Endings

The way in which we end something determines the way in which we will begin something new.

I learned this in 2021 after leaving my decade long career at Nike and immediately throwing myself into a new career endeavor.

It felt rushed, chaotic, desperate, and wrong.

Although I had invested hours into therapy and inner work to ready myself for this midlife transformation, there was more needed.

I needed space.

I needed to be alone.

I needed to ritualize this experience of crossing over.

The immenseness of this change propelled me to pause everything and walk a pilgrimage, the Camino de Santiago.

I would walk over 200 miles on the Camino Primitivo, experiencing myself in ways I could have never imagined. By the end, I had fully landed into the next chapter of my life.

Not all change requires such a drastic “crossing over”, but every change requires reverence, the processing of grief, and an understanding that how we end anything is how we will begin something new.

There are a lot of endings happening right now.

🍁 In the northern hemisphere, the fall season is coming to end as we enter the winter solstice, heading into our longest night.

📉 Many people are ending their jobs, either by choice or by chance, as waves of layoffs make their way through corporate America.

🦋 As we’ve slowly returned to the office, there is a deep understanding that the ways in which we used to work have ended and the new is only beginning to emerge.

🌿 And lastly, the year is ending as we begin to make way for what 2023 will bring.

And then there are the endings of marriages, friendships, routines, lives, and our youth. Each of which deserves our loving attention.

So, how will you end this year?

How will you begin your next chapter?

Listen into your heart over these next weeks.

Make this ending a calm, beautiful one, filled with dream, story, non-doing, and rest.

Touch the places of pain and joy within you.

Enter the dark fertile void, not with trepidation but with excitement for what might emerge knowing that you did the work.

With love,

Brittney