Starting Over = Proof of Life
I’ve had to start over more times than I ever planned.
Careers I thought were “it.” Oh yeah, there’s been more than one. Relationships I thought were forever. There’s been more than one of those too. Identities I thought were welded to my bones.
For me starting again is what happens when you mess up the first time. Maybe it was the dancer in me. Turn off the music. STOP. Restart the music. Work harder. Be better. Keep going. Keep pushing. Don’t stop to examine if this is something you even want to be doing anymore. The goal is to get it “right”, not if it’s right.
But here’s what I’m slowly, stubbornly learning:
Starting over is not proof that you failed. Starting over is proof that you’ve grown and often times, outgrown the thing you started.
There comes a moment when a life that once fit you like a custom suit begins to feel like a dress you can’t breathe in. You haven’t lost the plot; you’ve simply outgrown the chapter. If we’re completely honest, your nervous system knows it before your mind will admit it. You feel the tightness, the Sunday-night dread, the “is this really it?” hum under your skin.
Most of us ignore that whisper for as long as humanly possible.
Because if we’re honest, endings are terrifying.
The Version of You Who Walks Away
We usually tell the story like this: She quit or she was quit on. She left the job. She lost the marriage. She closed the business. She walked away from the identity everyone recognized.
But what if that’s the wrong story? What if the version of you who walked away isn’t the quitter at all? What if she is the bravest one you’ve ever been, the one who finally said, “This chapter has given me everything it can. I’ll risk my life on the next one.”
We don’t celebrate her. We interrogate her. We ask her for spreadsheets and guarantees. We call her selfish, impulsive, ungrateful. We forget that staying in a room with no oxygen is a different kind of quitting. It’s quitting on ourselves.
So if you’re standing at the edge of something that used to feel like home and now feels like a costume, I want you to hear this clearly:
You are not betraying your life by outgrowing it. You are honoring it.
The Brutal Middle
No one tells you how disorienting the in-between is.
The last chapter has ended, but the new one hasn’t shown up with a welcome basket and a tidy outline. You’re just… floating. Half-packed boxes. A LinkedIn profile that doesn’t quite match your heart. People still introducing you as the role you no longer play.
It’s the moment after the credits roll and before the lights come back on.
It feels naked to not know what comes next. It feels lonely to reinvent yourself while everyone else is still relating to the previous version of you. It feels like walking around in an outfit no one will let you take off.
For me, this is where my shame and smallness loves to slink in and whisper:
You’re too old to start again.
Other people would have made it work.
You had a good thing, and you blew it.
Why are you here again? What’s wrong with you?
Shame loves to frame survival as failure.
But here’s what I know from my own “wipe the slate clean and sob in the shower” seasons:
Your biggest breakthroughs rarely happen in the chapter that’s neatly working. They happen in the hallway between what collapsed and what’s being born.
The blank page.
The quiet room.
The drive home after you were let go.
The first night you sleep alone in a bed that used to hold two hearts.
This middle space is brutal.
And also, holy.
Identity Alchemy
Starting over is not just logistical; it’s spiritual. It is identity alchemy.
You are slowly dismantling the version of you who survived so that you can become the version of you who will thrive.
That takes time. That takes grief. That takes ridiculous amounts of self-compassion. Like, uncomfortable amounts of what can feel like coddling but it’s not. When your skin is raw and new, the most important thing you must be is gentle with yourself because what you’re doing is actually grieving. There’s a death in every reinvention, the death of a dream, of a role, of a fantasy of how it “should have” gone. If you feel sad, angry, numb, or confused, nothing has gone wrong. You are simply in the part of the story where the ground is rearranging itself under your feet.
You’re allowed to cry over the life you’re leaving, even if you’re the one who chose to leave it. You’re allowed to miss the familiarity, even if it was slowly suffocating you.
Both conflicting ideas can be true at the same time and more often than that, they are.
Making Room for the You Who’s Coming
If you’re in your “starting again” era, if something ended, if a door closed, if you’re grieving a life you thought you wanted, here’s what I hope you remember:
Your new life needs space. Your new timeline needs permission. Your new identity needs you to believe she exists before anyone else can see her.
So what does that actually look like, on a Tuesday, with laundry in the dryer, kids to pick up from school and a to-do list still calling your name?
A few gentle practices that have carried me:
Name the ending out loud.
Write it down: This is the end of my season as ___________. We honor grief by naming it. We step into agency when we stop pretending it’s “just a rough patch.”Stay close to truth-tellers, not fixers.
Call the friend who can sit in the mess without rushing to paint it silver. The ones who remind you you’re not crazy, you’re courageous.Give your nervous system a say.
Starting over is a full-body experience. Walk. Breathe. Put your bare feet on the ground. Turn down the volume on everyone else’s opinions long enough to hear your own heartbeat again.Ask, “What is this season asking me to learn?”
Not “What did I do wrong?” but “What is this inviting me to practice, boundaries, rest, courage, asking for help, telling the truth sooner?”Create small rituals of welcome.
Light a candle when you sit down to journal. Buy the bouquet at the grocery store for your kitchen table. Rearrange one corner of your home to reflect where you’re going, not where you’ve been. Tiny acts of beauty are declarations: I am worth beginning again for and in case you needed reminding, you are. You absolutely are. This is your one previous life, darling. Congratulations for being brave enough to actually live it.
You Haven’t Met Her Yet, But She’s Real
There is a version of you who lives on the other side of this ending. She is not a “better” version in the hustle-y, perfectionistic way. She is not smoother, quieter, or more palatable. She is simply truer.
She knows what it costs to betray herself, and she’s not willing to pay that price anymore. She trusts her own voice more than the chorus of expectations.
She is softer in some places, fiercer in others, clearer about what is and isn’t hers to carry.
You don’t have all the details of her life yet. You don’t know her address, her exact job title, the shape of her days. But that doesn’t mean she’s imaginary.
She already exists. She’s already walking toward you.
Your job, for now, is not to have a five-year plan. Your job is to hold the door open. To give this new life room to breathe. To refuse to label yourself a failure when what you really are is mid-metamorphosis.
If you’re starting again, I am so deeply proud of you.
You are not late. You are not behind. You are not broken.
You are a woman courageous enough to tell the truth about a chapter that has ended and brave enough to bet her life on the next one. We’re cheering you on every step of the way.