Graceful Endings

Enjoy this 11-minute read and/or have me read it to you via the recording at the top of my webpage. 

My life is full of times I did the right thing in the wrong way. Perhaps that’s why so many of the endings in my life have involved me both inflicting and enduring pain. My recent decision to bring our weekly Wild Recovery gatherings to a close was no exception. It revealed just how much our lifelong patterns show up in times of transition, but it also taught me that it’s never too late to heal the wounds of the past through how we show up today – if we are willing to really see, feel, and respond to our impact on others.

One of the most powerful practices we’ve shared in Wild Recovery was an exploration of our Birth Myth inspired by Michael Meade. If we look at the events of our conception, and our mother’s pregnancy and labor, we see a metaphorical template for how we approach and move through transition for the rest of our lives. One important element in my Birth Myth is that I was born two weeks late. My mother labored all night and I wouldn’t budge. Then a new nurse came on shift at 8am, said to just turn my mom on her side, and I popped right out!

Every major transition I can recall in my relationships followed a similar pattern. I held on and resisted making the move that was needed, and then rushed through it in a burst of urgency that was disorienting for me and often upsetting to others. My impatience to get it over and done with lies in the fact that I’ve hung on too long. I’m afraid that if I stop to look around, I’ll lose my nerve and cling to the familiar. But my eagerness can feel like I don’t value others, and I often find myself reeling from taking on too much change, too quickly.

I had been feeling for weeks like the current format of Wild Recovery was becoming too demanding and I needed to move in a different direction, but I hesitated because I didn’t want to hurt the people I cared about by separating all of us, and I was afraid of losing momentum on the work I love without weekly opportunities to share and practice. After talking with the group, they accepted my suggestion of one final session to honor our time together. I felt an initial rush of relief and liberation from finally taking action, but I was soon inundated by a sense of deep darkness and doubt. I recognized in it my old fears around being alone and vulnerable in the world without a meaningful way to express my gifts. But I also sensed something like a subtle haunting, which I can best describe as a growing suspicion that I was violating something sacred.

As I’ve noticed is often the case during periods of deep reckoning, other threads of my life were working through a similar theme. In the week between my announcement of the end of Wild Recovery and our final session, I completed an 8^th step on my ex-husband. In the 12-step tradition, this is when we take inventory of someone we’ve hurt so we can take full responsibility for the harm we’ve caused. This enables us to let go of that internalized pattern by making amends to them, forgiving ourselves, and/or changing how we act in the future to avoid causing similar harm.

I realized a deep connection between my relationship with my former husband and my relationship with the Wild Recovery group. In both cases, there was a growing sense of misalignment and a hesitation to admit or act on that because of a fear of emptiness and of causing harm to those I cared about. Because of that, I stayed in both relationships, partially invested and increasingly dissatisfied. Finally, an inspiration for the next best thing arose and I jumped ship. This vision gave me the clarity and momentum I needed to do what was right – end the commitment and create space for something new – but the abruptness of it was hurtful to those I cared about. And while it took some time to realize it, it was harmful to me as well. I learned long, long ago that no relationship can be relied on, so making quick, abrupt changes re-enforces my unconscious justification that it’s best not to get too close and that I can do just fine on my own. Only that isn’t true.

In doing this 8^th step on my husband, I shed tears from a deep and tender place that hadn’t grieved for him before. It was the place in me that honors the tender part of him that I had wounded – over and over again – by my open ambivalence and inability to leave, and by the abruptness of our parting. Understandably, he has shut me out of his heart because I proved myself untrustworthy. Because I cannot make amends to him directly, I carry our story in my heart as a visceral, humbling reminder of the importance of choosing and nurturing my relationships mindfully.

Then I realized that the ending of Wild Recovery was an opportunity for me to begin to make amends. It was too late to bring things to a close as gracefully as I would have liked, but it wasn’t too late to end it better than I had ended my marriage. It was right to bring things to a close. I was determined to see it through. But I was also beginning to understand the importance of listening more deeply to “how.” How could I interrupt that familiar dance of “abandoned and abandoner” with those I care about? How could I soften the uncertainty and isolation in my own life by breaking my pattern of hot/cold, on/off? How could we elongate the process of closure so there was time to transition? How could I share power and control over the details?

I believe this willingness to slow down, listen, and ask – even and especially when we are certain we are doing the right thing – is a powerful part of healing our world. It acknowledges that every action we take, even if it’s clearly in our best interest, has ripple effects we are responsible for. It acknowledges that our joy, pain, devotion, and liberation are interwoven. It honors the sacredness of a deep exchange of heart and mind by saying, “It is time to part ways, but you are an honored part of me and will be a vital part of everything I do from now on.” This difficult, necessary work is made more easeful when everyone is able to be honest with what’s in their heart, bold about speaking what they need, flexible and patient with the process, and trust the earth to hold the inevitable unknowns.

And that’s exactly what happened when I opened the final gathering of Wild Recovery. Everyone came – even those who hadn’t been in weeks and those who had been determined to stay away until an hour before. I shared my Birth Myth, my heartache over what I did to my ex-husband, and how the urgency of our closure was a familiar pattern I wanted to end because it denied the truth of how much everyone means to me and how much we all need graceful endings to heal and trust. To my surprise, everyone affirmed that this was only the end of this particular gathering, not of our commitment to and connection with one another. I was free to create and lead in new ways, and they would continue to hold this space in shared friendship. Until it was spoken, I hadn’t realized my deepest longing – to become a peer and friend to those my original vision had inspired and to recognize that the container I had tended so diligently had enabled them to see and care for one another to such an extent that it was no longer needed.

I’ve come to realize that the sense that often accompanies making changes in my life and relationship – a sense of deep disorientation, aching, and feeling like the ground is falling away beneath me – isn’t just fear of the unknown or of doing harm. It’s a sign that I’ve lost my inner compass. The rush of clarity and power that comes from knowing what must be done can be lost in a blind dash to see it through, whether that is building something new or letting something go. What I’ve learned is that an intuitive hit is just the beginning. It’s not a call to a specific action, but a call to stop, slow down, and continue to ask “How?”

The same deep part of us that shows us the right thing to do can also show us the right way to do it, to ensure graceful transitions for ourselves and for all the people – known and unknown – who are touched by our choices. In this way, even if pain is felt, we stay in alignment with a sense of grace that can heal old wounds instead of tear them open or harden them.

And I believe this lesson is especially important for being alive on our planet right now. Admitting and accepting the truth of the loss and damage happening all around us to ecosystems, communities, and individuals is just the first step. If we can slow down, stop, and resist the urge to jump into compulsive action or to shut down and shirk responsibility, we can take the next, and perhaps harder step. We can begin to feel into all the parts of us – the parts that want security, vengeance, acts of heroism – and all the networks of exchange we belong to, and ask “How?”

And perhaps the most important and unexpected lesson I learned is that even when I do it the wrong way – even when I move from a wounded, blinded place – things can still turn out even better than I could have foreseen. The pain of our divorce led my husband to his new wife within six months of our parting, and he now has the family life that never would have satisfied me. And the timing and abruptness of my announcement to close Wild Recovery ignited a fierce commitment in its members to ensure our connection wasn’t lost.

Perhaps graceful endings have less to do with the way we navigate unknown and difficult transitions and more to do with the grace that permeates our lives when we simply ask – “show me the right thing to do, and give me the courage to see it through, each step of the way.”

Nancy