On Starting Over Without Calling It That

I didn’t call it starting over.

That felt too dramatic. Too much like failure, or like I was making a statement. So I called it a transition. A pivot. A next chapter. All the words we use when we want to describe a significant break without admitting how significant it is.

But here is the truth: I started over. Completely. From a stable senior HR career to building a coaching practice from the ground up, during a pandemic, as a solo parent. That is starting over. You can use softer language if you need to, but let’s not pretend it wasn’t what it was.

Starting over is terrifying in a way that is hard to describe to someone who hasn’t done it. Not just the practical terror — the income uncertainty, the identity questions, the loss of the title that told people (and yourself) who you were. There is also a quieter terror: the fear that you left something real and might not find anything equally real on the other side.

I want to tell you what I found on the other side: more of myself.

Not in a vague, Instagram-caption way. Specifically: I found the parts of me that had been subordinated to the role for years. The natural curiosity. The genuine care for how people move through their lives. The desire to have conversations that matter and not just meetings that run over.

I also found: discomfort. Uncertainty. A learning curve I hadn’t expected. Moments of genuine doubt.

All of it was real. All of it was mine.

Starting over doesn’t erase what came before. Everything I built in those 20 years came with me — the knowledge, the relationships, the hard-won understanding of how organizations and people work. It just stopped owning me.

If you are standing at the edge of something that feels like starting over — the thing you’re afraid to call what it is — I want you to know: you don’t have to have it figured out to take the first step.

You just have to be willing to find out what’s on the other side.

I promise it’s worth it.