The Second Time

This isn't the first time I've blown my life up. Leveled it to the ground and rebuilt it from scratch.

The first time was around 2019, right before the rest of the world was forced to start over too. I was the most miserable I’d ever been. I was a new mother, I wasn’t being treated the way I deserved in my relationships, and my MS diagnosis had brought physical struggles I never expected. I had to make a choice, and instead of ending my life, I decided to start it over. If you’ve never struggled with your mental health, you may not know how hard that decision is to make. I’m just so glad I made it.

I sold my house. Left my marriage. My son and I moved in with my parents and I took hard looks at exactly who I spent my time with and called ‘friend’. Then, almost on cue, everything shut down and the whole world stopped moving with me. Looking back, 2020 was the breather I needed to truly reset my life.

In 2021, I started to rebuild. Got my very first apartment by myself, started byFriday and handpicked the people and energy I wanted to surround myself with. For the last five years, I've been living the dream of that version of me. Numerous times I would look around at my life and very proudly say, sometimes out loud, “I did this. I built this with my own two hands.”

Recently I reevaluated everything once again. It felt very different this time, and almost like I wasn’t ‘allowed’ to make big changes. Different because I wasn’t unhappy this time. I love the house I’m in, I love my partner, and I still love the work I’m doing. I just didn't like the shape of it anymore.

So here I am, blowing it up again. Not because anything was broken, but because I looked around and realized it wasn't making me happy anymore and I refuse to keep doing it anyway.

If I can do this once, I can do it twice. And if I can do it twice, anyone can do it as many times as they need to. This isn't really a story about marriages or businesses or houses. It's about permission. The permission to look at your own life and say, this isn't it anymore, and to actually do something about it. Not just once, when things are unbearable. Any time. As many times as it takes.

So that's what I want to leave you with. Not my reinvention: yours. Whatever it is you're not happy with, you're allowed to change it. You're allowed to start over as many times as you need to.