Rebuilding, when life didn't go the way you planned

I know something about starting over. Not as a credential — it simply means I am unlikely to tell you it is a phase, or that it happens for a reason.

Some things do not resolve into a lesson. They just have to be survived, and then lived alongside.

Rebuilding is not returning

The early hope is usually to get back to how it was. That hope is doing something kind — keeping you upright — and eventually it has to be put down, because the old life required conditions that no longer exist.

What you are actually doing is building a second one. With the same person, holding more.

Function comes back before feeling does

You will look recovered long before you feel it. People will say how well you are doing, and mean it, and be wrong. This mismatch is normal and worth knowing about, because otherwise you conclude something is wrong with you.

Small structures, then choices

Sleep, food, a few fixed points in the week, two people who get the unedited version. Only then decisions. Big decisions made in the first year tend to be attempts to escape the feeling rather than expressions of what you want.

And at some point — later than you would like, earlier than you expect — something will interest you again. Follow it. That is not disloyalty to what you lost.