The Love Your Life Podcast Episode 26: Endings Are the Place We Begin Hi, and welcome to The Love Your Life Podcast. I’m glad you’re here. Today we’re talking about endings—something we all face, again and again. This time of year brings a lot of them. School years wrap up. Kids move on to the next phase. Some of us are sending high school graduates out into the world. And honestly? That’s been one of the hardest transitions I’ve faced—not when I graduated, but when my own child did. Endings come in all shapes: Jobs change. Relationships evolve. Kids grow. Bodies age. Dreams shift. And eventually, life itself ends. As William Bridges puts it in his book Transitions, “Transition is the natural process of disorientation and reorientation marking turning points in the path of growth.” And yet, most of us don’t give ourselves space for that disorientation. We want to rush to the fresh start and skip the messy middle. But real transitions begin with endings. Not just the event—but what it means internally. How we’re changed by it. Let me ask you—what’s ending in your life right now? A role? A belief? A relationship? A version of you? And how are you responding to it? Are you letting it go—or clinging to what was? That image of the monkey trap comes to mind—reaching in for the fruit, refusing to let go, and staying stuck because of it. That’s how we can get with old identities, patterns, even pain. Not because they serve us—but because they’re familiar. Scarcity tells us, “This might be as good as it gets.” But what if that’s not true? What if letting go is how we clear space for something better? Letting go isn’t easy. It takes courage and a willingness to accept what is. So, here’s what I want to invite you to do this week: ACTION ITEM: Write down your answers to these two questions: What is ending in my life right now? What emotions am I feeling around that ending—and what are they trying to tell me? Name it. Sit with it. Let yourself feel it instead of stuffing it down. Most emotions, when given space, move through us in under five minutes. When we avoid them, they stay—sometimes for years. Socrates said, “The secret of change is to focus all your energy not on fighting the old, but on building the new.” But you can’t build the new until you acknowledge what’s ending. This is where real clarity begins. Thanks for joining me today. In the next episode, we’ll talk about the neutral zone—what I call “the soup”—that awkward, messy, middle part. And why it’s so important not to rush it. Until then, honor the ending. Let it do its work. Talk soon.