Findmeraw

Starting over at 55 was not on my vision board.

I didn’t wake up one morning, stretch, make coffee, and announce, “You know what sounds fun? Rebuilding my life from the ground up.” Life was less polite than that.

By this age, we’re supposed to have things figured out. At least that’s the story we’re sold. Career. Family. Money. Health. A respectable plan for retirement. Maybe a grill we have surprisingly strong opinions about.

But life doesn’t care much about the timetable.

Sometimes starting over begins with admitting something isn’t working

For me, rebuilding meant looking honestly at parts of my life I had spent years surviving.

It meant putting distance between myself and a dysfunctional family system. It meant learning boundaries after years of confusing keeping the peace with being at peace. It meant facing major health challenges, including surviving AIDS and a stroke, and eventually making the transition from disability back into working life.

Those experiences changed me. Some changes were painful. Some were freeing. Most were both.

I also learned something I wish someone had told me years ago: surviving something and healing from it are not the same job.

Walking away can be an act of rebuilding

There is a strange idea that family relationships must be preserved at almost any cost. I understand where that comes from. Family can provide history, identity, loyalty and belonging.

But what happens when belonging requires abandoning yourself?

Walking away from unhealthy relationships did not magically fix my life. There was no movie soundtrack. No dramatic sunrise appeared on cue.

There was grief. There was anger. There were questions. There was also space.

And eventually, I began filling that space with something I had not always given myself permission to have: my own life.

Starting over isn’t starting from zero

This may be the biggest lesson I’ve learned.

When you’re rebuilding in your 50s, it can feel as if you’ve lost time. You look around and compare your life with people who appear more established, more financially secure, healthier, happier or simply farther ahead.

But I am not starting from zero.

I’m starting with experience.

I’m starting with everything I’ve survived, every mistake I’ve made, every boundary I’ve learned to set, every difficult conversation I’ve gotten through and every time life knocked me flat and I eventually stood back up.

That counts for something.

Going back to work changed more than my paycheck

Returning to work after disability was another kind of rebuilding.

Work can be exhausting. Customers can test every spiritual principle you’ve ever claimed to believe in before lunch. But working again also gave me structure, independence and proof that my story wasn’t finished.

I wasn’t trying to become the person I had been before everything happened.

I was learning how to become the person I was now.

The financial side of starting over is real

Personal reinvention sounds wonderful until rent is due.

Starting over later in life isn’t only emotional or spiritual. There are bills, credit problems, housing decisions, work decisions and the uncomfortable mathematics of rebuilding financial stability.

I’ve had to deal with those realities too. I don’t want FindMeRaw to pretend that a positive attitude makes practical problems disappear.

Sometimes healing means processing the past. Sometimes it means filling out an application, making a budget, going to work and trying again tomorrow.

So what is FindMeRaw?

This site is not about having life figured out.

It’s about what happens when you don’t.

I’ll be writing about starting over, family estrangement, boundaries, recovery, trauma and growth, money after financial setbacks, returning to work, getting older, being gay, and the strange mixture of courage and absurdity involved in rebuilding a life.

I want to talk about what helped me, what didn’t, what I’m still learning and what I wish I had known sooner.

No perfect ending required.

At 55, I’m not finished. I’m editing.

There are things I would change about my past if I could.

I can’t.

What I can change is what gets the next chapter.

That’s where I am now. Not at the beginning. Not at the end. Somewhere much more interesting in between.

If you’re rebuilding too, you’re welcome here.

This is FindMeRaw.