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Charles McQueen
The truth about starting over is rarely spoken. It hides behind language like “fresh starts” and “new beginnings.” These phrases are comforting, even hopeful, but they do not tell the whole story. What nobody told me is that starting over comes with grief.
There is grief, even when the decision is voluntary. There is grief, even when the ending was necessary.
We often romanticize change, wrapping it in slogans and sunrise metaphors. "Every ending is a new beginning." "Trust the journey." "Let go and bloom." These are well-intentioned, but they fail to capture the layered, often contradictory experience of beginning again. But the reality is more textured. Starting over is not only about what lies ahead; it is also about what has been lost.
Change holds a paradox: to begin something new, something else must end. And endings, however right or overdue, carry weight. That weight is grief. It is grief for an identity once worn, for relationships left behind, for unfinished hopes. For a version of the self that once felt whole. Even chosen growth requires mourning.
I remember standing in the kitchen, cardboard boxes half-packed, holding a mug I could not yet decide to keep. The room had already begun to forget me. It echoed in ways it never had before. In that silence, it struck me—not regret, but the ache of leaving behind a life that had once felt like mine.
And yet, this grief does not diminish the value of the decision. It affirms the depth of it. It means what came before mattered because we loved, we invested, we believed. Starting over is not weakness. It is depth. It is the quiet courage of holding both sorrow and hope in the same breath. It is standing at the threshold of the unknown and stepping forward, not because fear is absent, but because courage is present.
We do not always recognize that courage in ourselves. We may feel broken, doubtful, or disoriented. But the act of starting over is profoundly human. It reveals our capacity for renewal, our willingness to carry both grief and growth, side by side.
You can love what was and still walk toward what will be. You can feel pain and still choose possibility. Starting over is not a betrayal of the past. It is an embrace of the future, made more honest by everything the past has taught you.
If you are beginning again, by choice or by force, remember this: you are not weak for grieving. You are not lost for feeling uncertain. You are simply human, navigating the tender space between what was and what could be.
In that quiet, uncertain space, something small has already taken root.
🖋️ Journal Prompts: Exploring the Root
Use these prompts to write freely, honestly, and intuitively — no pressure to make them polished.
1.
What part of me has survived the loss? And how is that part changing shape in this new beginning?
2.
What am I learning to trust in myself again? Describe a moment when something small gave you strength.
3.
Where does grief still live in me, and how is it teaching me? What has it made room for?
4.
If this “small thing” were a plant, what kind would it be? Is it wild or delicate, common or rare? What does it need to grow?
5.
What does “beginning again” look like today, not metaphorically, but practically? What is one small act I can take that honors this growth?
🌼 5 Gentle Affirmations Inspired by the Final Line
Repeat these aloud, or write them down at the start or end of your day.
Even in uncertainty, something good is quietly growing inside me.
I do not need to have it all figured out to begin again.
My grief is not a weakness. It is the soil from which my strength will grow.
I trust the small, slow beginnings of my healing.
Something new is taking root in me, and I will tend to it with care.
