I was supposed to be grieving an empty nest this week. My daughter was supposed to be flying off to her gap year before matriculating at the New York City art school Pratt Institute next fall. I was supposed to be celebrating my daily parts processing partner Emma’s English country wedding while my daughter flew the nest for her gap year.
I was not supposed to be feeling torn about leaving because my daughter’s visa for her gap year in Portugal has not come through- or because my BFF’s husband is actively dying and I’m going to miss it if I’m in Europe. I was not supposed to feel conflicted because two of my closest friends are breaking up and dissolving the marriage I’ve been very much a part of. I was not supposed to discover just before seven weeks in Europe that I’m going to have to leave the home where I raised my daughter for the past 16 years. I was not supposed to have to consider rehousing my beloved dog Gaia, because of our sudden and unexpected housing instability and the relocation of so many of Gaia’s many caregivers. I was not supposed to have to entertain the idea of no longer living with my housemate April and her cat Emmy, who I’ve lived with for twelve years and who helped me raise my daughter, because we may not be able to find a place to live that has a guest house and allows dogs and cats.
I was not supposed to face this much potentially devastating change and loss- all at once.
But of course, “supposed to’s” make God giggle.
When Unexpected Turn of Events Turn Everything Upside Down
I just finished teaching an in person workshop in Mill Valley, California called Transitions & Transformation for health care providers and therapists in transition, but I had no idea when we planned the workshop six months earlier that I would be in as much of a phase of deep transition as my students would be.
The impending empty nest, my daughter’s father’s expatriation to Portugal after living next door to me for ten years since our divorce, my friend Emma’s wedding, and my partner Jeff moving in with me in California after three years of living bicoastally were the only big transitions I’m currently facing that I knew were coming well ahead of time. That seemed like enough change for one month!
But because of a bizarre twist of fate, I seem to be in the midst of another cycle of massive change, most of which I didn’t plan or expect.
It turns out that I’m the one leaving my 18 year old daughter home alone in the nest while I jet off to England for my BFF’s wedding after a week of complete chaos. It was supposed to be the other way around. She was supposed to be leaving me.
Another Perfect Storm
My daughter reminded me right before I left for seven weeks in Europe a period of intense transition like this has happened before. When she arrived in the world as a baby on January 6, 2006, my family’s life was in complete chaos. And now, the week she’s supposed to be flying into adulthood, chaos has once again descended upon us.
The memories take me back 18 ½ years…
The month my daughter was born, back in January 2006, I gave birth by C-section to my little girl, my 61 year old father died of a brain tumor, my otherwise healthy younger brother wound up in the ICU in full blown liver failure as a side effect of a common antibiotic he was taking for a sinus infection, my 16 year old bichon frise pup died, I had to go back to my OB/GYN job only days after Dad’s funeral, a total of four weeks after giving birth surgically. Then a few months later, my daughter’s father cut two fingers off his hand with a table saw. And a few months after that, I quit my job as an OB/GYN for good, tossing us into financial chaos, because my daughter’s father didn’t have an income-producing job outside the home for the entirety of our marriage.
I came to call it my Perfect Storm. Now, it seems, I’m in the middle of yet another stormy transition phase.
For starters, I said yes to some work commitments in Europe to ease what was supposed to be the pain of an empty nest. I thought it would distract my sad parts and give me something to look forward to.
But this week, I wound up leaving my daughter behind in California to begin 7 weeks in Europe. Her father moved to Portugal a month earlier, so he’s already there. But her visa for her gap year in Portugal hasn’t come through yet. So sadly, she’s now at home alone in California while both of us are ahead of her in Europe, and I’m feeling strange about being the one to leave home, leaving her without her mother or father during this time of great change developmentally. I have parts that feel terribly guilty about doing so, even though she reassures me that it would be silly for me to stay home just because she’s stuck there.
Then there’s more change afoot.
Before packing for my extended European journey, I spent the past week ministering to one of my dearest friends, whose way-too-young husband is actively dying under the angelic benevolence of Hospice care. I’m going to miss the very end of the death vigil because my daily Internal Family Systems parts processing partner Emma is getting married in the Peaks district in England! How is it possible that between my two closest girlfriends, if I stay for one’s husband’s funeral, I miss another’s wedding. My humorous parts comfort me with flashbacks to Four Wedding & A Funeral scenes.
Which feels about right just now, as I’m in the UK, writing from Emma’s wedding venue while recovering from jet lag, after witnessing the bride get her hair and makeup gorgeously done up while various kinfolk with British accents curse so poshly- “Buggar!”
As I wait for the wedding march to begin, I’m keenly aware that another dear friend is back home, grieving the end of her marriage right now. And I’m not there to comfort her and grieve the loss alongside her, the way parts of me would like to be.
And I just found out that I have to vacate the house I’ve been renting for 16 years in the little coastal NorCal town where I’ve raised my child. There’s no other home rental available in our small town to replace it just yet. My partner Jeff just moved in full time after three years of the two of us flying back and forth from Boston to San Francisco, thinking we’d be living in the home we’re now losing.
So…my baby is flying the nest at the same time as I’m losing the nest in which I mothered her. One bestie is losing her husband to death and another is losing her husband to divorce, which also means I’m losing him as a friend who has lived nearby and been in my inner circle. Jeff just left his position as medical director at Harvard’s inpatient psychiatric hospital McLean and is now trying to decide what’s next, so he’s between jobs. Which also means we are now mobile. We don’t have to stay in the Bay Area if he chooses to go elsewhere.
And now we’re at Emma’s wedding, preparing to travel from England to Scotland, then to the Maldives for a conference Jeff is speaking at, then to Santorini to work on our next book, and then to Malta, where I’ll be teaching my Internal Family Systems & Memoir Writing retreat. (There’s still room to join us in Malta if you like!)
Everything is changing so fast that there’s barely time to breathe it all in or digest what’s happening. So I’m looking forward to the 12 days Jeff and I will be resting in Santorini and working on our next book together, in between work commitments in the Maldives (for him) and Malta (for me.)
I’m trying to look at the bright side of all of this, to find the silver lining, to see the glass as half full. But I’m also aware of my tendency to bypass the discomfort, the pain, the grief, the sadness, and the guilt- so I can bolster up the parts of me that feel overwhelmed, scared, helpless, and frozen.
But the truth is I don’t know if there’s a silver lining. Maybe there’s just loss, change, sadness, a forced move I don’t wish to make, an empty nest I’m not excited about (even though I know it’s the right thing), and the grief of losing connection- through death and divorce and relocation- with people I love dearly.
It makes me think of something one of the monks at Green Gulch Zen Center once said about why meditation is important. “We must stop and slow down each day, to go inside, and register, ‘Wow, that happened.’”
Wow, that happened.
The globalized world seems to speed up the pace of all that’s happening too. We now know what’s happening in many parts of the world we might have been ignorant of a century ago. It can feel overwhelming to let it all in.
Wow, that happened.
So many people I know are in the midst of enormous change that it makes me wonder if there are solar flares or strange astrological or astronomical happenings. Or maybe just the influence of all the political strife.
But I hope you can take just one minute right now to let in whatever is changing too swiftly to digest in your life.
Can you take just one minute to close your eyes, go inside, check on your parts, and let it sink in, “Wow, that happened?”
Can you take a few more minutes or maybe even a day, to write down what’s going on, to let yourself feel the emotions that arise in the midst of change?
Can you give your parts some breathing room so they can slow down and take in whatever changes might be thrust upon you, in addition to the changes you might be choosing?
Can you ask your parts what they might need from you, to help you adjust to whatever changes might be happening?
I find that if I just acknowledge the parts that feel overwhelmed, frightened, or hesitant about all the uncertainty, I can find space to calm down and maybe even get a little excited. As I wrote about in The Fear Cure, when we don’t know what the future holds, anything can happen!
When I look back at my life with my trusty retrospectoscope, sometimes I feel regrets about the choices I’ve made, but other times, I discover that the times that felt the most terrifying at the time turned out to be the catalysts that led to some of the wisest pivots in my life.
Which is why it helps to slow down- to do what we can to have some agency over the choices we make, to reduce the risk of regret and improve the chance that times of transition can be catalysts for positive change, the kind that gets us out of our ruts and helps us redirect towards a life more closely aligned with our true nature, our authentic Self, and our highest potential.
Maybe a year from now, I’ll look back at this transition time and be grateful that so many unexpected, unplanned, unwanted changes were thrust upon me. Maybe it will be hard to imagine what might have happened had I not been pushed out of my comfort zone and into the zone of uncertainty.
Or maybe not. Maybe I’ll miss what I’m currently losing and wish I had it all back.
Regardless, life keeps living through us all, whether we’re choosing it intentionally or not.
And so…when we find ourselves face-to-face with uncertainty, let us do what we can to guide our lives with intention, to get clear on our desires and wishes, to express our activism and fight injustice when we have the power to do so, to be proactive about taking control of our lives where we have the power to do so, to lean into the possibility times of uncertainty bring upon us, and to try to co-create the next phase of our lives. But let us not bully change either. Let us be gentle with parts that are attached to outcomes we can’t control. Let us surrender to what’s happening, extend compassion to our own resistance, and kick up our heels as the winds of change sweep us into whatever is meant for us next.
Until then, let us pause and breathe and take another moment to digest, “Wow, that happened.”
Whatever is happening for you, may your transitions be as easeful as possible, with grace where it’s available, with compassion for your own parts, and with the support of whatever community you’re blessed to have in your life.
If you’re needing any support with times of transition, we have two offerings coming up.
One, come to Malta for Internal Family Systems & Memoir Writing! If you’re in Europe and can get to London easily enough, flights from London to Malta are currently quite reasonable. I got my tickets for $84 roundtrip from London. You can process whatever is happening with your parts- and learn some self-help skills for doing IFS on your own- through writing your own stories.
Register here for Internal Family Systems & Memoir Writing.
If an island holiday is out of reach, IFS lead trainer, author, and Harvard trained physician Frank Anderson, MD and I will be revisiting our WRITE TO HEAL workshop in January 2025. Enrollment is open now, so please sign up soon if you want to make sure there’s still room.
Register here for WRITE TO HEAL with me and Frank Anderson.
If you happen to be a health care provider or therapist, we’ve also just opened enrollment for the Whole Health Medicine Institute, Class of 2025. Whether you’re looking to heal the healer, get certified to facilitate the Six Steps To Healing Yourself, or needing aid in business development for your creative entrepreneurial visionary idea, the Whole Health Medicine Institute is designed specifically to guide and support health care providers and therapists in transition.
Learn more & apply for Whole Health Medicine Institute, Class of 2025.
If none of those offerings is within reach or applicable to you, try completing this writing prompt:
When I feel into the changes that lie ahead of me, I…
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