Transitions are demanding, often onerous, because we humans do not like change. Transitions place necessary transformation front and center in our lives. Change is difficult since it requires not only our full participation but also our ability to adapt.
What are those transitions in our lives that seem to present the biggest challenges or obstacles? And why do they always seem so complicated? Here are just a few of the biggies I have endured, in no particular order:
1. Progressing through your midlife (generally in your forties)
2. Obtaining your first real job
3. Getting married
4. Becoming a mother
5. Having a second child
6. Acquiring a divorce
7. Changing jobs to pursue a new direction in your career
8. Becoming retired
Before a significant life transition, we tend to give ourselves so much negative self-talk. What do I really want? Am I capable of doing this? Am I good enough to accomplish the change I anticipate? Can I overcome my previous limitations? Sometimes it is difficult to know exactly what we need to be successful and feel fulfilled. In addition, each transition requires our analysis of totally different things.
When we're faced with significant change, we often feel a loss of control. This loss can be disorienting and anxiety-inducing. Transition periods are often marked by uncertainty. We may feel anxious about our situation and the possible choices that lie ahead. We may be unaware of what we really need to feel good about ourselves. This is the perfect opportunity to lean on your support systems. A discussion with a trusted friend, mentor or advisor can help greatly. Finding the validation from a colleague can be crucial prior to embarking on a big change. Does she agree that you need a change in direction? If so, it helps you to know that.
Taking some time to pause and be truly reflective about your situation, to consider what you really want is always helpful. Remember: the pause is the space between the stimulus and the behavior. The pause is the place where we really grow. We pause so that we can give ourselves time - time to rest, time to relax, time to quiet our negative self-talk. Every transition teaches us about our strengths and our weaknesses, especially during midlife. In pressing through each of life’s transitions, we are rewarded with learning so much about ourselves.
We all want to predict, confirm, and understand our experiences as fully as possible. However, navigating a transition period, we often don’t know what is going to happen next and that invites fear, anxiety, and worry. It is okay to feel all the complex emotions during your transition period. Despite their difficulties and challenges at the time, our life’s transitions have two things in common: our lives were never the same, and we evolved.
Getting your first real job is such a stark challenge, and one we anticipate and prepare for via education and degrees, yet once we begin to work for someone or for something we learn that others have expectations of us. Are we clear on what those expectations are exactly? Do we have a boss, or supervisor who communicates clearly and provides feedback in a helpful way? I finished my fellowship in neonatology seemingly prepared to practice as attending faculty in the NICU without help. During that first year, I called upon several of my professors many times just to make sure my clinical decisions were sound. Did I need to do that? Probably not, but knowing they agreed made me feel more confident.
Getting married was a huge transition for me. Millennials and Gen Z women are postponing this crucial step into adulthood. Maybe that means that this tough transition is not necessary, maybe simply living together is enough. Having grown up in the deep South, I desperately wanted to get married and have a family. I finally married at the old age of thirty-three, when all my friends were already married, and most had families. As a result, I had felt deficient in some way. I had allowed my medical training, both residency and fellowship, to take priority over finding a compatible partner. I chose to let work come first before my personal life. In retrospect, that was a flawed decision.
Work does not fill those parts of you that need human connection, love, and intimacy. One of my mentors whom I admired greatly was a consummate academic physician, with NIH grants and an active research career. She remained single and childless, forever devoted to her career. Many years later, she told me that she wished she had married and had a family like I did. She was the academic star who felt she had missed out on something vital which, over the years, she had watched me enjoy.
Becoming a mother, or matrescence, is huge for nearly all of us. Whether you want to get pregnant, have trouble getting pregnant, or became pregnant inadvertently, once you have your baby, your life is changed forever. We all become mothers in different ways, depending on the health of our pregnancy, the health of our baby, and our own mental health. I plan to write more about this process later, so stay tuned.
Having a second child is a transition that many of us desire, but once it occurs, we look around for the reasons we ever wished for such an upheaval. As a mother of two you are outnumbered, especially if your spouse or partner is of little help. But the burdens lessen as the first few years proceed and the first child becomes less threatened, more independent, and helpful. Two children are the perfect pair, unless like me, you look at your spouse and say, “They will only have each other, and they need another sibling.” Both my husband and I came from large families, so we talked ourselves into a third child. It has been bedlam ever since. Perhaps if I did not work full time, the three would have been controllable, but life at home never seemed controllable for me.
Getting a divorce is the most awful transition that some of us ever deal with. Divorce signals a transition fraught with emotional upheaval. The dissolution of a marriage brings with it a cascade of emotions -loss, grief, anger, and sometimes relief. I cannot imagine the pain that is attributed to this process. However, recently I read Maggie Smith’s memoir, “Maybe You Could Make this Place Beautiful,” about her divorce and recovery, and now I have a clear understanding of the struggle and suffering that she endured during this process. She kept her two children firmly rooted with her and underwent a metamorphosis into an independent, thoughtful, loving, and creative person married to herself. Please read her fabulous poem, “The Bride,” originally published in The New Yorker magazine.
Changing jobs always seems like a daunting task. You may be unhappy where you are and can put your finger on your grievances – money, time, schedule, colleagues, working conditions, or all the above. We change jobs for many reasons, knowing mostly what we do not like and hoping to find that job that will work better for us. Yet, leaving one job for another can feel like stepping into the unknown, abandoning the comfort of routine for the uncertainty of change. The familiar faces, the rhythms of the workplace, and the sense of belonging will fade as we adjust to our new workplace.
In my forties, during a period of midlife upheaval, I jumped ship from the NICU to a medical director position at a small HMO. That new and different “executive physician” job was so easy, eight to five, with only phone conferences, meetings, and data review required. But I found myself having to say no to some physician trying to get a treatment or medicine approved for his or her patient. This was not an enjoyable position to find oneself in. A great schedule with weekends off is not everything in a job, so I bounced right back into clinical care in the NICU, knowing that it was busy, tiring, challenging, but oh, so fulfilling.
Any job change can be helpful or harmful, unless we know what we are getting in to ahead of time, unless we have a thoughtful mentor or advisor, loyal friends, and a supportive partner or spouse. Listening to trusted friends, partners, and colleagues is paramount in importance during life’s greatest transitions, especially for our midlife challenges.
Please comment and let me know your best and worst transitions thus far, and the ways you learned to live successfully through them. Personally, I’m still working on being retired, and it has been a real struggle.
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Susan- this article stated it perfectly. Transitions are very difficult and I’m currently in one of the most difficult transition periods of my life. On the life stress scale I think it ranks a 12 out of 10! In the period of 12 months, I had two major joint surgeries, sold our forever home of 30 years where we raised our children, moved twice.. and then literally moved ourselves across the country, retired from Medicine, my husband started a new job in our new state, lost our home church and core friends in the move and have to start over. Plus we are building a podcast business and taking a big leap of faith at this latter point of our career years.
It’s been a lot and I struggle balancing “ finding purpose “ with giving myself time to adjust and accept that respite is needed.
Thanks for the reminder that these are big adjustments.. it helps me allow myself some grace in the healing and settling process. And inspiration for my weekly newsletter as well!