~Hilary Mantel
There are a lot of you mourning the "end" of something right now. I've read posts about children who are no longer (young) children. Husbands who will no longer be husbands. And you, who will no longer be wives to those husbands. Homes left. Friendships severed. Jobs lost.
It's easy to focus on the empty space where something was. The empty chair at the dinner table. The empty spot on the calendar. The empty bedroom where a teen used to sleep to noon.
It's important to mourn those endings, those losses. It's necessary, always, to grieve.
Our culture often ignores this and, too often, we succumb to pressure to get past something we're just not ready to get past. I don't think grieving can be rushed, nor should it be.
But grief isn't just about endings. Endings aren't just about endings. The end of anything always always means the beginning of something else. And even if that beginning isn't something you might have chosen – life as a single mom, for instance – that doesn't mean that within that beginning isn't still the possibility of adventure.
I've been thinking about this lately as my daughter begins an internship at a theatre company in the costume department. It has meant giving up a month of do-nothing summer time. And she's an introvert by nature so it has also meant giving up the comfort of days alone.
So it has been with some angst that she has embarked on this opportunity. But from my perch, four decades her senior, I can see the adventure, the possibility, the promise. She sees only the anxiety, the discomfort, the lost time.
And that's the thing, isn't it? When we're mourning the end of something, it's hard to see any promise in the beginning of something else. We believe the stories we tell ourselves. We'll always be alone. We failed. We gave up our chance to have the "perfect life", as one commenter put it.
Nonsense, I say. If we could be so wrong about how our lives were going to turn out thus far, isn't it possible that we're completely wrong in all these predictions of doom? Why do we assume we're right in our assumptions of misery but wrong in any expectation of joy?
Whatever your new beginning is, I wish for you the chance to see it as holding promise. Promise of a better marriage, perhaps. Promise of new boundaries. Promise of rediscovering yourself.
There are no endings, says author Hilary Mantel. I don't entirely agree. Of course there are endings. But what I think she's really reminding us is that within every ending is a beginning if we can only shift our gaze to notice it.
Our culture often ignores this and, too often, we succumb to pressure to get past something we're just not ready to get past. I don't think grieving can be rushed, nor should it be.
But grief isn't just about endings. Endings aren't just about endings. The end of anything always always means the beginning of something else. And even if that beginning isn't something you might have chosen – life as a single mom, for instance – that doesn't mean that within that beginning isn't still the possibility of adventure.
I've been thinking about this lately as my daughter begins an internship at a theatre company in the costume department. It has meant giving up a month of do-nothing summer time. And she's an introvert by nature so it has also meant giving up the comfort of days alone.
So it has been with some angst that she has embarked on this opportunity. But from my perch, four decades her senior, I can see the adventure, the possibility, the promise. She sees only the anxiety, the discomfort, the lost time.
And that's the thing, isn't it? When we're mourning the end of something, it's hard to see any promise in the beginning of something else. We believe the stories we tell ourselves. We'll always be alone. We failed. We gave up our chance to have the "perfect life", as one commenter put it.
Nonsense, I say. If we could be so wrong about how our lives were going to turn out thus far, isn't it possible that we're completely wrong in all these predictions of doom? Why do we assume we're right in our assumptions of misery but wrong in any expectation of joy?
Whatever your new beginning is, I wish for you the chance to see it as holding promise. Promise of a better marriage, perhaps. Promise of new boundaries. Promise of rediscovering yourself.
There are no endings, says author Hilary Mantel. I don't entirely agree. Of course there are endings. But what I think she's really reminding us is that within every ending is a beginning if we can only shift our gaze to notice it.
