Welcome to May We Gather - Week 2

The Ending: Letting Go of What Was

Last week, we arrived. We introduced ourselves to each other and to this process. We named what we're carrying. We began to build a shared language for the in-between.

This week, we're going deeper into the first phase of the Bridges model: The Ending.

What Is a Ending?

When we think of endings, we tend to think of the external event — the last day of a job, the moment a relationship shifts, the day a parent dies. But Bridges makes an important distinction: the ending that matters most isn't the external change. It's the internal one.

It's the moment you realize that a version of yourself is being left behind.

Maybe you were "the career woman" and now you're not sure what you are. Maybe you were "a person with two living parents" and now you're not. Maybe you were someone who knew what their days would look like, and now you don't. These inner losses — the identities, the roles, the assumptions about how life works — are often harder to name than the external changes. And they're almost always harder to grieve.

Bridges writes that many of the losses in an ending "aren't concrete. They are part of the inner complex of attitudes and assumptions and expectations that we all carry around in our heads. These inner elements of 'the way things are' are what make us feel at home in our world. When they disappear, we've lost something very important — although to someone else it may seem as though nothing has changed."

That last part matters. Your loss doesn't have to look significant to anyone else to be real. You're allowed to grieve the small endings too. The routines you engaged in and the roles that you played. The version of your life you thought you were going to have.

You Are Not Overreacting.

One thing Bridges names that I find really liberating: what looks like "overreacting" to a change is often just reacting to the losses underneath it. We don't react to the change itself — we react to what the change takes from us.

And sometimes a new ending triggers old, unprocessed ones. A retirement can surface grief about a parent. A move can crack open a loss from twenty years ago. If you find yourself feeling more than you expected — more than seems proportionate — that's not a sign something is wrong with you. It's a sign that your losses are real, and that they've been waiting to be seen.

This week, we're going to see them.