You’re Allowed to Start Over and Over and Over

We make clothes that say what we’re too tired to explain.

But tonight, we have some time just for you.

Have you ever felt that familiar pain is better than the thought of starting again?

That those unmoving lips might do, rather than tasting someone new.

That the house you’ve built on sand feels safer simply because it’s the only one you know even while it’s sinking.

Because same. Most of us have.

We call ourselves brave while shaking at the thought of being bad at something new. Terrified sometimes to the point of paralysis at picking up the metaphorical pen, or picking our physical selves off the bedroom floor to go on a date.

The harshness we feel towards ourselves is precise and personal. It seems designed to hit directly at our own nerve. We’d never speak that way to someone else and if we did, it would probably be projection. Wishing we were bold, too.

I hear people all the time saying they’re “too old” to begin again — at the ripe age of 25, 30, or 72. My psych degree would say that’s a cognitive distortion, but to myself and others, it feels painfully true.

My life has been a cycle of deaths and rebirths. I’ve spent years collecting fragments of myself, picking up scars and soul decorations along the way.

At 15–17, a career-ending injury shattered my hip cartilage and my ballet trajectory. I had no idea who I was outside those mirrored walls — no defined sense of self beyond the discipline I’d built my life around. A decade-long identity crisis ensued.

Was I academic? Did I want to study? Did I want to be an artist in another medium? Was I a party animal? A homebody? I searched for myself in some strange and dark places — toxic relationships, red, brown, and black hair dye, blonde regrowth always seeping through, parties with people I was scared of. I threw myself at anything and almost anyone, but I seldom stuck.

At 28, I left the apartment I’d worked my ass off for — my first proper “adult” furniture, my long-term relationship, and the version of myself I thought I was meant to be. The idea of giving up that life terrified me.

My inner critic told me I was falling behind my peers. That I should hold onto my pain with white-knuckled fists — because at least it was something to hold. A piercing chronic pain condition was the only thing that could make me let go. I heard someone say once that it’s interesting how much pain people will tolerate before they finally change. The answer for me was a lot.

I think we fear starting over because we don’t know what’s on the other side. But what’s on the other side could be better. It could be transformative. And even if it isn’t — it could teach you something.

If only I’d known that on the other side of that fear — and that healing — was starting a business, travelling the world with my best friends, reclaiming my dating life, and forming the deepest friendships and family relationships I’ve ever known.

I don’t hold onto anything with white-knuckled fists anymore. Because the one thing I can count on is change. Waves move in and out and so do we. Getting older, I think that saying is true: it’s less important to worry about the waves, and more about learning to build a better boat and choosing who is on it with you.

No one is going to give you permission to do the things you want to do. And we’re not in the business of handing it out.

But if you needed a sign — from us, or from one of our pieces, that you’re allowed to start over and over and over, then here it is.

Start your project. Be passionate. Be bad at it. Travel somewhere new. Tell them you like them. Get rejected 100 times. Make mistakes. Make a new friend. Kiss a different face. And if there’s no one to come home to — kiss yourself.

You’re not too late to your own life. There’s no rulebook. No single way to be happy.

So do what feels good to you.

 

You’re allowed to start.

And you’re allowed to start all over again.