For this week’s blog, I decided to focus on a story from the famous blog site Humans of New York (HONY). Created in 2010, HONY is a project of photographer Brandon Stanton. Stanton walks the streets of New York City and photographs and interviews individuals about personal anecdotes they are willing to share.  As I was strolling through his site, I stumbled upon one story that struck a chord with me. The photograph chosen for this story is one of a woman sitting by an open window and looking straight on towards Stanton’s camera. The woman appears to at ease, as she is smiling with a closed mouth and a magazine at hand. Behind her is the setting of a restaurant: there is a group of individuals sitting at a table with drinks by their sides. For the written part of this post, the woman chose to only share one sentence to summarize her life at that moment: “I’m twenty-four, and I’m already on my third fresh start”.

At first read, the sentence is quite surprising: the woman appears relatively young. What past experiences could have prompted her to restart over a number of times? The more I stared at the post, the more I found myself being able to relate to the individual.

What does ‘fresh start’ exactly mean for this particular person? I know that for myself, a ‘fresh start’ typically embodies packing up and moving countries for the nth number of times I have done previously. But when I look back at it, my definition of ‘fresh start’ has evolved. When I was six years old, I couldn’t even understand the concept of starting over again. I just thought that hoping on and off planes was something everyone did in this world. However, as a twelve-year-old, a ‘fresh start’ meant being taken apart from my friends and moving to a country which I only seen through televisions. A fresh start was the last thing I wanted.

Through the older I get, the more of what adults have been saying has started making sense to me. While a fresh start doesn’t necessarily mean moving across the world and throwing oneself into a new and exciting culture, something as little in comparison such as getting a haircut can symbolize a beginning new to some individuals.