On endings
How to say goodbye so you don't get stuck.
Probably one of the most valuable things I took from my clinical psychology training was learning how to do endings well. It’s not something I’d ever really thought about before, but it turns out they are a huge part of all of lives.
We focussed on endings for clients, or terminations (the most awful term). We were taught that smaller endings like ending therapy will often link to previous endings and their experience depends on how well these have been processed and internalised. This ranges from how death and divorce were handled, all the way to how everyone coped with transitions like Sundays. Things like, how did your parents handle the death of a pet, the end of a school year, moving house, or even just taking the Christmas decorations down. Who knew!?
This year has contained more endings than I’ve had in a while with my brother, beloved sister-in-law and precious niblings moving back to South Africa. They moved back for a perfect storm of reasons, and while it’s early days, on the whole been it’s been like medicine for them. My brother and I grew up in rural KZN and it was a pretty magical place to be a kid, so I think there’s a part of him wanting to offer his children this same privilege. They’d also slowly been burned out by London life since the pandemic, throw in a school system that didn’t get my nephew and moving back seemed the next obvious move. Last week I saw a picture in our family chat of his delighted little face at ‘sprinkler day’ at his new school, and knew they’ve done the right thing—but uff, the heartache is very present.
Harrison also said goodbye to his beloved primary school, a place that lit us all up with new experiences and friends we’ll always carry with us. So it’s been a big old season of processing and letting go. I find it hard not to want to rescue him from this, while also knowing it’s an important skill—being able to adapt and move on without getting stuck.
I’m at once very pragmatic and also prone to deeply romanticising life. I know this sounds good, and in light, it means I can easily find joy and meaning in everyday experiences, and make a happy life for myself in almost any circumstance. But the more shadowy side of this is that I can ask too much of moments, and people, wanting them to be perfect, peaceful and dreamy. And here’s the delightful kicker, because I know this about myself I’m ironically not good at knowing when it’s time for an ending and when to say ‘enough’ because I find it really difficult to trust whether I’m romanticising or not. Sigh.
Living in the UK has taught me to lean into the seasons, the lessons and rhythms they help us to hold. Autumn teaches us about shedding, letting go, composting and making space for new growth and experiences. It also highlights how beautiful this can be, if you go with it and don’t hold on too tightly.
It’s something I have to keep learning, by holding it lightly and practising when endings come up, or I’m feeling stuck in some way—tiny rituals really help me to do this more consciously. Rituals help us to hold complex experiences, which is why we have social rituals around birth, death, marriage, and hundreds of things in between. Even manners are socially agreed rituals around what certain behaviours signal to each other that help us to get through the day without too much carnage.
Photo by Rajat Verma on Unsplash
So here’s a list of tiny letting go rituals that will help you to process endings.
Clearing out a drawer (or for the ADHD-version you could do every drawer in the house). Decluttering helps me to learn to let go emotionally as I physically let go of things.
Burn a candle right down, imagining your own ending completing peacefully.
Bake something to mark the ending, share it and enjoy it. And while I’m not saying ‘eat your feelings’, there are few things in life that can’t be eased with the creative act of making something. Oh and shared tea and cake, of course.