Holding tight in a changing season?

Are you holding tight in a season as it’s changing around you? Sometimes we anticipate change as if we hear a roaring waterfall ahead of us on a river. We know it’s coming but we’re not ready to face it. We’re perfectly content floating peacefully on the river.

Flowers blooming in the snow. Are you also holding tight in a season that's changing around you? — Are you holding tight in a season that’s changing around you, like these tiny blooms in the recent snowfall? Holding tight is natural, but we also need to know how to navigate through our changes.

As our daughter and son-in-law prepare to move to his next duty station in North Carolina, the change looms close for us. He leaves in a week and she leaves in two months.

As the inevitability sinks in, the days spin fast and my mind tries to slow down time. Holding onto the essence of our lives now and taking in every detail of our time together becomes the goal.

Holding tight is natural

We can’t stop time, though we try. I want to capture these fleeting moments like fireflies in a jar, savoring them for later. It’s a delicate balancing act, this, hovering in the moment while also trying to preserve it.

But I’m doing my best to hold my family tight. We coordinated a weekend together at our little cabin to make some good memories. And, overdue for a family photo, we slipped in a photo shoot to record us all together before they move 3,500 miles.

Yet we need ways to process our changes

William Bridges’ transition model helps us do the internal work of navigating change in three distinct phases: Endings, neutral zones and beginning. The first phase of transitioning through change is an ending, or letting go.

Bridges, in his book Transitions, discusses five aspects of the natural ending experience: disengagement, dismantling, disidentification, disenchantment, and disorientation. Understanding these aspects can help us move more healthily through seasons of change.

Transitions are turning points in our lives

Our kid’s move is a transition for all of us, an ending to this phase of our lives. In my heart, I know we will never quite be the same as we are now as a family.

Transitions are turning points. And, to fully experience the transformation we must work through the natural ending experience. We need to grieve change, accept the loss it brings.

And Bridges’ transition model is a helpful guide. As you navigate your own changes, you may find yourself in one or more of the phases below. Though, as with Kubler-Ross’ stages of grief, the stages may not present themselves neatly and tidily (or sequentially).

Common phases in an ending

Bridges used psychological terms in his model, noted in the parenthesis below. I prefer the bold-face words:

Letting go (disengagement) — In the initial stages of an ending, it’s important to separate yourself from familiar roles and behaviors. You have to let go of what was in order to make room for what will be.
Living broken (dismantle) — This phase can be a long, slow and sometimes confusing stage when what used to be is no longer there, but you haven’t yet established a new way. It’s similar to living in the middle of a home remodel and can be quite chaotic.
Drifting (disidentification) — In this murky middle, you may no longer identify with your old self. As we let go of roles and identity, we may not know who we are becoming. Many of us experience this when our kids leave home or we retire: “I was a mom or a nurse” and “now I don’t know who I am.”
Unraveling (disenchantment) — In this phase, you begin to see your prior state for what it was and acknowledge that some part of the old reality was “in your head.” Bridges describes an enchantment as a “spell cast by the past on the present.” Here, we acknowledge the misperceptions, “look below the surface of what has been thought to be a certain way,” and most importantly, begin to explore options for living differently.
Get comfortable being uncomfortable (disorientation) — Bridges describes this phase as “a time of confusion and emptiness when ordinary things assume an unreal quality. Things that used to be important don’t seem to matter much now.” We may feel stuck or lost, unable to make decisions.