When we think of new beginnings, we think of a fresh start.

Something new and exciting that can potentially lead to an adventure where there will be new experiences, lessons learned, new people, and perhaps a love story to unfold.

We live in a world where there are seemingly endless possibilities and where nothing is for certain.

We all want to believe in magical fairy tales, but it’s never that simple.

We forget that new beginnings only start where there are endings.

We forget that it’s often the endings that keep us stuck in old patterns, cycles, and behaviors.

Endings are hard.

We are swallowed whole with hope, taken for granted, chewed, used, spit out, and discarded. Endings break us, throw us into darkness, and often as a result, we lose all faith in ourselves and humanity.

We come to fear the future because of what we have experienced in the past. We come to be afraid to let go and move toward what happiness could look like as we have associated love, friendships, and connection to past experiences of hurt and termination.

Instead, we need to see them as coming in many forms and not just that one thing that we are looking for.

A new beginning is not the past; it’s not the people who should have cared for us and loved us, but didn’t. It’s about saying, “I will never give up; I will dust myself off and try again.”

A new beginning is the stranger whom we bump into and with whom we exchange a smile or a simple “hello” that turns into a new friendship or relationship and that helps us heal our wounds. It is often these new connections that show us that we don’t have to lose ourselves to please others and that there are indeed good people in the world who want to see us succeed and will accept and embrace both our flaws and our greatness—those aspects of ourselves we have rejected.

It only takes one person to see our worth, to give us the encouragement we need, and to show us the parts of ourselves we never knew existed.

That is what a new beginning looks like. It’s often missed for a new adventure at first, as we never see it coming. That’s what makes it magical.

When meeting someone new, smiling and chatting as I get to know them, I always wonder: how important of a role will this new acquaintance play in my life?

A best friend? A lover? The father of my children? Only time will tell. And in these moments, it’s fun to look back to past events where I was only focused on the ending, the hurt, the pain and I didn’t recognize the new door leading me to a new potential.

This is why it is so important to see how far we’ve come on our journey—to look back and be grateful for those endings and all that we have in our lives as a result of them.

This is why it is so important to appreciate each moment with those we hold dear to our hearts.

This is why it is so important to let go of the pain that once was and know that there are always better things to come.

Let go of the I will never have that which I am looking for. You will come to have that and more.

Do not love to find someone. Love because you want to see love in the world, even if all you have known is pain.

This is not the ending but only the beginning.