You keep seeing "starting over at 30, at 40, at whatever", and it looks so clean. It isn't. Here's what starting over in life actually costs, and why you might not need to do it at all.

There’s a kind of grief that sneaks up on you: not for what you lost, but for what never happened. The life you thought you’d have, the version of you that never got to exist, the paths that didn’t unfold. And once you recognize that ache for what it is, it becomes impossible to ignore how deeply it shapes the way you see yourself now.