Evolving our Relationship with Endings
First and foremost, endings are just things that happen. A big + weighty word - with heft and formality and meaning all coaxed in there in a way that, well, ends (instead of begins like beginnings!).
Quick fun highlight - as I’ve shared before, I joined Ann Randolph’s UNMUTE program last year and it’s my MOST favorite thing I’ve ever done. She’s offering 4 FREE days of UNMUTE, Sept 2–5!!! I promise great prompts, a few laughs, unbelievable warmth and an incredible sense of community. Join me - sign up HERE!!!!!
When: 20, 22 and 25 August 2025
Context: First sitting on my bed as the sun was coming up with both dogs snuggled in. Then in our dining room watching the soft morning light expand- with little notes from my writing retreat people that I recently pulled out of my bag next to me (a beautiful reminder to WRITE), two mugs of tea (peppermint and london fog), a vase overflowing with flowers, the pups laying sleepily next to me and the hum of Nat’s toothbrush in the background (older kids!). Finally, finishing this up in a bright cafe - when work is BEATING down my door but I know I need to finish writing this.
What’s Happening for Me: I recently ended a chapter that had been “mostly ended” for a while now. I say “mostly ended” as there were still a few tethers, none of which felt great. Then it just felt so clearly like it was time - and it was over with just a 10ish word email. A friend offered to help me mark the ending and all I could think of was wanting to write about it. Which then expanded over a couple days to my reflecting on endings, both this one in particular but also my relationship with the concept and history of it and, well, all the things. Have also recently listened to LISTEN TO SAVE PALESTINIAN LIVES w/ Our Friend Dr. Thaer Ahmad on We Can Do Hard Things, read the Subtack article The Biggest Loser Changed My Life by Kate Manne, watched my writing teacher Ann Ranolph’s Velveeta videos (example HERE) and am reading the book One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This by Omar El Akkad all of which have kind of welded themselves into my being. The result = this letter and evolving thinking…
Love, what would you have me know about endings?
Oh my little one, what a beautiful and important question. Endings are on your mind lately my love for so many reasons - and you want to explore them, so let’s go there!
I think first and foremost, endings are just a thing that happens.
Sometimes we choose endings, sometimes others choose them. Sometimes they just happen, sometimes perhaps the universe steps in… Endings are not things to be afraid of. They are not things to run towards. They just are.
And the word, endings. It feels like such a big and weighty word. It has heft and formality and meaning all embedded in there in a way that, well, feels like it is an END (instead of begins like the word beginnings!).
But my little eager beaver who wants to get it “right”, perhaps these are all just words, Perhaps they all kind of mean the same thing? Perhaps they’re all just our attempt to describe things that are happening in the world?
We can - and perhaps shall - change our definition of endings. It’s time for us to enter them not with a sense of fear and trepidation but with a sense of possibility, with the knowing that they are a chance to build + create.
So let’s take a minute and walk through some bigger endings in our world:
Gram + Pa’s final years - This was painful. And so prolonged. Maybe it was showing us what happens when we hold on too long? Memories that will haunt me every day. And memories that I will cherish and made every awful moment worth it. That life can be so beautiful and so painful and everything in between. And that we can feel this pain and survive. And it deepens us. And the ending is real and pronounced and we hate how it happened and even so, it happened. Endings happen.
Leaving work places. One you stay until you “know” you’ve done what you meant to do. You feel complete and finished. Not that the work is (never!), just that it feels time in your soul. The other you fight to stay, to get to that feeling. You finally “quit”. It feels like the first time you’ve ever really quit anything maybe? And suddenly it’s fine. The world doesn’t end. You aren’t suddenly a bad person. When you reflect, the primary reflection you had was that you wished you quit sooner. Regardless you’re out. And with both there are things you’re proud of and things you aren’t. And they just are. Endings happen.
Divorce. For years you know this CANNOT HAPPEN. You can’t imagine the impacts on your kids, you promised them a forever family. And yet you know in your body it’s coming. You can barely stomach to be in the house. It’s “right”. You think it will destroy them. You have to do it anyway, you know. And you do it - and compound it by fleeing to your childhood home in LA, moving everyone from SF so abruptly. Maybe it destroys us all. Maybe this is what sets S on the path where we are all hoping for a beautiful ending. Maybe it saves us and opens us all up to journeys and paths and possibilities we need. Maybe it’s neither and just is? And when Nat says the other day, I just know, my body is telling me it’s time to end this and I have to listen, I feel like this is maybe the most beautiful lesson I could ever have shared. Endings happen.
Our family changes. We now live in LA and my ex/kids’ dad lives in SF. My middle son, S, lives outside our home. Sophie (our beloved dog) has passed. J will be gone at some point. I’m on my bed sobbing at how we went from 6 to 3 and what that might mean. What will come next? What could I have done to change this? How lonely might it be. It starts to feel okay. Painful and sad and okay. Endings happen.
Annual hike at Slate Run in PA - we created a memorial for J, S + N’s birth cousin here about 8 summers ago - AND REMNANTS OF IT ARE STILL HERE! Astounds me every year that it holds - and this year, N adds a heart made of stones. Honoring endings over and over…
And some current endings:
Goodbye to work that had felt central to my identity and synonymous with my purpose. I leave - and try to design a good ending. It doesn’t go as planned and I leave before that happens. The connection lingers. Money is supposed to be shared - and it isn’t. The entire experience of it feels off. A friend asks me how it feels - and while I don’t quite have the words, it is different than how I want money and work and relationships to feel. I tell them this process feels disrespectful and bow out. There’s nothing planned or expanded on or desired, just an honest reckoning that this is over and accepting endings is perhaps the best way to move.
Preparing for goodbye to J/this next iteration (realizing constantly shifting) - I’m loving J living at home as he becomes an adult. He contributes and makes our home richer. I love getting to witness and support his next iteration. He says he wants to move out, doesn't want to live at forever. I feel pain throughout my body. And then peace that whatever will come will come. And I love him and trust him. And know that the ending of this phase of home is coming - and there will just be a next and a next and a next.
Realizing end of life is coming in next season with the elders I grew up with. Everyone is “good” - and we know that isn’t the forever state we’re going to be in. All sorts of fears from G+P passing come back. All sorts of ideas of how to make this different. And then I remember (okay, that’s giving me way too much credit, my therapist reminds me), this is not my life. This is theirs. And maybe the most beautiful thing I can do here is to ask them what that will look like. Ask them how I can show up and be part of it. To witness it and keep my eyes open and all my senses on (even as tears well up in my eyes thinking about this). That I can welcome and honor the ending, however close or far it may be and with all it will bring.
That there are “knowns” of the world. How fun it was to delude myself for so many years that the world was a thing that I could know. That I could understand. That I could get right. Is there a universal right? Are there a list of rules that if we follow will make everything better? Who knows - and the more I welcome that the world is nothing but a series of beginnings and endings, things flowing beyond anything I could every comprehend and I release myself into it and let myself be guided, the more I’m able to show and see and hear, the more my heart opens, the more I feel clear and connected and whole. And from this place, this feels like maybe the best way to be a “good person. The ending of my certainty opens to way more peace…
I feel myself constantly becoming and the more I remove any sense of this being it or knowing, the less anything feels like a beginning or and ending and more just is…
My grandparents are still with me in too many ways to count. Nat reminds me of Joy, my gram, every time we drive through a yellow light. Whenever I hear someone laugh with joy and abandon, she’s right there. Whenever I meet someone with kind eyes, I feel him in my soul.
Nat tells me about John, my ex/her dad, going out and she says, “I’m just glad he’s finally doing something for himself as he’s usually only doing things for us”. I feel all the pricks of all the feelings - the beginnings of rage + resentment as the primary/nearly solo caregiver (and only parent that lives in the same city). I mention to J and he guffaws a bit. I tell John on our next call and we laugh together. Our family keeps evolving.
Sophie has transformed her presence in our worlds, teaching N and I to grieve together versus alone, expanding all of our hearts, and gifting us two 100 pound beasts of pups in an attempt to carry on her legacy.
What we’re leaning and hearing isn’t just about endings, my little one.
It is that language matters. The voices we hear matter.
We hear the word ending and feel sadness and failure. We hear beginning and feel hope and possibility.
Where are we falling for the language that others are using? Where are we only hearing certain voices. Where do we need deeper introspection?
Where do we need to change the definitions of words? The meanings? The feelings?
Is an ending really much different from a shift than a beginning might be? Is fat something to hate and revile OR to revel and fall into? Is family something to be warmly embraced and held in or something full of mine fields and trap doors and something to escape? Perhaps neither. Perhaps both.
We build these definitions and then they hold us. Define us. Carry us through. Get all the power.
The definitions come from somewhere - and, like in all things, we get to have the agency to inquire and sit with and listen and, through that beautiful process of living and learning and being, they get to evolve. (note - let’s write more on this my little one, a LOT more).
For today, my little one, it’s endings. This is what we’re called to build a new relationship with. A relationship not of fear and failure and grief - instead one of possibility and humanity. Moving and shifting and being.
There are seasons. There are chapters. There are phases. We can call them whatever they need to be called. And mostly my love, mostly, it all just is.
XOXO,
Self/Love
I really needed this today! Thank you for sharing…I too have experienced endings and disappointments in a short period of time. Most recently this week. My sadness and heartbreak seems to get heavier everyday.
Your vulnerability has hit me. I’m going to go chase sunshine today!!☀️