Celebrating Endings

Grieving Change

In general, change is hard. Unwelcome change is even harder. Saying goodbye to people, jobs, pets, and times of our lives that we love is often the hardest thing we have to do in our lives. Yet through the grief, there are still things to celebrate in every transition. Finding things to honor when you feel that your life is collapsing may feel impossible, but I’d invite you to open just a crack to the possibility of something new and fresh coming in.

Right now, I’m working with the recent loss of my cat, layoffs at work, and an unexpected break-up, so the reality of endings is feeling strong in my life. In addition, each of these losses happened within 3 days of each other. I am doing my best to stay grounded amid all of this upheaval and uncertainty. So I am most definitely practicing what I am offering as guidance today.

Clinging to Security

Sometimes we are so wrapped up in our cocoon of safety, that we don’t realize how musty and stale our life has become. Yes, there are definite positives about what we are losing, but when viewed honestly, not everything is sunshine and rainbows. At the end of something we loved, we tend to romanticize the past and forget to also honor the opportunities we had for growth along the way. 

When change forces itself into our bubble of contentment, it shatters the idyllic world we thought we had created. We want to climb back into our bubble where things were familiar. Even if it wasn’t all roses, we at least knew what to expect. There were no surprises, which meant we were safe and secure there. And as long as things stayed the same, our security was guaranteed.

But believing that things won’t change is just a futile fantasy concocted by our ego. The nature of our existence is built upon the understanding that everything changes. Time exists on planet Earth and the very nature of time is that each second is unique and different from the next. From the moment of birth to the moment of death and all the moments in between, a vast potential exists for anything to happen. We cannot stop time, just like we cannot stop change. 

Clinging to the fantasy of security will only bring suffering, where one gets stuck in the past or obsessed with the future. In this case, often we get stuck in unhealthy patterns and cling to people, places, and ideas long past the healthy time to move on has come and gone. Holding onto things past their expiration date is a way to avoid feeling grief. 

We all cling to things to avoid change in many different ways. In our personal life, this may happen when a beloved pet is dying. You know its time, but you can’t bring yourself to make the final appointment with the vet because you don’t want to face life without them. You may cling to a job when you know you should move on because there’s no more mobility opportunities for you. But because your work routine has become so familiar, you stay, despite wanting to move your career forward. In our romantic world

, we may stay in a hurtful relationship because we keep hoping the other person will change. There is a fine line between hope and delusion. 

The Power of Grief

“Grief is love with no where to go.” - Jamie Anderson

Grief provides an opportunity to process the full picture of a person or a situation. Remembering the highs and lows, the roses and thorns, can allow for a more complete grieving to take place. Holding space for our love with no where to go, the disappointment of something we’ll never have again, and the heartache of what could have been allows us to heal and find peace. If we try to halt grieving by clinging to an illusion of a person or a recreation of history, then we can never

move forward. Our life will feel incomplete. We also prevent ourselves from experiencing the full range of emotions that are longing to be felt. Black and white thinking can freeze us in a moment of time that we refuse to leave. 

Celebrating the beautiful parts allows us to fondly remember times in our lives that brought us joy. Honoring the difficult parts allows us the opportunity to see how far we’ve come. Holding the whole of a person or situation grants you the chance to grieve completely. 

But grief is not just about what the lost meant to you, but also about who you were in relation to the loss. Mourning the loss of your identity is another piece of processing grief. Who are you without that person, job, or situation? For example, losing your cat means that your identity as a pet parent has changed. As you can no longer care for your fur baby, your identity as the guardian for that creature has vanished. Mourning the loss or shift of that part of yourself offers a richer way to move through grief.

Moving Forward

When there is a loss, our life is changed. Routines, habits, and connections, all shift and vanish.  Where there once was something, there is now empty space. How we choose to work with that space will help determine how we move forward. If for you the space, like silence, needs to be filled immediately, you may move forward very quickly. Get a new cat or find a new romantic partner. 

However, if you choose to pause and sit with the space and the discomfort, then you can take time to deliberately choose what to put in that space. You can open to the grief and with mindfulness sit among the rubble and decide what to sift through, salvage, or leave behind. We have the freedom to start over. Once you appreciate the new space in your world you have the chance to determine what that space can hold for you. Open space allows for something new to arrive.

The open space of potential can be daunting, but if we know and trust ourselves, we can relax into who we are and move forward in the knowledge that we can handle this unknown.

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