The Gift of Beginning Again
Sometimes I catch myself stocking the produce cooler at work and think, “How did I get here?” I look at my 17-, 18-, and 23-year-old co-workers and find myself reflecting on when I was their age, doing much the same thing. Back then it was The Herb & Spice Shop in Ottawa. Today it's The Root Cellar in Charlottetown. I'm here stocking shelves, working the cash, clocking in and clocking out—just as I did all those years ago. Only now, I'm about to turn sixty-one.
By the time many people reach sixty, life has settled into familiar rhythms. Careers are behind them or winding down. Gardens are established. Friendships have deep roots. Family traditions are well worn. There's a comforting sense of knowing where home is.
I did not have children, though I have a beautiful young step-daughter who lives many miles away. My parents passed many years ago now, and my siblings, who also don't have children, live many miles away as well.
I uprooted my life after thirty years in Victoria, established what I thought would be forever roots in the Kootenays, only to realize that wasn't the place for me. Now here we are by the ocean once more and, dare I say it, I can feel new roots beginning to form.
Packing up a house—and a life—and transplanting it here has been both exhausting and exhilarating. Starting again has made me feel surprisingly alive. In some ways, I even feel younger. Not because my body is younger, but because my mind is awake again. There is something invigorating about not knowing exactly what tomorrow will bring.
Being around health-focused, like-minded people every workday is refreshing and anything but boring. Walking into a life where nobody knows you and learning new things every day can be challenging for sure, but it's also confidence-building. Every errand becomes a small adventure. Finding a favourite café. Choosing a new hairdresser. Learning which roads to take. Discovering where the locals go. Even the weather has become something to learn.
Learning the weather patterns here in Atlantic Canada has been fascinating. There is a humidity here that I haven't experienced since I was a child in Ottawa. The trees and gardens love it, and there is a lushness to the landscape that I've not been used to for some time. The fact that there are no deer on the Island allows hostas to be wildly abundant and huge. I miss the garden I built in the Kootenays—the fruit bushes, the trees, the flowers and vegetable gardens—but I'm equally thrilled to begin again, applying everything I learned there to a new garden here.
One of the unexpected gifts of beginning again is that you notice everything because everything is new. The landscape, the people, the birds and other wildlife—spotting a red fox on the beach was a highlight. We're slowly discovering our favourite beaches, cafés and little hidden corners of the Island. There is something deeply satisfying about realizing a place is beginning to feel familiar.
Perhaps the greatest gift of all is the opportunity to quietly reinvent yourself. Not to become someone different, but to notice habits or ways of being that no longer fit and gently let them go.
Small accomplishments suddenly feel meaningful. Learning new roads. Remembering a person's name. Finding my favourite local products and berry-picking farms. These little things become quiet victories that somehow feel bigger than they should.
Moving across the country at twenty-five from Ottawa to Victoria, and then again at sixty, has been quite a different experience. At sixty you're less interested in impressing people. You trust yourself more. You recover from disappointments faster because you've survived them before, and you know that uncomfortable feelings don't last forever. You have decades of evidence that life keeps unfolding.
Starting over isn't becoming someone different; it's finally having permission to become more fully yourself. Like the tides that come and go, or a garden that begins again each spring, nature is always moving through endings, beginnings, seasons of growth, and periods of stillness.
Starting over is also humbling because it makes you a beginner again. You ask for directions. You introduce yourself. You make new friends. You learn a different community. Children do these things every day without a second thought. Somewhere along the way, many adults begin to believe they shouldn't have to. Perhaps that's one of the greatest gifts of beginning again—it returns us to a kind of curiosity we didn't realize we'd lost.
Moving to PEI has given me permission to rediscover my creative life. Not because I came here to become a writer or painter, but because beginning again created enough openness for my writing to return.
Perhaps life isn't asking us to have everything figured out by sixty. Perhaps it simply asks us to remain curious, vulnerable, and willing—to learn another road, meet another neighbour, discover another version of ourselves, and trust that there are still beautiful chapters waiting to be written.
