Wintering is Coming!

We’ve all had endings in our lives, some good, some lucky, some terrible.  But we have very little guidance on how to actually do endings.  Endings can be fun and celebratory like a graduation or retiring from a career.  They can be good but hard like a divorce.  They can be good but also challenging like finding a relationship but giving up single life. 

Or they can be downright messy and terrible like breakups, getting ghosted, being fired, losing friends or community, moving to a new place, miscarriages, deaths, and all kinds of other loss and change.

I’ve had plenty of endings in my life.  As humans we just tend to accumulate them after a while.  The key isn’t to avoid endings but to learn how to make good endings.  It’s possible to do this even if the other party isn’t still there with you.  And it’s important to do this so our energy and power don’t keep leaking out into the past.  

A good ending is kind of like a good wintering.  It’s an acknowledgment of all that’s come before, blessed with the sacred practices of acceptance and gratitude, and calling on the allies of endings (there are many!) to help close a chapter and move forward in peace.

Some of my most important endings were also the messiest, and where I developed this work from.  I’ve lost whole communities in one fell swoop (read, breakup).  I’ve decided to leave relationships with folks who couldn’t walk in integrity, and who likely never will, whether or not I’m around.  I’ve had to create closure on dreams that I finally realized just weren’t for me, no matter how bad I wanted them. 

For example, after I graduated seminary I desperately wanted to be a hospital chaplain and applied and interviewed at five hospitals in Denver and San Francisco.  No one hired me and I had to find a new path forward in ministry, which I have.  Sometimes I still wonder if that path is for me, but I think of the good ending I made of that dream and am at peace with where I am today.

And every year around autumn time I face the grief of all the lovely summer things dwindling and all the summer things left undone.  It’s an ending I can’t control.  The Earth turns with or without my approval!

So this year I’m getting really clear and intentional about my endings using the medicine of autumn winter.  I cut down all my garden summer plants and laid them in their literal beds.  And I’m cutting down my internal summer projects that now need a rest. 

I’m also pruning relationships, habits, griefs that are now fully grieved and ready to lay down, and dreams that need to winter before trying again next year.  My closets and kitchen cabinets are getting a great cleanout too.

You deserve good endings and may you always winter well.