The pool has closed and School has opened. The baseball season is ending and the football season is just kicking off.
The ComEd bill will go down because we’re not using the AC. Sweaters get pulled out of cedar chests.
Nature bustles with change: Fawns born in the spring are losing their spots. Squirrels are storing as they dig in our lawns.
Change is in the air but it’s not the stressful kind of uncertainty that keeps business owners up at night. For me the changing seasons provide a comforting, predictable rhythm to my life.
Not all transitions, however, are comfortable or comforting.
When my parents and I said goodbye, my mother had tears in her eyes. I was beginning my freshman year of college. It is supposed to be a happy transition, and it was, but still …
As a pastor I did many weddings, happy transitions, right? Why do weddings sometimes bring out the worst in us?
“Our lives move in chapters, and the shift is often rocky,” wrote social worker Robert Taibbi. The key points in an article on life’s transitions he posted are:
Transitions are challenging because they require learning new skills and adjusting to changes in our identity.
Key life transitions include leaving home, marriage, parenthood, midlife, and retirement.
It’s important to expect feelings of loss, be patient as you learn new skills, and seek support.
Taibbi distinguishes between “script-consistent” transitions, e.g., graduating from school, getting married, and “script-divergent” ones, e.g., sudden illnesses, divorces, discovering that you’re infertile. And as you would expect, script-consistent transitions, though challenging are easier to navigate than script-divergent ones.
The day my church closed was a sad day. It felt like a funeral for many of us who gathered for worship for the last time, but it wasn’t painful because it had what Taibbi calls a “rounded ending.”
“Navigating transitions is easier if you have rounded endings,” says Taibbi, “where you leave feeling you’ve done a good job and not shackled by tons of regret.”
When I heard that Dorothy Gillian had died I felt sad, but I also said to myself, “Well done, Dorothy. Well done.”
I personally have gone through two script-divergent transitions — divorce and being diagnosed with a disabling neurological disorder — and want to share how my personal experience confirms the advice Taibbi is giving.
When I went through the divorce, as Taibbi said, it was like I was moving from one chapter in my life to another and because the last chapter was painful it’s tempting to move on to the next chapter as quickly as possible
But it is so important to pay attention to what he calls “the space between chapters.”
Expect a sense of loss and give yourself permission to do good grieving.
“Get support,” he wrote. “It may be a teacher, coach, or mentor to help you learn the skills. It may be a good friend who is emotionally supportive or boldly honest, who can hold you accountable, or it may be a counselor who can do all three. Marching through life is not a solo trek but a group activity.”
Kim Schneiderman, another social worker, writes, “Change is the one constant in life. And yet, we are often surprised when it comes. Our educational system grooms us for progressive levels of security, reinforcing the belief that skill mastery yields the predictable comforts of a settled life. As we age, we are measured by our gains, not our losses, our stability, not our vulnerability. We believe in change as long as the wheel of fortune spins in our favor. However, when it doesn’t work, we may begin to question our preconceived expectations about life.”
She is a big fan of a professor named William Bridges who teaches that there are five fundamental tasks involved in doing transitions well:
1. Disengagement (separation from the familiar)
2. Dismantling (letting of what is no longer needed)
3. Disenchantment (discovering that certain things no longer make sense)
4. Disidentification
5. Disorientation (a vague sense of losing touch with one’s reality).
Bridges has this to say about the space between chapters. “People progress to an uncomfortable but growth-filled neutral zone, an empty in-between time when … everything feels as though it’s up for grabs and you don’t quite know who you are or how you’re supposed to behave.”
September is a month of transitions.
So is life.