Something in us has to die for something to grow
Yesterday I sat in a workshop on William Bridges' work on transitions. Pen in hand, three minutes on the clock. Notice what's changing for you right now. That was the whole instruction.
I filled the page faster than I expected to. Then a second three minutes: what transition does that seem to be inviting for you. That filled fast too.
I wasn't writing about a client. I was writing about myself. This one comes from inside the middle of it, not after.
What childhood already taught me about endings
One of the things we unpacked was our relationship to endings, what our own childhood and past have already shown us about this, long before transition had a name. Everyone's carrying some version of this pattern, whether they've noticed it or not. Maybe yours is a family that never talked about loss. Maybe you weren't allowed to go to a funeral because you were thought too young, even for a grandparent you were close to, and no one really explained why. Mine is just an example, and mine traces back to school.
I went to an international school, friendships weren't built to be temporary but the reality was people would stay a couple of years and then leave. If you were lucky, they'd stay longer. You just learned to enjoy and appreciate the time you had with someone, for the time you'd had them.
I've since found that friendships last for as long as you want them to. Distance was never really what ended things for me, not if I didn't want it to end.
That's still how I move through life. An ending can be difficult, and I still find I can move forward. I can move on. I look for the positivity in the need for transition. I've moved through this one relatively quickly, because I learned young to appreciate what I had, and that I get some say in what continues.
But every transition has its own flavour. Its own pain. That doesn't change just because I've had practice.
Slay was the word, is it the right one?
Bridges uses provocative language for this. It's important to slay something to move on, he says. Something in us has to die in order for something to grow.
I think that's true. Not a wind-down. Not a gentle retirement. An actual death of who you were, so someone else has room to exist.
Both things are true at once, though. It's real and it's hard, and it doesn't mean you've failed. We tend to associate death with something negative, a failure, something like that. But it doesn't need to be that way. Take the metaphor of composting, of fertilising the soil. Something has to die in order to grow something new.
And also, at the end of the day, I notice how important it is for me to have some sort of closure, but also to have an extension of connection, or a prolonging of a relationship, to be able to move swiftly forward. Both. Not one instead of the other. Probably the same thing school taught me without me noticing: something can genuinely end, and you can still decide to keep part of it going.
Reflection invitation
Take a moment to pause with this week's theme and notice what it stirs in your own leadership and life.
Try the exercise from yesterday. Two rounds, three minutes each, written by hand if you can.
What is changing for you right now? Just notice it. Don't explain it yet.
What transition does that seem to be inviting for you?
Then sit with these:
What has your own history already taught you about endings, long before you had language for it?
What's the specific habit, role, or way of showing up you'd need to let go of for something new to actually have room to grow?
This also made me want to check back in with anyone who read the two pieces that started this thread: Change and transition aren't the same thingand What to actually do in the Neutral Zone. If you read either one, how are you tracking? Has the difference between change and transition stayed with you, or not landed until now?
Your next step is within reach
If you're in the middle of something similar, hit reply and tell me what you're noticing. I would genuinely like to hear it.
With you,
Linda
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