“All endings are also beginnings. We just don’t know it at the time.” ~ Mitch Albom

What happens when things end, people end, and relationships break?

It hurts.

And that too like hell.

Every ending takes away a part or perhaps parts of us.

It also leaves several parts of us fragmented all around.

Then, all that we can do is just somehow gather the courage to pick those up and piece them together again.

Of course, nothing remains the same ever. No matter how hard we try. But we’ve got to try, right?

At some point, we have to find it in ourselves to make sense of what happened and why.

Then, begins another struggle of trying to put together everything in a way that makes some sense…somehow.

No matter what we do or how careful we are with this act of making sense and giving meaning to this ending, it continues to hurt.

And the hurt continues till we reach a point where it becomes a part of us. We allow it to show up every now and then, acknowledge it, and let it go.

Then, there is no fight.

We let it come up, hang around for a bit, and then let it go.

“There is no real ending. It’s just the place where you stop the story.” ~ Frank Herbert

Yes, there are some endings which leave us with a tinge of joy and happiness, and there are also those which rip us apart.

The ones that rip us apart hurt the most. It’s those that we struggle with the most.

Is there a way where we can look for meaning in those endings without the pain?

Sadly, no.

We’ve got to do all this while making room for this pain that keeps showing up and asks us to tend to it every now and then.

When faced with such endings, all we can do is give ourselves time to heal and move on.

Here are some ways in which we can do this for ourselves:

1. Give yourself time to come to terms with the new reality. Sometimes, the heart takes longer to accept what the mind already knows. It takes time for the realization that things will no longer be the same to set in.

2. Make room for your emotions. Endings bring with them a gamut of emotions that come and go in waves. Give yourself the time and space to reminisce the wonderful times gone by and grieve the loss that you are going through.

3. Up your self-care as you juggle different moods and emotions.

4. Acknowledge the vacuum that you’re feeling rather than running away from it. Look out for constructive and healthy ways to deal with it rather than covering it up with pretense or ignorance.

5. Decode what the presence or absence of that opportunity, relationship, or person is telling you. There is meaning in everything that exists or ceases to. It’s up to us to find it.

6. Take one day, one step at a time.

Everything that ends, brings with it a new beginning. But we may not be able to see or understand it right then.

“New beginnings are often disguised as painful endings.” ~ (Maybe Not) Lao Tzu

Every ending is also a signal to find some more pieces of this puzzle called life and piece them together to form a new whole.

But all that takes time.

Sometimes, a lot of it, and we must allow for that to happen.

That’s how we move on.

That’s how we grow.

That’s how we heal.

“You only grow by coming to the end of something and by beginning something else.” ~ John Irving

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