What if some of the biggest grief in our lives comes from changes we are actually happy about? From sending a child to college to moving, changing careers, or becoming someone new, transitions ask us to grieve what is ending while we make room for what comes next. This week, I wanted to explore transitional grief through the lens of Restorative Grief and Francis Weller’s idea of the descent, and what it might look like to move through these seasons with more attention, ritual, and connection.
There are seasons of life that we know are coming, and somehow that does not make them any easier to grieve. We know what it looks like when someone dies. We know what it looks like when a relationship ends or when a diagnosis changes everything. We have language for those things, and we tend to recognize them as experiences that deserve our attention.
But what about the grief that shows up when your kid goes away to college for the first time? What about moving into a new home, starting a new job, leaving a community, changing careers, ending a friendship that has simply run its course, or realizing that the version of yourself you have been living as does not quite fit anymore?
Those transitions can be exciting. They can be exactly what we wanted. They can even be deeply necessary. And they can still hurt.
I think that is one of the places where Restorative Grief gives us something really useful. We do not have to decide whether a change is good or bad before we are allowed to grieve it. We do not have to prove that we made the wrong choice before we can acknowledge that something has been lost.
We can be thrilled that our kid got into college and still cry when we drive away. We can know that moving is the right decision and still miss the house we are leaving. We can be ready for a new chapter and still feel tender about the one that is ending. Grief does not require us to regret the change. It asks us to acknowledge the loss that came with it, and sometimes that loss is simply the life we knew before things changed.
This is why I love thinking about grief through the seasons.
We are constantly being reminded that life changes. Things bloom and disappear. Things grow, become ripe, fall away, go dormant, and eventually begin again. We understand that there is a rhythm to this, even though we sometimes forget that we are part of the same natural world we are observing.
We do not look at a tree in November and tell it that it needs to try harder to keep its leaves. We understand that something is happening, even if we cannot see what the tree will look like in spring.
Francis Weller’s work gives us another way to think about this through the idea of descent. We live in a culture that is deeply invested in ascent. We are supposed to keep moving forward, growing, improving, achieving, and figuring out what comes next, and even when we are grieving, there can be pressure to turn the experience into progress.
But there are seasons when we are not moving upward. There are seasons when we are moving inward, when something is falling away and we do not yet know what will grow in its place. There are seasons when the most honest thing we can say is that we are not sure what this change means yet.
That does not mean we are stuck. It means we are in a season. And when we approach transitional grief this way, the question changes. Instead of asking, “How do I get through this?” we might ask, “What is this season asking me to notice?” That question gives us somewhere to begin.
When a child leaves for college, for example, the obvious change is that they are leaving home. But there are so many other changes happening underneath that one. Your daily rhythms change. Your role changes. Your home feels different. You may suddenly have more time and less responsibility, and those things can feel liberating and heartbreaking at the same time.
You may be grieving the person you were when you had a child at home every day. You may be grieving the little rituals you did not realize were rituals until they disappeared. You may even be grieving a version of the future you had imagined, because sometimes we build a life around expectations we do not realize we have until something changes them.
This is why I think it is worth slowing down enough to ask ourselves what we are actually grieving. Not just, “My child is leaving.”
- What does that mean for me?
- What am I losing?
- What am I gaining?
- What feels different in my body?
- What am I relieved about?
- What am I afraid of?
- What am I going to miss?
- What am I ready to stop doing?
Those questions do not need immediate answers. They are invitations to pay attention to the experience we are actually having instead of rushing toward the experience we think we are supposed to have. And paying attention is a form of grief work.
This is also where I want to bring the body into the conversation, because transitions do not happen only in our circumstances. They happen in our bodies, too. You may notice that you are exhausted after a move even though you are happy about it. You may feel restless when your child leaves for school. You may feel relief when a relationship ends and then surprise yourself by crying three days later.
None of that means you are confused. It means something has changed. Our bodies are often responding to a transition before our minds have language for what is happening, and I think there is value in becoming curious about those responses rather than immediately trying to explain them away.
- Where am I holding tension?
- Where do I feel relief?
- What happens in my body when I think about what is ending?
- What happens when I imagine what is beginning?
You do not have to interpret every sensation. You can simply notice it. Sometimes that is enough to remind us that grief is not something happening somewhere outside of us. We are living through the change with our whole selves.
And this is where the communal piece becomes so important. Weller’s work reminds us that grief is not something human beings were meant to carry entirely by ourselves. We need places where our losses can be witnessed, and we need people who can accompany us without immediately trying to move us toward resolution.
Think about how often we respond to transitional grief with reassurance.
- “Your kid is going to be great.”
- “You will get used to it.”
- “This is such an exciting new chapter.”
- “Just think about all the free time you will have.”
All of those things might be true. They also might not be what someone needs to hear in the moment. Sometimes they need someone to say, “Of course you are going to miss them.” Sometimes they need to cry without having to explain why they are crying. Sometimes they need someone to sit at the kitchen table and acknowledge that the house feels different now, even if everyone agrees that their child is exactly where they are supposed to be. We can offer one another companionship without trying to fix the experience. We can let someone hold the complicated version of a transition, where excitement and sadness are allowed to exist alongside each other.
That is a very different kind of community.
So if you are entering a transition this season, I want to offer you two very simple ways to create a ritual around it.
The first is a before-and-after ritual. Choose something that marks the transition rather than letting it disappear into the busyness of the change.
If your child is leaving for college, you might have a final breakfast together before they leave. You might take a walk around the neighborhood you have lived in for years. You might sit together and name what you will each miss, what you are excited about, and what you hope you remember about this particular season. If you are moving, you might stand in the empty house before you lock the door for the last time. You could take a few minutes to name what happened there, what you are grateful for, and what you are ready to leave behind.
The point is not to make the moment dramatic or create some perfect ceremonial experience. It is simply to acknowledge that something is changing and give yourself a little time to actually be present for it. We often move through major transitions without ever acknowledging that something actually ended. A ritual gives the ending a place to land.
The second is a seasonal check-in. Choose one day each month, or even once at the beginning, middle, and end of a season, and ask yourself the same few questions.
- What has changed?
- What am I grieving?
- What am I enjoying?
- What is my body telling me?
- What am I ready to release?
- What do I need more of right now?
You could write your answers down. You could talk through them with someone you trust. You could light a candle, take a walk, sit outside, or make a cup of tea and give yourself twenty minutes without trying to accomplish anything.
The ritual is not about creating the perfect grief practice. It is about creating a little bit of space where you are allowed to notice your own life while it is changing.
I think this is one of the hardest parts of transition. We want to know what comes next. We want the plan, the new identity, the new routine, the new normal. We want to feel settled enough that we can stop wondering whether we are doing this right.
But sometimes we are simply between things. The old way is gone, and the new way has not settled yet.
That in-between can be uncomfortable, but it can also be deeply important. It is a place where we can notice what we are carrying, what we are ready to release, and what is beginning to take shape before we have to name it.
Restorative Grief asks us to stay present enough to notice what is happening rather than rushing ourselves toward an answer. Weller’s image of descent gives us language for the same kind of movement: sometimes we have to go inward before we know how we will move forward.
So maybe the invitation this season is not to figure everything out. Maybe it is to notice what is ending, what you miss, what you are relieved to leave behind, what your body is telling you, and who you are becoming in the middle of all of it.
And then let someone else notice with you. Because restoration does not always mean returning to the person you were before the transition. Sometimes restoration means becoming more present to the person you are becoming now. Maybe that is what these seasonal transitions are really offering us. Not a chance to get back to normal, but a chance to become more honest about what is changing and more intentional about how we want to move through it.
We can grieve the ending. We can welcome the beginning. We can make room for the season in between, even when we do not know exactly what it will ask of us. And we do not have to do any of it alone.
Thank you for listening to episode 256 of Restorative Grief. If you are in the middle of a transition right now, I hope you can give yourself a little more room to notice what is changing instead of immediately trying to figure out what comes next. You do not have to rush yourself through the grief of a season simply because you know the next one is coming.
Before you go, be sure to subscribe and leave a review so others can find the work, too. We grow collectively, so if you know someone who might benefit from these conversations, feel free to send them a link to the episode, too. Thank you as always to my Patrons; your support keeps the work intact. And if you want to become a Patron to gain access to bonus episodes and content, check out the Patreon link in the show notes. We’d love to have you join us. And as always, before we go, one last thing. Please remember, the only solution for grief is to do the work of grieving. Thank you for listening. I will see you next week.
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