We all have to start over at some point in our lives.
Depending on how you’re feeling about it, the process can either be incredibly painful, or a fresh bright chance at a new beginning. For many of us, starting over can actually be a complicated mess of both these emotions, tangled up in this indecipherable web of conflicting feelings.
I’ve had many years to process what happened to my dream, to my career vision with health coaching, and even to my marriage that waned and bent under the weight of failures and miscommunications. I started She Lives Fit as a bright and beaming 24 year old, ready to take on the world and make waves of positive change. Less than a year into my venture, I realized it was going to take a lot more financial security to make ends meet for my husband and I, and I gradually eased back into part time and eventually full time employment in other ventures. I was devastated, but still continued to accept a few clients on the side of my many hours of work and private teaching and volunteering.
In 2016, I birthed my son. Becoming a mother fundamentally shifted my entire life. (I feel like there should be a warning about the degree to which women feel altered hormonally and emotionally while breastfeeding, even when it’s not fully considered postpartum depression.) It was the closure of any “free time” I had to engage in entrepreneurial work while also working full-time and nursing my infant. I quietly let the door shutter on my dream, as my strained marriage and family responsibilities took its steady toll on any flicker of hope I had left.
I mourned the loss of this dream. Mourned it, cried over it, berated myself, gained some weight, struggled with certain healthy habits amidst roils of life change, and eventually just concluded I needed a new dream. Washed my hands. Moving forward. “You failed. Suck it up, buttercup.”
I experienced the end of my first marriage throughout this mourning process as well. Cue sweeping waves of emotional ruin, complete devastation… and somewhere buried under the ash: the smallest seed of hope for a new life and new dream ahead.
Starting over isn’t easy. Anyone who has been through a traumatic “end” of some kind knows that. And sometimes the way we start over is just by licking our wounds, tending to our emotional scars, and taking one baby-step at a time into a new existence.
Thankfully, the end of one chapter of my life began the start of a beautiful new vision and reality. I started my life over, grew into a more confident mother by single parenting, resolved to do better in my future relationships, and build myself into the self-made and confident woman I knew I could be and wanted to be back when I was 21 years old. I remarried – and have so much to be thankful for. My spouse is loving, encouraging, and supportive in all the right ways. From the beginning of our relationship, when I confessed my feelings of devastation and failure with my business, he said it wasn’t over. He said he could see it happening again – just with the right foundation in place. He believed in me long before I believed in myself, and for that I am so grateful.
When we got married, I quit my full-time employment in medical care, and moved into the position I hold currently with VitaLife: working in health and wellness coaching again, with the security of a business model that I knew would be successful, and support at home to make it happen. I also was able to focus on my private voice studio and expand the number of students I could teach. Everything was falling into place.
A few months ago, I was looking through bank statements and saw my recurring monthly web-hosting payment on my ledger, and got extremely agitated.
“This is so dumb, Whitney. Why keep this stupid website you never even update or use, when you aren’t coaching on your own!? You keep paying year after year to keep this useless thing, just cancel it already.”
I slogged through the irritating process of resetting my usernames and passwords because I couldn’t remember any of it, and got logged in to my host site and hovered over “cancel”… I clicked it… and it said, “Are you sure you want to cancel and deactivate your domain?”
And I hesitated. I wasn’t sure.
That tiny seed under the ash had been growing subconsciously, being watered and tended lovingly with the affirmations of my husband and the little pieces of fate falling into place over the last year with my jobs and life. I’ve been happier and more content than ever, which is the most fertile place for hope to germinate and thrive.
I didn’t want to give it up. I didn’t cancel, and I didn’t let go.
After a lot of discussion, excited brainstorming, and the right support, I decided it was time to refocus. Time to relaunch my dream, in a new direction and with my new life. I know so much more than I did nearly a decade ago when this all began. My life looks totally different, and so does our society and cultural norms. (And amidst the COVID nightmare we are all experiencing, I have had a lot more time at home to fill with work and projects.) The equation is completely different now….
Over the past few years, my passions have taken me in a few different directions to ultimately land me where I am now, feeling more at peace and fulfilled doing work that I love each day. I started out of college as a newspaper editor, transitioned to a graphic designer at an ad-agency, then to a graphic artist at a printing company. Along the way, I started teaching voice lessons to fill my spirit and joy of music in my life, and also picked up a part-time position as the music and arts coordinator at my church. These side-jobs filled my drive to createmore than any of the work I was doing in my main jobs, which occupied my mind and time for the majority of my week.