My husband turns forty this week, and in the midst of all the preparations for his birthday party, I’ve been reflecting on different milestones and moments of achievement in my life.

I passed the forty milestone a few years ago (I won’t say how many!) and we celebrated fifteen years of marriage last year. Our son will be ten this year, so that will require another celebration, as he enters double digits. These are some recent milestones in my personal life.

There have also been milestones and achievements in my writing career. Having The Heir accepted for publication was one of them. Having all the books in my trilogy published was another, and especially, seeing The Heir win the Literary Classics silver award in their science fiction section in 2014 was also a big one.

However, it’s interesting to note my attitude when it comes to talking about those kinds of achievements. I always find it more difficult to tell people about things like that. Sometimes it feels too much like boasting. A few years ago I was at a seminar at my son’s school, and they asked everyone to write down their greatest achievement. I wrote down The Heir winning its award, but when everyone else read theirs out, they were all things like losing weight and finding more time to read . Mine felt so self-congratulatory I struggled to share it. But I knew it was worth sharing. It was something important that happened to me and I was right to feel proud of my achievement. For the record, the other people in attendance didn’t seem to consider me boastful or arrogant when I told them. Instead, they were interested.

Sometimes it’s hard to remember that it’s all right to feel proud of the things we achieve, as long as we don’t use them as an opportunity to lord it over others. We all have talents and there’s no shame in celebrating them when we have a success.

Have you ever achieved something but were embarrassed to mention it? Let me know in the comments.