Embracing Change: Navigating the Transformative Journey of Life Transitions

Transitions are here to make us grow. Sometimes we choose the transition (i.e deciding to go to college, moving to a new city, choosing to get divorced, etc.) and sometimes we don’t have a say in the matter (i.e. medical diagnosis, unplanned pregnancy, being broken up with, etc.). And I can tell you from experience, both scenarios are painful. But again… transitions are here to make us grow.

We are different people before a transition and after a transition.

We will never be the same and that is beautiful and excruciating all at the same time. The most important aspect of a transition is making sure you don’t zone out the whole time; that you don’t waste it. Transitions are long. They are very rarely a day or two of discomfort. These are big changes in your life that can sometimes take over a year to feel normal again. It’s different for everyone, but when you’re in the throws of a transition it feels like a lifetime. And during this lifetime, you’re changing.

Change is uncomfortable, that is the painful part. But change can also be fun if you let it be. If you get curious about the changes taking place. If you start asking, how is this situation serving me? How does it help me to grow? Because we are all growing. We will be growing up until the day that we die. It’s part of the human experience. 

When we get curious about a change that is happening in our life, we gain the most from that experience. The pain is not a waste. It becomes a gift if we let it be. Curiosity is the cure. Resistance is the pain point. If we can move from resistance to curiosity, we open the door to more. We open the door to our future self, the one that went through a hard time and came out the other end more whole and more wise than the previous version of ourselves.

It can be hard to change your mindset and catch that wave of curiosity during the experience, but once you catch that wave it will carry you to the end. The lessons we are here to learn are all different but the intention is all the same, to make us more whole. To make us a better version of ourselves. And you might think, “but I liked the older version of myself” (I definitely thought this over and over again in my most recent transition) and to that I would say “keep an open mind”. 

We only know one version of ourselves but the number of realities (or versions of us) that are possible is infinite. Literally infinite. So while this version of yourself might be great, there could always be another version that is slightly improved in ways you never thought possible because you didn’t know those improvements were a problem.

That is what we call the shadow self. The parts of ourselves that we cannot see.

Sometimes we go looking for our shadow self (if you live in the realm of self help like myself) and sometimes that shadow self comes looking for us. I can tell you from experience that I didn’t understand why I had to change. My life was good and full of happiness and joy and it didn’t make sense why I had to go through so much pain. And yet I still had to change. Because there was an even better version of myself on the other end. A version of myself that I hadn’t even dreamed of. A version of myself that I am extremely grateful for, one that I would not want to do life without anymore.

She is more patient, more loving, and more connected. She listens to her body and respects the cues that something is a miss. She has released the control she once needed in life, recognizing that she is simply a co-creator and not the creator in life. She recognizes she was overly independent at one time. However, her interdependence with others is now apparent and she leans into this dependence in a loving way. Enjoying the co-creation of it all.

This is the version of myself that I didn’t know could exist, or needed to exist to bring me closer to wholeness. But she’s here, and I’m grateful for her.

We are all at different places in our journeys. No one is ahead or behind. We are learning lessons in the sequence that best serves us. Let us lean into the experience and never let a transition pass us by without taking all that is there for us.

Cheers to each transition that comes our way and may we let curiosity guide us through it all.