She didn't start over. She started better. The decision wasn't made quickly. It was made after a long time of knowing, the way you know things before you're ready to act on them, and then a shorter time of courage, and then the actual doing of it.
What Starting Over Actually Requires
It requires the willingness to let something be finished. To not revise the ending. To accept that the story of this relationship, or this career path, or this version of your life in this city, is complete, and that completion is not the same as failure. This is harder than it sounds. The mind finds reasons to continue with what is familiar. Starting over asks you to trust that the unfamiliar is where the next version of your life is waiting.
The Symbol for This Moment
The butterfly. There is no more accurate symbol for what starting over actually is. The chrysalis period, the one where nothing looks like it's happening from the outside, where you are in the middle of becoming something but haven't arrived yet, is real. The emergence is real. The flight is real. The butterfly jewelry does not celebrate where you have been. It celebrates where you are going. It marks the moment of departure from one form of your life into the next.
Or the Moon
The moon that disappears and returns. The waning that looks like ending but is actually just part of a cycle. The crescent that means growth, the part of you that is still becoming, still in process, still not arrived but undeniably moving. The moon is the piece for the woman who is in the middle of her starting-over, not yet on the other side. The woman who knows something is coming but isn't there yet. The piece that says: this is temporary. The cycle continues. You will be full again.
A Note on New Cities
The new city version of starting over has its own specific quality. The anonymity, no one here knows the previous version of you. The freedom that comes from building an identity from scratch in a place that has no prior associations with you. The loneliness that comes in the evenings of the first weeks, and then recedes as the city becomes yours. The butterfly for this, always. You left something behind and went somewhere new. That is transformation. The butterfly has meant exactly this for four thousand years.
Shop new beginnings:
- Butterfly Orchid Pearl Necklace, $129
- Butterfly Orchid Pearl Ring, $75
- Celestial Star Pearl Radiance Pendant Necklace, $96