What They Don’t Tell You About Starting Over by Cathy Ben-Ameh.

A Permission to be Powerful Community Post

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Dear Permission to be Powerful Reader,

They don’t tell you that after twelve years of waiting, of hoping, of carrying dreams like fragile glass, freedom can feel like silence. Not celebration. Not relief. Just the weight of what’s been lost in the waiting.

I’ve just been granted the right to stay in the country where I was born. Let that sink in. Born here—in the UK. And yet, my right to belong was stripped away not because I did something wrong, but because my parents moved back to Nigeria three months after my birth. Because they lost their indefinite leave to remain. Because I wasn’t physically present in the country ten years later. Technicalities. Legal fine print that decided the last twelve years of my life.

Twelve years of not being allowed to work. Of watching peers build lives while I stood still. Of setting alarms I didn’t need just to feel like I had structure. Of holding tight to dreams I’d formed as a little girl—dreams of singing, writing, changing the world. I sacrificed everything for them. Said no to relationships, no to kids, because I believed that my calling required everything. I gave it everything. And then life… happened.

I lost time. I lost momentum. I lost people.

And then I lost my health.

Three years of fighting cancer. Three years of fighting for my own body while also fighting for the right to exist in the only place I’ve ever called home.

But I made it through. I’m here.

And yet—I feel stuck.

Stuck in a rut where the world expects you to leap forward now that the chains are off, but they forget your legs have gone numb.

Stuck with a faith I still believe in but feel distant from, because I’ve met more Christians with agendas than with love.

Stuck with a loneliness that won’t leave, even in rooms full of people.

Stuck with the echo of goals I set at nine, and a quiet, persistent guilt that I haven’t reached them yet.

But this isn’t a cry for sympathy. I’m not looking for pity—I’m looking for language. I’m looking for a way to name what this in-between space feels like. The tension between surviving and thriving. The ache of hope that refuses to die, no matter how much it's bruised.

And maybe someone else out there feels the same.

Maybe you’re fighting invisible battles. Maybe your plan didn’t go to plan.

Maybe you’re still showing up, even when there’s nothing glamorous to show for it.

If so—please know this: hope isn’t always loud.

Sometimes it’s a whisper.

Sometimes it’s just the fact that you're still here.

Still trying.

Still writing.

Still daring to believe that even now, after everything, your life can bloom again

—Cathy Ben-Ameh