I have been thinking about how rarely life moves in a neat, straight line.
We may be taught to expect life to follow a predictable sequence: choose a path, build a career, find a partner, start a family, settle into our roles, retire, and eventually arrive at some imagined finish line.
But that is rarely how life works. We face disruptions and move through multiple transitions across our lives.
We build relationships and families, experience endings, and sometimes begin again. We change jobs, step away from work, return after time away, or outgrow roles we once worked hard to earn.
We raise children, send them into the world, and sometimes welcome them back home. Later, we may find ourselves caring for aging parents. Along the way, we encounter detours, disappointments, new desires, and unexpected openings.
Some transitions are ones we choose. Others arrive at our doorstep uninvited.
Regardless of how the change arrived, we can choose to meet it with curiosity, self-compassion, and a small step toward what matters.
My Life in Transition
I recently returned from our annual family summer trip to Rhode Island, where we enjoyed temperate weather, ocean views, and the kind of breeze that makes you briefly consider moving.
Then we came home and dove straight into some of Austin’s hottest temperatures of the year, including several 107-degree days, just in time to move my younger daughter back to college.
The heat was intense, but the truly terrifying mishap of the move was discovering a forgotten frozen bean-and-cheese burrito at the bottom of a grocery bag that had been sitting in my car for several days after the move.
Meanwhile, my older daughter, who moved home after graduating this spring, just started a remote internship with a startup. It is her first experience in corporate America. She’ll be living at home during the internship, which means our household is shifting in more ways than one.
So, our nest is not empty anymore…but it is definitely not the same kind of full.
Our home has a new rhythm. There is more activity around the kitchen, a few more people navigating schedules and shared spaces, and the quiet awareness that we are all finding our way in a new season.
I feel proud of both of my daughters. I also feel a little wistful, a little curious, and not entirely sure what this changing chapter will look like for our family or for me.
That is one thing I know about transitions: even the good ones can bring a complicated mix of emotions. We can be happy about what is beginning and still miss what has changed. We can feel grateful and unsettled at the very same time.
A New Series: Navigating Life Transitions
Over the next several issues of The Positive Pull, I’ll be exploring life transitions and how we navigate them with more self-compassion, courage, curiosity, and connection to what matters.
I’ll give you a peek into some of my own messy transitions, including some I am still very much in the middle of.
I’ll also explore themes that come up often in my coaching work: navigating career pivots, redefining identity, making room for uncertainty, grieving and honoring what has ended, and finding purpose in a new season of life.
A Pause for This Week
For this week, take a moment to finish these three sentences:
- I am moving away from…
- I am moving toward…
- What I need most in this in-between is…
And I would truly love to hear from you: What transition or major life change are you navigating right now?
Leave me a comment and share a sentence or two. Your answers will help shape this series.
The hardest part of change is often the in-between. It can be scary to leave the familiar behind when the path is unclear. Wherever you are in your changing season, you do not need to have the whole route mapped out to take one kind, curious next step.
Need Support?
If you’d like personalized support while navigating a life transition, email me at dianna@collierclan.net for a free consultation.
Dianna Collier 