Navigating Transition
The Perilous Passage Across the Nowhere
Story time. Walk back with me ~6 years.
I can remember finally getting what I thought was a dream job. I had worked for it, and I felt validated and recognized for my contribution. Then, several months later, I was told that the role was being dissolved. Poof, just like that. I felt as deflated as a balloon that's been popped. And I was given a choice: Take a new role that was being created, which would involve a lot of travel OR take a severance package. Uuuufff. This scenario was not on my bingo card.
I felt exposed and vulnerable, not to mention angry and confused. I cried. Maybe I wasn't good enough to do the role and the company had realized that? Maybe I would never be good enough? Why had I even dared to dream that I could've excelled in the role to begin with? My logical brain disappeared and my primitive brain went into fight or flight mode. I felt powerless to stop it. In fact, I felt powerless in general. I was like a turtle pulling my head into my shell, trying to protect what was left of my ego.
Perhaps you can relate through one of your own experiences. If this is bringing up memories or feelings for you, I invite you to notice and hold space for them.
I rallied by casting a wide net around me asking for help and/or ideas for how to move forward. I assumed the answer was "out there"; it was hard to look inward – to create space to sit with the discomfort and ask myself: What do I really need? What do I want? What are my values at this point in my life? I’m sure I did in a subconscious way, but inside, I was angry, sad, and filled with self-doubt. We were also navigating big challenges with my father-in-law’s Alzheimers, so there were layers of emotions and practicalities to navigate.
I'm reminding myself to take a deep breath now, even as I recall this time and write about it, years later. Our bodies store all of these memories and moments. And when we're not intentional about checking in with ourselves internally as we navigate the swirl, we risk getting out of alignment with who we are and may end up on a path that takes us far from "home."
In my case, this happened in multiple ways. I was determined to prove my value and worth to the external world as I submitted job applications and went on interviews. I sought validation from others. When an amazing job offer finally came my way, I realized I was torn about whether to take it. It meant uprooting our entire life: Selling our home and physically relocating. Trying to make that decision was in some ways as agonizing as receiving the initial news about my now former job going away.
The opportunity was amazing, but it involved tradeoffs, as opportunities so often do. And I was stuck in my head trying to decide. The only way I involved my body was to go for runs to let off the stress of the moment. And while that was good, I didn't realize that the flow of energy from my body was mostly outward; I thought if I could just let go of the frenetic worry that I'd be fine, or at least feel better. And that did help, but it was only part of the equation. I was still out of balance; I wasn't filling myself up from the inside. I thought the way forward involved more external achievements.
I took the job. We sold the house. We said goodbye to a life we had spent years cultivating with love and care, similar to the way one might grow a garden from fallow ground. It was hard. I sobbed buckets. The girls cried. The move physically split us as a family for a while, as Chris and the girls went to California while I went to the Seattle area to start the new job (we did come together for Christmas & New Years). It was a new beginning, yes, and a difficult ending. I didn't realize then that transition involves the death and grief of who you were and that letting go is required to move forward. Even though I was excited about the job, I was terrified to let go and so I clung tightly to memories, to friends, to the trajectory that our life had been on because it was comfortable and familiar. We had physically made a massive outward change in our life, but the transition behind it would take a long time to move through.
This can be normal for transition, only I didn’t know that. And I wish, oh how I wish, I had had someone outside of our family unit to help me navigate. Someone to coach and guide me, to help me get in touch with my inner self, and to remind me that I was enough. Someone who wasn't also bound up in the process of grief and letting go, who could help me keep things in perspective. In part I clung to friends because they provided an anchor I was desperately searching for. But much as I hated to admit it, they represented what was behind me, not in front of me. So while they helped me feel grounded, they were like strings attaching me to what had been. I didn't realize I would need to cut some of those strings so I could move forward, and I certainly wasn't ready.
Perhaps not surprisingly, I found myself alone in our new life and feeling lonely, like a tree that had been pulled out of the ground, roots dangling, and set down in a new place but without any attachment to the soil. I was left to figure out how to plant myself in the new patch of ground, and it was a struggle.
Looking back, it was a dark time, literally and figuratively. It was the middle of November (like now) and the days were nearing their shortest, the nights their longest. If you've spent time during the winter north of the 45th parallel, which is halfway between the equator and the north pole, you'll understand. I thought that if I poured my energy into my new job, things would click. And because Chris and the girls weren't there, I poured all of me – or what was left of me – into the new opportunity. But I was far from my best.
Looking from the outside in, I had turned lemons into lemonade and I now had "it all": A loving family and a great role at a tech company with an amazing salary. I had made it. But inside I felt lost – disconnected from myself and feeling like an imposter. My self-confidence and self-belief were like ghosts – there but invisible. In time, I started to find my footing, and it helped once we were all back as a family unit after the holidays. But we were all navigating transition and struggling to let go in order to move forward. It was like riding a roller coaster.
Three months into starting the new role, I attended a multi-day workshop at work. On the second day there was a group activity designed to provoke people into a reactive state, such that they went into fight, flight, or freeze mode. I can't remember the details now, but I retreated, physically removing myself from the activity and finding a space at the edge of the room.
The activity triggered a well of emotion within me that had been building all through the many months of my transition and came pouring out in tears. I was like a fire hydrant that had been bust open and couldn't be shut off. A colleague who I barely knew at the time gently walked me out of the room and physically held space for me to feel all of the emotions that had been unleashed. She was quite literally a shoulder to cry on. I can remember the moment like it was yesterday. And I was so deeply grateful to her for being there and for being what I needed in that moment.
What I started to learn then and am still learning now is that if we don't work through the transitions in our lives, they will pick their own moments to force us to do so. Every transition begins with an ending. Often, we plow ahead with external changes, seizing the moment (in my case, moving and starting a new job), only to realize later that we haven’t yet let go of our old ties. We haven’t yet closed the prior chapter. We’ve held onto pieces and parts of ourselves and so we end up in “the perilous passage across the nowhere.”** I call it the messy middle. It doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have seized the day or that we regret decision/s we may have made, but it does mean we have to learn to let go to move forward. We also have to practice self-care and fill ourselves up from the inside.
I’d like to say I learned everything I needed to know about navigating transition from this experience but I did not. And what we don’t learn from so often shows up again as we go through new transitions because we often subconsciously pattern them after prior ones. So…can you see where this is going?
Does any of this resonate for you? Stay tuned for more.
*Moab Trail Half: An Absolutely Epic Runcation!
**From the book Transitions: Making Sense of Life's Changes by William Bridges. (Highly recommend!)
Gosh, I just found your page and I’m nodding my head through this entire read! I feel it so deeply. I’ve used the term “messy middle” so often for our season of returning from traveling for 8 months, to our same jobs/home/neighborhood. It’s carried SO many different emotions. I appreciate your words very much!
Thank you so much for sharing this! Transitioning, especially as wo.e, is something we try to "power" through, which can be hard. I am so thankful you found a new person in Seattle at the time to hold space for you. Love you dear!