How to Restart After Dreams Die
Today, I am exactly 45 and a half years old.
Some mornings I watch the Today show and forcefully spoon down what people in their 40s are supposed to eat for breakfast. Gone are the days of eating a bowl of my favorite cereal drowned in milk.
Sweet strawberry Yoplait yogurt with a shiny, red foil top (that somehow makes me feel special) are also banned. I eat the plain, non-fat Greek kind—sprinkled with defrosted berries and a caterpillar-sized spoon of stevia.
The female hosts of the Today show are my age—somehow still squeezing themselves into black pleather pants. Hoda Kotb interviews special guest Gwyneth Paltrow, and they agree: your 40s are the best decade. All the hard work you’ve put into your career and self finally pays off.
Even my Target sweats with an expandable waistline act jealous. I eat another spoon of the tart protein-dense yogurt and sigh.
I’m in my 40s, and I’m starting over.
I went to college to be a singer.
I left college with a music degree and the belief I could never be one.
I added an extra year and a second degree in English as a consolation prize. At least when I wrote I didn’t choke up and fail in front of an auditorium filled with peers.
My voice professor sat visibly shocked, jaw open, in the back row. My next vocal lesson always started with the same, dreaded question: “I don’t understand what happens to you out there, Olivia. In our lessons, you sing so strongly. But, when you get out there in front of people, it all disappears. What happens?”
I guess that’s what happens when you hustle for your worth through singing, through achieving, by trying to follow what you believe to be a non-negotiable, God-given mandate.
I was no longer an eight-year-old singing for fun while seated in front of the TV—belting out all the showstoppers from “Annie.”
I couldn’t sing simply because I loved it—in our Missouri living room with my dad and his guitar.
In college, I sang in front of a jury of musicians with doctorates. I waited for them to say I was talented and shrunk as they scribbled evaluations on clip boards.
When I stood on that stage, I had to prove my right to follow this dream.
I sang and searched the seats for the cluster of talented music majors who thought their secret side glances were undetectable. But with each of those looks, the soul of a musician died. Their disapproval meant we were the music-lovers, the dreamers, with no talent—dishing out $48,000 for a degree that would take us nowhere.
At the end of my music program, I had too much evidence. If you’re a vocal giant in the practice room with the strength of a mouse on stage, what’s the point?
It was the first time I experienced the death of a constant companion—my voice.
No more singing in the shower.
No more attempts to conquer vocal runs with Celine Dion on the way to work.
Not even the best rendition of “It’s a Hard Knock Life” could coerce my well-trained vocal cords to join in.
I followed my husband, Nick’s, dream instead.
I moved overseas and volunteered to do everything possible to make his goals and our organization’s expectations happen.
I lost big parts of me to serve in places few wanted to go, and I believed that made God happy.
Sometimes I get trapped in regrets.
I wish I could board some Dr. Who-like time machine and transport myself back to 2001. I’d sit across from my 22-year-old self, in the passenger seat of our cheap, red Honda Civic.
I’d scream.
I’d shake her.
I’d drive her to buy one of those strawberry banana smoothies, filled with the bad kind of frozen yogurt she was obsessed with.
It’d tell her that she can sing…
and write…
and be a mom…
and be an oxymoron—both an incredibly strong and sensitive leader…
all while living overseas.
I’d try my best to convince her that God needed her to be alive,
not dead.
But I doubt the younger version of myself would recognize the 45-year-old Olivia.
She’d see my wrinkles and stretchy pants and think I’ve lost my edge—and she’s right.
After my first ten years overseas, another companion took the place of my singing.
I started a repetitive dance with depression.
Through the sadness, God did what I could never achieve via Dr. Who time travel. He didn’t scream or shake me.
He laid his head down next to mine—my pillowcase darkened by salty tears and streaks of mascara. And with a soft voice,
he asked me to remember.
Over the next few years, therapists helped me remember.
My dad, with his guitar, called me to remember.
Armenians invited me to remember—to sing for their congregations packed into old communist meeting halls—on dusty stages draped in thread-bare red velvet curtains.
Nick begged me to remember.
But to remember, I had to forget. Forget the scribbles of professors, the sideway glances, the nerves that choked my voice into silence.
And when I forgot, I started to make music again.
Instead of organizing other people’s dreams, I completed my Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing.
I stopped traveling all over the globe to prove myself, and chose to stay home with my kids for the few years I had left with them.
There is a new dream, and this year is dedicated to the vision of a 45.5-year-old woman.
Still…
somedays, I just want to stay in bed—the idea of starting a writing career in my 40s feels impossible.
Then my husband hands me my daily dosage of 10 depression-fighting supplements, pulls me out of bed, and I sit at my desk in front of a sun lamp. Nick feels it’s his turn to help my dreams fly.
On cloudy days, when it seems I need it most, you read my words and send a thoughtful message, and our stories become one.
Today, I boarded a plane to Armenia—the place I ran to escape disappointment in June 2003. I was 24 years old.
I know God is already there waiting, standing outside baggage claim.
He blends in with the other Armenian men—dark hair, large nose, thick eyebrows; clutching a bouquet of roses purchased from some grandma’s road-side stand. Donning all black and pointy dress shoes, his gold teeth illuminate a large smile.
He invites me to rise from the mascara-stained pillow and back to the beginning; to re-write my story.
I have plenty of proof that some dreams never happen. And maybe they don’t have to.
It’s what we learn in the trying; in the dancing with depression; in showing our children the life of “not giving up.”
It’s what we find in the people who share our wet pillowcases or hand out vitamins; those generous souls whose belief drags us through storms.
It’s what happens when you realize that God is expansive—kinder and more compassionate than you’ve been taught to believe.
Hoda and Gwyneth swear on their bottles of expensive retinol cream that the 40s can be the best decade of our lives. I kinda believe them.
As I sit on this airplane, flying back to the place I lost my songs, I sing. I write.
I can’t wait to see God’s gold-toothed grin welcoming me home.
See below for this week’s Journal Entry questions designed to help you find the forgotten things that make you feel alive.
***Per the advice of one of my writing professors, I have moved my writing subscriptions from mail chimp to Substack. As of now, I am dedicated to keeping my writing free for anyone to find and read.
However, Substack does allow people to subscribe with two options: a free subscription that sends you my writing in your email inbox, or a paid subscription (for those of you who have the extra funds, this encourages me to keep doing the hard work.)
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Weekly Journal Questions:
Find a quiet place that is comfortable. Close your eyes and take a few deep breaths in and out. Find peace after a busy morning or day.
1. Remember the things that made you feel alive. Make a list of things that came easily to you or brought you joy as a child (before others—parents, teachers, Sunday school teachers—told you that those things were frivolous or unfruitful.)
2. Do those activities and talents still make you feel alive today? Have you suffocated them in some way; given up on them?
3. What would it take for you to give yourself the freedom to allow at least one of those things to be re-ignited in your life? This can be a big dream or a simple act—like making a craft, bike rides, reading sci-fi, getting back in the pool, taking hikes.
4. Are there comments or disappointments you need to heal from? Write them out and sit with them. Allow your mind to float above the pain, call on God, call on your true self, and ask for the truth. Write the truths alongside the hurt.
5. Memorize the truths. Speak them to yourself with the lies come back.
6. Make a real plan to step towards a dream or add a life-giving habit back into your life. Can you make time and schedule it to occur at least four times in the next two months?
7. Imagine God welcoming you home to yourself (if you don’t believe in God, you can try it, or imagine something/ someone else.) He is calling you back to the things he made for you to love and dream about. What does he look like as he welcomes you home?