Starting Over When You Thought Your Life Would Look Different By Now

You can survive heartbreak, divorce, burnout, toxic relationships, and still find yourself looking around in midlife wondering:

How the hell did I end up here?

In this episode, I'm talking about the grief nobody really talks about—the grief of the life you thought you'd have by now.

The marriage you thought would last.
The version of yourself you lost trying to keep everyone else happy.
The life you thought you'd be living now.

I share my own story of starting over, rebuilding after heartbreak, navigating mental health, identity loss, people-pleasing, and learning that sometimes the hardest part isn't letting go of the past—it's letting go of the future you thought was guaranteed.

If you've ever felt behind, broken, or like everyone else got the instruction manual except you, this episode is for you.

You're not alone.

And you're definitely not too late.

Transcript

Welcome And Who It’s For

SPEAKER_00 0:07

The podcast where we get into the nitty-gritty of real life, starting over and figuring out who the hell we are now. No tilter, no shame, a little messy, still not done. I'm your Facebook. If you're a woman over 40 who's ready to embrace the chaos, unpack the bullshit, and navigate the next chapter of your life without pretending you've got it all together, you're in the right place. Let's dive in together. Oh my gosh, can you believe it? I'm so excited to have you here listening to me share this stuff with you. I mean, I'm not any kind of guru or confidence coach or life coach or anything like that. And we're only at episode three, so I haven't really shared much of my personal story with you. But let me tell you, I can pretty much guarantee that there is not a lot I haven't seen or been through in my life. So trust me when I say that I did everything the hard way.

The Highlight Reel Of Hard Things

SPEAKER_00 1:32

I wanted to start off today's episode by giving you what I guess we could call the highlight reel of my life. I just feel like I need to give you some context or basis of where I'm coming from when I'm writing the topics for these episodes. I'm just gonna rattle them all off without going too deep into each one because honestly, if I unpacked everything, we'd be here for hours. Okay, so here we go. I was adopted shortly after birth. We moved around a lot while I was growing up. Like I went to seven different primary schools back and forth across the east and west coasts of Australia. I had a father who loved alcohol and a fairly controlling, maybe I should say overprotective mother, both of whom I love very, very much. So don't read in anything into that. I was an extremely hyperactive kid for back then, and that developed into other stuff later on. But it was when I turned 18 that shit got messy. I've had two miscarriages, one broad ligament, and three live births, so I have three kids. I've been married twice, divorced twice. I've had DV relationships, both physically violent and emotionally toxic. I've been diagnosed with bipolar BPD, all the anxieties, um, and I've been in a mental hospital twice. I've been on all the meds, and I've been on none. My dad was killed in a workplace accident when I was twenty six. Um I've had periods where I abused alcohol and periods where I've been sober. I've been a shit mum at times and had to deal with the consequences and the guilt of that. Hearing that list out loud, I think the only thing I didn't do was end up a drug addict. Ouch. But the point is, I survived it. And more importantly, I learned something from every shit thing that ever happened to me. But you know what else?

When Life Looks Nothing Like Planned

SPEAKER_00 4:36

Even after surviving all that, I still thought by this age that my life would look different. I thought I'd feel more settled, more certain, more healed maybe. I thought I'd finally have reached this magical point in adulthood where everything made sense. And instead, right before my forty-sixth birthday, my second marriage ended. No fairy tale ending here, right? So I've spent the last five years rebuilding parts of myself that I didn't even realize were broken. And I think that's why I wanted to do this episode. I know I can't be the only woman who's looked around at her life and thought, this is not where I thought I'd fucking end up. Not because it's terrible and not because we're ungrateful, but because somewhere along the way, life stopped looking like the picture we had in our heads. And there's a grief in that that nobody really talks about.

High-Functioning Survival Mode Costs

SPEAKER_00 6:04

I think the reason that nobody talks about it is A, from the outside, we're all still functioning, right? I talked all about this in the last episode, high functioning survival mode. So if you haven't listened to it yet, go back and check that one out. But basically, we're still going to work. We're still replying to messages, still paying the bills, still posting happy birthday comments on Facebook like emotionally stable human beings. And B, because we don't want to look like we failed. And I say look like with air quotes, because that's the story you're telling yourself, right? I should have figured my shit out by now. Why does everybody else seem more stable than me? I can't let so and so see how much I'm struggling right now. Or I'm not that woman that falls apart. I'm too old to still be a hot mess. And babe, all that judgment, it's coming from you. You're your harshest fucking critic. Because nobody else is saying that shit. And if they are, then fuck them, right? You need to go and get new friends or surround yourself with better people or something. Maybe I'll do an episode on that. But that fear of looking like you've failed, and all those stories that you tell yourself is because you've attached your worth to how successful your relationships looked, how well you coped, how functional you appeared, how much you could carry without collapsing. So we keep doing it. Meanwhile, you're over here thinking, what the fuck happened to my life? I know, I was too. And while that question's still burning in the back of your brain, you're also dealing with the loneliness that stems from it. Because you're judging yourself for not having it all figured out already. Like there should have been some magical point in your life where suddenly you healed all the trauma, your relationships became healthy, your confidence snapped into place, you stopped caring about what other people thought. Your finances made sense and your nervous system calmed down, and you finally became this secure, emotionally evolved woman who drinks green smoothies and has matching Tupperware. But that's not the way it worked out, right? We kept doing the same shit while hoping and praying that things would miraculously get better. And instead, a lot of women, including me, hit their forties and fifties, still carrying the burnout, the grief, the relationship trauma, the identity loss, the chronic stress, mental exhaustion, and years worth of pretending they're okay because the people in their life got very comfortable with them being the strong one. And the brutal part, you still have to function while you rebuild and reinvent yourself. Life doesn't pause while you're figuring it all out. You still have to check most of the same boxes. Go to work, parent, pay the bills, answer the emails, clean the house, buy the groceries, and show up for everyone else. And I think that's why so many women get stuck on autopilot and in survival mode for years. Because survival mode becomes efficient. It's comfortable in an uncomfortable way. You stop asking yourself, what do I actually want? And start asking, what do I need to do to get through the day? And when you live like that long enough, eventually you lose yourself a bit. No, scratch that. You lose yourself completely. I know I fucking did. There were periods in my life where I can honestly tell you I wasn't living at all. I was literally just reacting to everything. Reacting to trauma, reacting to past relationships, reacting to abandonment, reacting to fear, reacting to chaos, not the actual situation. I was reacting to my own unhealed shit. I was on this constant emotional roller coaster while simultaneously firefighting my own life. And that was probably what was so confronting about starting over again at 47.

Who Are You Without Chaos

SPEAKER_00 11:47

I'd realized how many versions of myself I'd built around survival instead of authenticity. Like, who are you when you're not trying to keep everybody happy? Who are you when you're not desperately trying to hold on to a relationship? Who are you when you stop shrinking yourself? Who are you without the chaos? Now that's a big one because some of us get addicted to the emotional chaos, right? The drama of it. It gives us that dopamine hit. And when it's gone and we start coming down, and we start to get that empty feeling in the pit of your stomach. So we repeat the cycle, subconsciously searching for that comfortable feeling again. I know for me personally, there were times where I confused emotional intensity with love. I confused being needed with being valued. I confused survival with living. And that's heavy stuff. It takes time to unravel it all.

Shame Social Media And Comparison

SPEAKER_00 13:11

And another hard part about rebuilding your life, especially later in life, is the shame attached to it. We don't want to admit that to ourselves, let alone say it out loud. So nobody's talking about that either. The shame of feeling behind, the shame of failed marriages, the shame of starting again financially, the shame of mental health struggles, and the shame of looking around at other people your age and thinking, why do they seem to know how to do life better than me? Honestly, I kind of think social media has made that feeling even worse. Because everybody's online, they're either healed, thriving, soul aligned, financially free, drinking collagen, manifesting abundance, or renovating a fucking pantry. And don't get me wrong, I love social media. I love Instagram and all that, but it's not real life, right? I mean, every time I scroll through my feed, I see these flawless over 50 women. Some of them are like talking about real shit, and I love that. But I'm also looking at them going, how do you always look so freaking good? The hair's always done, makeup's done, they're in gorgeous outfits with the right accessories and the perfect lighting. Most days for me when I'm not at work, I'm sitting over here with my hair thrown up in what might pass for a bun, like wearing sweats, barefoot, no makeup, hormonal breakouts on my face, and wearing glasses. I mean, when there's an event or a party or a reason, I can totally get my glam on and, you know, look friggin' fine. You know what I'm saying, right? But for the most part, it's not an everyday thing for me. I'm too exhausted for that shit. It's not real life. Not mine anyway.

The Messy Middle Of Healing

SPEAKER_00 15:35

Healing, rebuilding and growing and learning in real life is not graceful. It's fucking messy. Sometimes it looks like finally setting boundaries after years of people pleasing. Sometimes it looks like not having that fourth glass of wine. Sometimes it looks like leaving relationships that you should have left years ago. Sometimes it looks like crying in your car before work. Sometimes it looks like learning to be alone without panicking. Sometimes it looks like admitting you don't know who you are anymore. And that's all okay, by the way. Because you can build from there if you're willing to look deeper and do the work. But that's what you don't see on your Instagram or on your for you page. Not the breakdown, not the inspirational comeback story. I'm talking about the messy middle, where you're doing the work on yourself while simultaneously grieving the life you thought you'd have. Because there's grief in starting over. Real grief. Grief for wasted years. Grief for the younger version of you who deserve more softness than she got. Grief for the relationships you tried so hard to save. Grief for the woman you might have been if survival hadn't consumed so much of your life. But here's the thing. Your life not turning out how you imagined doesn't mean you failed. It ain't over yet. Some of the strongest women I know are the ones who've rebuilt themselves from absolute rock bottom later in life. Women who've been through hell and back and still kept going. Yes, there are the famous stories. Vera Wang, Mel Robbins, Julia Childs, right? All women over 40 who rebuilt. But I'm talking about real women that you don't see or hear about. Women who left abusive marriages, women who got sober at 50 at 52 or 42, women who started businesses after bankruptcy, women who went back to uni in their 40s. Women who lost lost themselves completely and still found a way to come back. Because my point is that they are no different from me or you. They just chose to do it anyway. They chose to start again in spite of everything. That's bravery. Real courage. It's where I got to at 47, and it's where I still am now. Not fully healed, not fully figured out, still a bit chaotic, but still rebuilding. Still asking the right questions, still calling myself out, still noticing when I go off track and still writing that shit down. It's not about who you thought you'd be at 20. It's about figuring out who you are now. Not living in the past, not pitching a tent in victim town, who you are now. And then choosing to be the best fucking version of yourself moving forward.

Starting Again Takes Real Courage

SPEAKER_00 19:34

Thank you so much for listening today. I hope this helped. If anything in this episode hit home or it made you feel seen or comforted or maybe a little called out, I'd genuinely love to hear from you. So please connect. You can find me over on all the socials at unuofficial.au or you can slide into my DMs anytime if you want to leave a message or have any questions or want to tell me something you'd like to hear about next. And if socials aren't your thing, you can email me at unfinished and unapologetic at gmail I can't even say my own email address at unfinished and unapologetic at gmail.com. I've got so many more episodes, like literally thousands that I want to get out. So many more topics to cover and to chat about. Some will go deeper and get more real, and some are just about shit you need to hear. But if this episode did speak to you in some way, it would help me out so much if you followed the podcast, left a review, shared it with another woman who might need to hear it, or even just send this episode to a friend and say, This made me think of you. Because that's how this works, right? The more you guys show your support, the more Spotify and Apple push the podcast out so I can reach more women. Because that's my mission. To reach, connect, help, and support women going through all these changes. You know, stepping into the best version of themselves. I know that sounds cheesy, but it's true. I fully believe that your 40s and 50s can be the start of an entirely new era. So thank you. I love and appreciate you guys more than you know. So until next time, bye for now. Remember,

Connect Share And Keep Going

SPEAKER_00 21:50

we're doing this side by side. Every chapter we explore together, I bought some version of it too. So if today's episode ends with one thing to think about, feel, question, or try, I'd love to hear how you use it. Until next time, keep it racing and messy, I'm finished unapologetically.