Life transitions: how to find your way through change

Change is hard, and it’s constant. We are often working so hard to resist change or control its outcomes, that we end up getting tossed around through some of life’s inevitable twists and turns. So how can you find balance, evolve and grow with life, without losing yourself or all the things and people you love?

Life’s big changes

I’m Hannah, a queer perinatal mental health therapist. Perinatal is a fancy word to describe all things fertility related, including trying to conceive, pregnancy, pregnancy loss, and postpartum. I support people through one of the life’s biggest transformations - becoming a parent.

Talk about change - from your body taking on new shapes, to relationships taking on new roles, to priorities completely shifting, this journey is a labyrinth of transitions. The word “matrescence” was created to encompass the biological, social, and psychological transformation for a new parent, which takes place over the course of 3-5 years, and is ever-evolving.

Additionally, working with queer and trans folks, I’ve had an intimate look into different coming out processes. The transformations that take place along the queer journey often involve a renewed discovery of yourself, a choice to live authentically as yourself, and a shifting of relationships, gender expressions, timelines, and plans. “Coming out” can mean a lot of things to a lot of people, whether it’s disclosing your sexual orientation or gender identity to others, or coming into your own sense of sexuality and gender. Like parenthood, both coming out and coming into yourself are ever-evolving processes.

Grief in letting go

In times of great change, something has to die - to be released - in order for something new to emerge. While it can be more obvious to grieve the outer things, like relationships with people who don’t accept you or activities you used to have time for, the inner sense of loss can be more confusing. As you explore emerging parts of yourself, you become untethered from the parts of your identity that had become familiar and well-practiced.

For example, as you’re discovering a deep longing for queer love, the “traditional” path you had planned for might start to fade away. Now, you find yourself grieving old expectations and the sense of security they provided. And you’re left wondering what it is you actually do want, and what that says about who you are.

For a new parent, perhaps you had once prided yourself on showing up for all your people, and you loved being a reliable source of support for your community. But after becoming a parent, you not only have less time for everyone else, but you have less interest in dealing with their problems. You wonder if you’re losing your worth, and if you’re even losing yourself.

To be present with where you’re at now, and to allow yourself to move toward where you’re going, you need to give yourself permission to grieve. It’s okay to feel sad that you’re not everyone’s go-to person anymore, even if you are so grateful for your baby. It’s okay to miss those family dinners, even if you know that being there was emotionally harmful. When you allow these difficult feelings in, you give yourself the opportunity to take care of the most vulnerable parts of yourself. And you find that you are able to move through the grief, rather than against it.

Making space for grief is not easy; usually we do everything in our power to avoid feeling grief. To be gentle with yourself, you can surround yourself with the people and things that hold you with the most compassion - a best friend, a pet, your favorite book, a cup of tea…whatever feels like a soothing balm to your spirit.

Fear in the unknown

During change, you’re not losing yourself, but you are getting lost. You’re walking a new, uncharted path, and you have no idea where it’s leading you. There is fear in letting go of the old internal map that you had spent so many years drawing and perfecting. And what is even scarier is the unknown about what will take its place.

I really like queer life coach Martha Beck’s framework for understanding the change cycle. In particular, I love the way she describes the inner undoing as “bug soup”, referring to the chrysalis stage of a butterfly, when the caterpillar’s cells dissolve into a soupy substance before reorganizing to form a butterfly.

Surrendering to bug soup is terrifying! How can you stay in control of anything when you are basically a big puddle on the floor? When you’re in this state, you can ask yourself, “what’s just one next right thing I can do?”. Maybe it’s just brushing your teeth, or remembering to breathe. Maybe it’s cozying up with a good book, or throwing in a load of laundry.

And remind yourself - this feeling of being lost means that you’re doing something right - you’re allowing yourself to grow and evolve with life. You are still you, emerging with new and wondrous parts of yourself.

Building resilience

Life transitions come in many packages, big and small, including: leveling up in your career or starting over; the death of a parent; starting gender affirming medical care; starting or ending a relationship; taking a first step toward a healthier habit or deciding to quit an unhealthy habit; starting a hobby or making a new friend.

All of these changes call on us to be open to new possibilities, to adapt, and to let go of what no longer serves us along the way. I have found that queerness and parenthood offer some invaluable tools for folks adapting to life’s many changes. Here are some reflection questions to journal about, and a strategy that you can try while coping with big change:

• Journal prompt 1: What has queerness or parenthood taught me about adapting to change? How can I use that in future transitions?

• Journal prompt 2: What’s one thing I can let go of in order to make room for something new?

• Coping skill to try: Put a loving hand over your heart and take three deep breaths. Give yourself permission to feel by saying: “This hurts, and that’s okay. I am hurting but I am safe.”