily for everybody else.

WHAT HARDSHIPS HAVE YOU ENDURED THAT YOU FEEL HAVE MADE YOU STRONGER?
I lost my dad to cancer when I was just going into high school, and that created a situation at home where I understood I gained responsibility quickly for helping out. There were several things in my teenage years that maybe I didn’t do as much as my peers because I just was in a different situation. It’s the hardest thing I’ve gone through, but I don’t think that that created a hard life for me. Our hardships are all how we handle them, I watched my mom who was such a strong human being and raised four kids on her own, and I remember thinking that I wanted to be that strong for my kids. That gave me a drive for sure. I don’t look back on my dad’s passing and think man my life would have been good without that, it was a hardship, and I don’t feel like it forced my life in any certain way, I do think the examples that I saw in my world inspired me.

WHAT DO YOU CONSIDER YOUR GREATEST ACHIEVEMENT?
I wouldn’t say it’s anything attached to my career or where I’m at in life, but it would be my marriage. Marriage is hard and I am very lucky and blessed to have the husband that I have. He’s a good partner and we’ve created a life that we both can enjoy.

WHAT IS YOUR GREATEST EXTRAVAGANCE?
When I think of the word extravagance, I think of being extravagant with experiences. When we travel, we do behind-the-scenes things, taking my kids to Fenway Park and getting them out on the field, or going to places where you get up close encounters with animals. We’re more extravagant with those types of things.

WHAT IS YOUR MOST TREASURED POSSESSION?
When my husband and I got engaged, we were in college and we were high school sweethearts, we met at band camp, and we were poor college students. My most treasured possession must be my wedding ring, which at the time was what we could afford. I have had a lot of friends ask me over the years when are you going to upgrade your wedding ring, or when are you going to get the new one, and I won’t because it’s the story of how we started.

WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE THING YOU HAVE CHECKED OFF YOUR BUCKET LIST?
Travel, when I was growing up we didn’t travel a lot, we would go to the lake every year for vacation. So, it was kind of the same few places we would go to. My husband is a traveler, and with my career, I get to see all different places. Just the ability to experience things, it’s made me more independent and I’m willing to go out and try things. When I was younger, I was uncomfortable driving in cities. Now I look forward to it, it’s a whole different perspective I have now.

WHAT IS YOUR IDEA OF PERFECT HAPPINESS?
We’re pretty involved in our church and my kids are in a Catholic school so our church and school community is pretty tight. There are a lot of things we do to support that. My kids are at the same school I went to school when I was younger, and they go to the same high school I did. I even taught there for a couple of years so I have a strong bond with that community. But when I sit in church on Sundays, with all the kids, my daughter-in-law, and my grandson now, that’s the absolute best and it makes me emotional almost every weekend. It’s interesting because it’s every weekend we all go to church together and I still think man it doesn’t get better than this.

WHAT ADVICE WOULD YOU GIVE YOUR YOUNGER SELF?
Don’t worry so much, I used to always worry so much about what others thought about me and am I pretty enough or smart enough or funny enough, all those things. Then I became a mom and all the worries were about am I doing the right thing, will other people think my kids were cute enough, are they dressed right or is my house clean enough. I just think man I spent a lot of time worrying about things that did not matter and nobody cared nearly as much as I thought they cared.  I would just say don’t worry so much. I still must remind myself today, that I think we are inclined to always want to be everything for everybody and it’s just silly.

DO YOU HAVE ANY WORDS OF WISDOM FOR YOUNGER WOMEN?
What comes to mind is about the relationships and the mom guilt we all carry. I hit the jackpot with my amazing daughter-in-law. She’s a new mom, she has a three-month-old, and I try to always remind her that no matter what you’re doing, everything you’re doing is the right thing. It doesn’t matter what you decide to do for diapers or clothing, or for bottle feeding, whatever you’re doing is the right thing. I wish we could convince all young moms of that because mom guilt is real and it’s silly the pressures we put on ourselves, we’re all just trying to raise these good humans together.

WHAT IS A TRAIT YOU ARE MOST PROUD OF?
My independence is something that has developed more over the last 10 to 15 years. I am an introvert at heart, my job is very social, and my personality at work is very different than my home personality. But independence, that’s something that I’ve had to work on overtime.

WHAT IS YOUR MOTTO OR FAVORITE QUOTE?
I have three mantras that I’m always reminding myself of and sometimes they’re in a little bit of contradiction to each other. The first one is to be still. My personality tends to be go-go-go, we’ve got crazy things on the calendar because why wouldn’t we try to shove everything into one week? We can get it all done and it’s just a constant, I must remind myself that we are human beings, not human doings and sometimes it is OK to just be still and sit and enjoy looking at nothing. I struggle with that because I always feel like oh there’s something I need to be doing with my time. I try to remind myself to be still and to be present and to enjoy it.

Another one is growth is uncomfortable and I remind myself often we tend to not do things that make us uncomfortable but anytime we’re going to grow we have to be. Change is hard and it’s uncomfortable and we got to do it.

My third one is from a Mother Teresa prayer, people will try to bring you down when you try to do good things do it anyway, people may not be kind back to you be kind anyway, people may take advantage of your honesty be honest anyway. The idea that it’s not about those people but it’s about you and it doesn’t matter what you’re surrounded with, you need to give yourself the grace to continue to grow and do all the things that you need to do regardless of your surroundings.

The ‘do it anyways’ and the ‘be still’ are kind of contradictory of each other but depending on where I’m at on that day that hour or month whatever it is those are my mantras. You allow yourself to be so or you allow yourself to go, whatever I need to do.

WHAT DO YOU MOST VALUE IN YOUR FRIENDS?
I have a group of women, all from different walks of life, we started a Bible study group years ago and we still get together. Our kids are all different ages, some are stay-at-home moms, and some of us work. What I value about this specific group is that we are 100% cheerleaders for each other. There’s no competition, there are no economic concerns, and we’re honestly a group of women who are happy for anything we achieve. It’s like the village that supports each other. It’s something I didn’t have when I was younger, this group of women is open and honest, and truly engaged with each other. The true affection we can show each other is amazing and I value these friends greatly.

HOW DID YOU CHANGE OVER THE YEARS?
I’ve always been kind of a rule follower and super responsible. I’m still a rule follower and responsible but I have learned to appreciate those things in myself, whereas when I was younger, I always felt like the nerdy kid for being responsible. Now I think that is what has allowed me to be successful and it has allowed me to raise great kids. Despite my shortcomings as a parent or the mistakes I have made, my kids are good humans and that’s awesome to watch.

I’ve also learned not to be so concerned about things that maybe aren’t cool but help you thrive as an adult. I’m more confident than I was, I still have a soft skin and have to remind myself sometimes that it doesn’t matter or I get hurt. I think overall I have learned to accept myself and be more genuine to myself which allows me to be more genuine to others as well.

IF YOU COULD CHANGE ONE THING ABOUT YOURSELF, WHAT WOULD IT BE?
As an introvert, I envy people who can be social butterflies and network. Some people can be so comfortable talking small talk about anything with any person and I would love to have that ability to do that. That’s something I see in other people and if there was a superpower, I could engage in it would be that.

WHAT DO YOU HOPE FOR THE FUTURE GENERATIONS?
I wish we could go back to when things were not so created, I’m not a big fan of social media. I feel like it creates a lot of false images, hopes, senses, and the need to be liked. I tried to protect my kids from it as much as possible, but I think adults fall into that path too. During Covid when we were all kind of shut down for a while, we had more meals together, played more board games, and had more nights at home because our schedules weren’t so full. I remember thinking how awesome that was. We tried to be careful about not falling back into the patterns of activities and events, but it’s hard and I wish we could find a way to take families and communities back to that time when everything wasn’t so rushed

WHAT BRINGS YOU THE MOST JOY AT THIS AGE?
My family for sure, I don’t know if it’s an age thing or if it’s just an experience thing, but seeing the efforts that I’ve made.

The balance of career, family, and marriage, all those things kind of come to fruition. I see my kids as they start to grow their relationships with significant others or even with each other as they move to adulthood. Seeing them with their adult relationships and sibling relationships you realize the impact you had and the things that you didn’t realize you were doing along the way that made a difference.

WHAT IS YOUR SUPERPOWER?
Probably organization and it’s also my toxic trait maybe. I love things to be in their place, I love to create systems and processes. At the same time, it can be very overwhelming to my family when I have every minute of vacation scheduled or have the process down for everything around the house, that’s my superpower.

DO YOU LIKE BEING 40+?
I do, I don’t worry about age, I never have. I will say I just turned 47 last week and it hit me for just a minute, and I said oh I’m kind of having to round up now. And if I round up, I’m looking at 50, and then I thought no that’s ok.

WHEN IN YOUR LIFE, SO FAR, HAVE YOU FELT MOST CONFIDENT, AND WHY?
Probably now. I think as I watched my kids grow up, it goes back to the anxiety that you have about doing everything right or being everything for everybody. When I was younger there was always that drive, that need to achieve something else, or what is next or what will be next on the list to win, to know, and to do. And as I watched my kids get older, I realized that the most important things are the people around me. All those other things just aren’t as important.