Starting Over, From Scratch
On building a life that finally feels like mine in midlife
Looking back on 2022, you would never have guessed I was someone who had spent most of her life resisting change. Because more than any other time I can remember, that year was defined by it.
Within a nine-month period, my 23-year marriage officially ended. My youngest son left for college, making me an empty nester. And I packed up the home where we had raised our children and moved to a new city where I knew fewer people than I could count on one hand.
I’m not sure if it’s a documented side effect of COVID, but I swear something about the pandemic triggered a seismic shift in my relationship to change.
There’s nothing quite like a global, apocalyptic event to remind you how short and fragile life really is. To force you to take a hard, honest look at whether you’re actually living your one wild and precious life — or just moving through the motions of it.
For me, the decision to get divorced was part of that reckoning. At first, it felt like the defining moment. The singular event that would split my life cleanly into before and after. And in many ways, it did.
For six months after it was finalized, I hunkered down. I healed. I began the slow work of getting to know myself again, leaning into the comfort of familiar surroundings and routines and friends. And for a while, that was exactly what I needed. Hadn’t I done the hardest part?
But as my youngest got ready to leave for college, I started to feel something I didn’t expect. A restlessness. At first, it was subtle. Easy to ignore. Just a passing thought here and there – the sense that something still wasn’t quite right.
But it didn’t go away.
What started as a little twinge slowly grew louder until it became something I couldn’t ignore. Change, it turned out, wasn’t done with me yet.
The life I had built - those quiet suburban rhythms that had been perfect for raising a family - suddenly felt too small for the woman I was becoming. And that realization was both disorienting and oddly clarifying. Something in my bones told me that if I was truly going to rebuild, I couldn’t just rearrange the pieces of my old life. I had to create something new.
Like most big decisions in my life, it didn’t arrive with fanfare. It started slowly, and then seemingly all at once. For a month or two, it was a quiet conversation I had with myself. Stolen moments and daydreams about what life might look like somewhere else. Should I move home to D.C. to be close to my parents? Cold New England winters had taken their toll, what if I started over somewhere with sand and palm trees? Or what if…what if I moved abroad? Florence? London?
As exciting as it was to play out those scenarios, I knew that with the boys in college and my mother still battling Alzheimer’s, it wasn’t the right time - especially for a foreign adventure.
Eventually, I worked up the courage to say it all out loud to a friend.
She didn’t hesitate.
“Why don’t you move to Boston?”
Boston?
She might as well have suggested Brussels for all I knew about the city.
Even though we’d lived just an hour and a half away, it had never really been my city. When we needed an urban fix, we went to New York. Or I went home to Washington, D.C.
But the more I sat with it, the more it began to make sense.
My boys would be in college in New England. I could still be close to them. It might not be as convenient, but I could still do my job. My friendships, the ones that had carried me through so much, would still be within reach. And something in me recognized the opportunity hidden inside the uncertainty.
And that was it. Decision made.
But here’s the thing I wasn’t entirely prepared for: When I arrived in Boston, I didn’t arrive to a new life. I arrived to an empty one.
No built-in community.
No routines.
No easy entry points.
No young children to meet other parents through.
No dog to spark sidewalk conversations.
No familiar rhythm to fall back into.
Just me. A stranger in a city that didn’t know me yet.
And if I’m honest, there were moments in those early days where the weight of that reality was overwhelming. It would have been so easy to give into the temptation to retreat. To stay inside.
To scroll. To tell myself I would figure it out later. But instead, I made a commitment to honor the version of myself that had brought me here. The one who wanted more, even if she didn’t yet know what that looked like.
I decided to participate in my own life.
What did that look like?
I walked.
Miles and miles, every day.
Not with a destination, but with the intention to learn the shape of the place that might one day feel like mine. I made a rule for myself: never take the same route twice. To let myself get a little lost.
There was something about the unfamiliarity of it all mirrored exactly how I felt inside. Uncertain. Untethered. But also… open.
I started talking to people.
At the coffee shop. On a park bench. Standing in line at the coffee shop.
I resisted the easy escape hatch of my phone and looked up instead. I made eye contact. I smiled.
I said yes more than I wanted to.
To book talks. To the theater. To live music. To eating dinner on my own at the bar of a restaurant. To anything that put me in a room with other people. Not because I felt brave. Quite the opposite most of the time! But because I understood something important:
No one was coming to build this life for me.
We talk about the courage it takes to leave. And yes, that courage matters. But we don’t talk nearly enough about what comes after. The daily courage it takes to show up in a life that doesn’t feel like yours yet. To choose, again and again, to stay open in the face of uncertainty. Starting over isn’t a single act. It’s a practice.
And if you are somewhere in that in-between right now. If something in your life no longer fits. You don’t need to have it all figured out. You just need to be willing to take the first step.
And then the next.
And then the one after that.
Because a new life doesn’t arrive all at once.
It’s built — slowly and imperfectly — when you decide to keep showing up for yourself.
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Been divorced for 2 years and the loneliness as 2 sides to it. I love being alone but i also love great company. These days I make sure I go out… just as you said solo dinners, movie night, picnic, country drives, camping or spa. It takes a lot of courage to leave what’s not working but even more not to rush into another relationship. Thanks for sharing your journey with us.
Laurie you’re like a real life rock star in my opinion. What you have done is courageous and inspiring beyond words. I’m flooded at the strength and grit that took. I love that you honored yourself and you did the hard work. It’s so much easier to stay in the familiar, but you have proven that if you stick it out, it’s worth it. It’s a privilege to know you 🤗💛