No Starting Over

I celebrated my 43rd birthday last week.

It was pretty awesome.

We spent a few days reading and talking and drinking copious amounts of coffee on a working farm with an incredible view of Mount Adams across the valley.

The only the sounds were of the White Salmon River, the horses in the far pasture, the cacophony of spring songbirds, and the occasional barks of Tank and Penny, the farm’s gorgeous (and friggin’ enormous!) Great Pyrenees guardian dogs.

There was very limited cell signal and I didn’t log in to the available wi-fi until the very last morning.

Quiet and rest was what I was after and dinging notifications are not part of that recipe.

One morning, coffee and pen in hand, I opened my journal to reflect a bit on what it’s meant to be “in my forties” and to take stock of where I am.

As I scribbled away, I found myself thinking back to my 30th birthday and some of the goals I had for myself back then.

I was headed into my last year of law school at the time.

Justin and I were recently engaged. We’d bought our first house the summer before— a little townhome in need of some love in Durham, North Carolina.

My sights were fixed on a career in the law, on professional achievement, on ticking all of the boxes I thought would signify that I’d “made it,” that I was officially an adult.

Less than two years later, law degree in hand, I took my bar exam prep money and bought camera equipment instead.

I started over, this time setting my sights on building a photography business, having discovered that creative pursuit opened up some heretofore unrealized part of myself.

We moved to Maine, leaving a tight-knit community of friends behind us, and began the work of building a new network of support and love in a brand new place.

Nearly a decade after that, we did it again.

We sold our sweet home in Maine, along with everything in it, from my parent’s old dresser that I’d refinished to the kitchen table that Justin and I had labored to build ourselves (we were damn proud of that monster!).

I left a thriving photography business behind.

We left another tight-knit community that we’d spent years building and investing in.

We moved our life into the 82 square feet of living space in Kippee, our camper, and decided to see what we might learn by spending a few years living and working on the road.

Which brought me here, to taking stock of our life right now, of where I am at 43.

It doesn’t look even a tiny bit like I’d imagined it would back when I was thirty.

We bought a house late last fall that has turned into a bit of a mess (like, a there-are-lawyers-involved kind of mess).

I’m a handful of years into a new business, making my living writing and coaching and teaching (and most recently, podcasting!).

Our community of friends and support is spread all over the country, but we don’t have any ties here in this place just yet.

For all intents and purposes, we are, once again, starting over.

But here’s the thing…we’re not.

Not really.

"Starting over” implies being back at the beginning.

The very beginning.

Which leads me to 2 questions:

1. What even qualifies as the “beginning”?

When I left home at 18?

When I fixed my “fork” and went to college?

When I quit college and ran away to the mountains to be a river guide?

When I went back and then onto law school?

When I had to stare down a cancer diagnosis?

Exactly when is this “beginning” we’re talking about?

Even if I were to define it for today’s purposes as revisiting 30-year-old me and those goals (and really— can we consider our 30-year-old selves our beginning? I certainly hope not…that’s a lot of years that are what, exactly? The “prequel”?), it begs the second question:

2. Is it even possible to go back there?

Of course not.

I’d add a resounding thank f-ing goodness to that, by the way.

While I certainly would l-o-v-e love to have those old knees back, the rest of it?

No. No, thank you.

I’m way too damn grateful for the lessons picked up since then and I would never wish for my ignorance back.

The failures and the triumphs.

The regrets and the do-overs and the false starts and the stumbling close calls.

The learning that can only come from hard won experience.

Coming back from a broken heart.

Picking ourselves up after a fall from grace.

Apologizing for words that can’t be unheard.

Waiting too long.

Not waiting long enough.

Trusting someone else when we should have trusted ourselves.

Letting go when we should have held on.

Holding on when we should have let go.

We never truly "start over” because we can’t help but carry forward our experiences.

Whether what we take from those experiences truly serves us or not is, quite often, a product of how curious we can stay with them.

How willing we are to mine them for the precious gems they offer us.

Can we keep learning and growing, even when the lessons are painful or embarrassing or deeply uncomfortable?

Can we keep asking, “What can I learn here? How I can I use this to grow? To be more compassionate and connected? To understand more deeply?”

There is so much to be learned from both our pain and our joy.

So here I am. Another trip around the sun both behind me and ahead of me.

In this place and in this time.

We’re not starting over.

We’re carrying with us all the communities of love and support we’ve ever had the privilege of being a part of.

We’re carrying a sense of home that never leaves us, that is rooted within and between us.

And maybe more than anything, we’re carrying with us the utter wonder and gratitude of knowing to our core how much possibility lies in this world, in our lives, in our relationships, in ourselves.

I think that’s my takeaway this birthday.

But I don’t pretend to know for sure.

That’s where curiosity will come in.

Stay curious out there, my friend.

P.S. Did you catch the second episode of the podcast that dropped on Saturday? Give it a listen and let me know what you think! Also, send over a favorite quote or line and why it touched you— I want to hear about it and, with your permission, share it on the podcast!