Understanding Endings
“It is always important to know when something has reached its end. Closing circles, shutting doors, finishing chapters. It doesn’t matter what we call it, what matters is to leave in the past those moments in life that are over.
-Paulo Coelho
The first time I really came to terms with the loss associated with transition was when we moved as a family from London to Austin. The change was so dramatic and the culture so different that it left me reeling. Several months in to the move, in an email to my friends in London, I began to list my losses. I missed the weekly trips to the library with our little ones, picnics in the park, the familiarity of products in the grocery store, and the ease of public transport. The more I wrote, the deeper the losses I discovered: the comfort of being known, the loss of identity and status that came with being unable to work, and quite simply the loss of relationships I’d cultivated over a decade. Needless to say, when I came to the end of the letter, my husband found me crumpled in a heap, sobbing. I had uncovered grief. It had always been there, unresolved and accumulating over the years, but by listing the losses, I had finally acknowledged it. My world, as I knew it, had ended and I was grieving.
Navigating a world that is profoundly and irrevocably different is challenging.
Our current global situation is no exception. We are literally navigating a world that is so entirely at odds with the one we were inhabiting only a few weeks ago and we’re finding it challenging. Travel suspended, paychecks ended, graduation uncertain, weddings postponed. Last week I asked you to list the losses you are experiencing as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and many of you shared your disappointments and heartbreak. Realizing that things we expected to continue as normal have instead come to an end, can be overwhelming. Endings require a letting go. And if letting go were not difficult, my girls would not still be singing Idina Menzel’s song by a similar name - (if you don’t have children, think Disney’s Frozen and you’ll be tracking in no time). With your unique list of losses in mind, try to identify with at least one of the following aspects of a natural ending to help validate your feelings and remind you it’s okay to grieve.
It’s okay to grieve.
Endings require us to disengage physically and emotionally from what was: as has been forced upon us with social distancing rules and national lockdowns. We might experience dis-identification as we unhinge ourselves from what previously defined us: work, studies, carpool routes - who are we without these social roles? Disenchantment follows as we realize the future is not as we expected and we may need to retract our expectations: canceling travel plans, changing birth plans, rethinking retirement. All of this requires a dismantling of how we did life before the change and can leave us feeling disoriented (confused, overwhelmed, disappointed).
It is no coincidence that these aspects of endings all start with the letter D as dis- is the Latin prefix for a negative or reversing force - something we’d expect as characters in a dystopian novel. But this is our new reality and understanding where these emotions are coming from, and that they are completely normal reactions to our circumstances, can help us start the process of letting go.
As we grapple collectively with a multitude of endings, we need to consider what we might do in the midst of them to avoid too rapid a descent in our spirits.
Here come the C’s.
Get Closure: Once we know what our losses are, we can sit in the pain of them and acknowledge that something important to us has ended. The emotion tied to each loss needs to be identified (that makes me feel sad, angry, cheated, scared) and released. This can sound like saying to yourself or a trusted other: My loss is real, I feel sad, it’s okay that I’m feeling this way, I’m not the only one experiencing this, and I know I’m not always going to stay here. Closure starts by externalizing what you’re feeling on the inside so the power of the emotion in you can dissipate.
Celebrate: Celebrating where you have been will help you build hope for where you can go again in the future. What you were doing or what you were planning before COVID-19, mattered. Talk about it with loved ones or friends and celebrate what got you there or what you achieved before it came to an end. Similarly, the places you’ve been, the things you’ve seen, and the memories you have cannot be taken away from you. Take time to remember them, get out the photographs, share the stories, and foster hope.
Find Contentment: Accepting and finding contentment in where you are gives you the power to choose how you will respond to your situation. We might not have control in loss, but we do have choice. Who are we going to be during this crisis? How are we going to behave? What parts of our character will be revealed? Create vision for yourself and your family and search for contentment in the small things: the sunshine on your back, a pet curling in your lap, time to be creative, or even a good night’s sleep. Count your blessings and make a gratitude list, daily.
List your losses. Count your blessings.
The thing with endings, is that they also signal new beginnings; like the end of winter heralds spring. One of the challenges for us in the midst of this pandemic, is not knowing how long it’ll be before we can expect our new normal. In his book, Transitions, William Bridges identifies three stages of transition: endings, the neutral zone, and new beginnings. Usually when something ends, we immediately want to jump to the next thing to avoid the uncomfortable feeling of being left in limbo.
However, without doing any of the internal work required to reposition our hearts and minds to the external change, we can miss asking ourselves the deeper questions: Why were we involved in so many activities anyway? What was more important than family dinners? What do I want from the rest of my life? These questions, and more, that so many of us are asking ourselves now that the world has paused to take its breath. The uniqueness of our situation, as many of us remain confined to our homes, is that we have time. Time to reflect, time to ponder, time to wonder how we’d like to set our new course. Bypassing time in the neutral zone is like passing up the opportunity to discover more of who you are, because it is often in the hard places, when we are stripped of our comforts, that we can see ourselves and our situation more clearly. Let’s not waste it.
It is often in the hard places, when we are stripped of our comforts, that we can see ourselves and our situation more clearly.
Friends, now that we have acknowledged the about-turn changes, listed our losses, and validated our feelings by understanding endings, we can start unpacking grief. What it is, how it affects us physically, psychologically, socially, and spiritually, and what we can do to help ourselves and one another.
I’ll leave you with a final thought. Grief, to me, is like a suitcase - one of those old, brown, hard-case ones with latches that we took to school as kids in the 80s. Until we know what’s in it, it can feel heavy, awkward, and burdensome. Listing our losses has opened the latches and now it is time to start taking things out one by one. As soon as we can see what all is in there, we can start choosing what to leave behind in order to lighten the load. Let’s unpack this together next week!
Join my Facebook Group and walk through this series with others!