Unsolicited Grit

Starting over rarely looks brave while you're doing it.

Usually, it looks uncertain, inconvenient, and occasionally ridiculous.

In Unsolicited Grit: 25 Things Nobody Tells You About Starting Over, Kate Waage turns twenty-five unexpected moments from her own life into stories about resilience, reinvention, courage, and learning to trust yourself when the path ahead isn't particularly clear.

There's the head-on car accident followed by an improbable decision to run a half-marathon. A childhood spent under the watchful eye of a formidable Soviet grandmother. A first post-MBA job folding sweaters at Filene's. A backyard meadow that took four years to bloom. A first horseback ride along the Chisholm Trail. A pandemic-era decision to take an exam she had no obvious reason to take. And the moment she walked away from a successful executive career to find out what else might be possible.

Some lessons arrive through failure. Others through people we almost overlook. And quite a few show up disguised as ordinary days.

Kate's stories aren't about getting everything right. They're about what happens when you keep learning, changing, trying, and occasionally laughing at yourself along the way.

This is a book for anyone standing at the edge of a change and wondering, "Now what?"

Maybe you're changing careers. Building something of your own. Recovering from a setback. Questioning a life that looks successful on paper. Or simply realizing that the person you've become wants something different from the person who originally made the plan.

You don't need to have the next ten years figured out.

You just need enough courage for the next move.

Each of the twenty-five stories ends with three reflection questions and space to write, giving you a chance to turn someone else's lesson into a conversation about your own life.

Because starting over isn't going backward.

Sometimes it's the first time you're actually choosing where to go next.