The anxiety of re-starting is so real. Restarting something you’ve hit the pause button on for too long. It’s so much harder than new beginnings. Because starting something hard for the first time comes with the anxiety of the unknown. You’re not really sure what to expect. You’re not sure if you’ll be up to it or not. You haven’t seen yourself in a similar context before. But restarting can bring along so much shame…and heaviness.

The shame of the downtime, of not being able to stay committed, of not being able to justify it to those who might have more questions once you decide to resume. The shame of the possibility that you might still have to re-pause again at some point. You convince yourself that if you never restart, you’ll never have to re-‘disappoint’ yourself. And so in addition to the potential unknown of regular beginnings, there are more embedded layers, more voices in your head that you’ll have to deal with first – and they’re not all so friendly. Shame is never friendly.

Plus the heaviness. The heaviness of already knowing that this particular thing will expose you to some dark sides of yourself you’ve long been ignoring. Because you’ve been there earlier. Because it got too much when you first started, and there’s a reason why it eventually started slipping off your calendar. Because anything worth doing, is honestly usually really hard…and heavy.

So every time you think of restarting, the shame and the heaviness will manage to convince you to postpone it. They’re so real, and they’re so hard to conquer on your own. And so this is a reminder for myself, and for you if you’ve been putting off restarting something too; you don’t have to do it alone. You just have to 1) believe in the validity of your anxiety, and 2) talk to someone you trust about it. You might just need a little push, for the magic to make its way through. But you never have to do it alone, I promise.