Starting Over at 60 — Break Up Regret
I don't want to be starting over at 60 and rebuilding everything.
And if you are reading this, I am sure you don't want to be starting over either. I just want to go back to life the way it was. But that is not reality.
I've just finished reading Mitch Albom's novel Twice, and it made me realize something about starting over at 60. If I could just go back with the knowledge I have now, could I have saved what I have lost?
Maybe you’ve had a moment like that too.
A moment that pops into your head and you think:
If only I had known then what I know now.
Today’s blog post and video is about how I'm trying to accept that there is no do-over in life — and how I'm handling that in real time.
Which, to be honest, some days I'm not that good at handling it at all.
If you could go back to one moment in your life with the knowledge you have now, what would it be?
Please come find me on Instagram and tell me in my DMs — if you feel like sharing that moment.
The “do-over” I wish I had
Twice asks this really interesting question: What if you could choose a moment in your life where you made a mistake with someone, or something, and go back with the knowledge you have now, and course-correct?
And as I was reading it, I thought:
Oh, I know exactly where I'd go.
Actually, I have more than one place.
I've said many times that I want a do-over of my life.
One is when my fiancé died.
And now, after the decades long relationship I thought was going to be my future has ended. And the hindsight of both losses can be incredibly loud. Here’s what I think about:
The conversations I wish I'd handled differently.
The moments I got triggered.
The things I wish I'd understood about myself.
The times I wish I had listened and sat in my own discomfort instead of reacted.
And that's the thing about hindsight.
It takes us back over conversations, decisions and moments we can't change, inviting us to rewrite a past that no longer exists.
But there's a fine line between reflecting on what we could have done differently and blaming ourselves for how everything turned out.
Hindsight can teach us something. But it can also become self-blame in a heartbeat.
Responsibility isn't the same as shame
There are absolutely things I would do differently now. I'm not going to pretend there aren't. I would change some of how I showed up in my relationship — for my partner, yes, but also for myself.
I know things now that I didn't know then.
I understand myself differently. I see patterns in myself and how they play into my dnamics with others. I understand boundaries differently.
And I want to own that.
But here's the part I'm learning:
Taking responsibility for your part in a relationships demise doesn't mean taking responsibility for the entire outcome.
Because whether we talk about job loss, or partner loss (guess what I had job loss in that too!) there was another person involved.
We cant control anothers choices or reactions. Nor can we control someone else’s subconscous patterns. We can only control our own, if we let ourselves discover them
We can’t control someones character, or the events in their life that shaped who they became.
And we certainly couldn't control the choices someone ultimately makes.
With all of this, I have to ask myself the harder question:
Would knowing what I know now actually have given me the life I think I want back?
I don't know. And neither does anyone else. Because even if I had behaved differently, there were still things outside of my control.
That's a hard thing to accept when you're grieving a life you thought you were going to have.
I sometimes think I want a superpower that would allow me to go back and fix everything.
But maybe I'm looking at the wrong superpower. Maybe the superpower isn't being able to go back.
Maybe it's being able to look back honestly without destroying myself in the process.
So when I feel a shame spiral coming on — or regret, or just plain sadness that the identity and family unit I had is gone — I come back to one question:
What is in my control, and what isn't?
I'm not the first person to suggest this. But I've started actually writing it down.
What is mine?
What isn't mine?
And surprisingly, that simple exercise helps. Because there is a difference between saying:
"I wish I had handled that differently."
and saying:
"If only I had handled that differently, none of this would have happened."
The first is reflection. The second is pretending I have control over an outcome I never actually had control over.
So what do I do with what I know now?
This is where I think starting over gets interesting. Because I can't go back.
I can't change the conversations.
I can't change what I said or didn't say.
I can't change what someone else chose.
I can't recreate the family unit or the identity I had.
And I can't save my younger self from every mistake she made.
But I can rebuild from a place of knowledge. Knowledge about myself and what my boundaries need to look like. I have insight around what my boundaries need to look like
I know what happens when I ignore my own needs or what it feels like when something isn't right.
I know what I want more of. And I know what I don't want to carry forward. Even though some days it’s hard to put down.
Maybe that's the closest thing we get to a do-over.
Not going backward.
Going forward differently because we know more now.
So if I could go back, would I change things? Of course I would! I'm human. But I don't get to go back and save the life I had. What I do get to do is take what that life taught me and use it to build the life I have now.
And maybe that's what starting over really is.
Not erasing the past. Not pretending it didn't hurt. Not deciding everything was my fault.
And not waiting for someone to give me my old life back.
It's taking the knowledge with me.
And starting from here.