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“We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.” ~T.S. Eliot

In my early twenties, I packed a backpack and boarded a plane alone with a one-way ticket to Southeast Asia. It was a move that baffled my father, inspired my friends, and quietly terrified me.

I was drawn by something I couldn’t fully articulate at the time: a craving for freedom, truth, and a kind of belonging I hadn’t yet known. What I didn’t realize then is that this two-year trip would imprint on me a version of myself I’d spend the next twenty years slowly forgetting, and then, almost by surprise, begin to reclaim.

Three weeks into that trip, I found myself in Northern Thailand feeling completely lost. I wasn’t sightseeing like I “should” have been, or checking off cultural highlights. I felt aimless. Lonely. A bit ashamed that I wasn’t “making the most” of the experience.

The structure I was used to (school, expectations, a tidy plan…) had fallen away. I felt unmoored, as if I’d made a huge mistake. Who was I to think I could just wander and have it mean something?

And then I met Merrilee.

She was older, solo, sun-wrinkled and wise—the kind of woman who carries stories in her skin.

Over an afternoon spent talking at our quiet guesthouse, she helped me see something I hadn’t yet understood—that the point wasn’t to fill the time. The point was to be with myself. To let the lack of familiarity and structure teach me how to listen inward. To begin trusting my own rhythm and desire without external cues.

The kind of freedom I’d dreamed of required discomfort first and a willingness to stop outsourcing my worth to what I was doing.

That single conversation changed the entire arc of my trip. And it changed me. Forever.

For the first time, I felt connected to myself not because I was achieving something, but because I was simply attuned. I moved at a pace that felt good. I made decisions from joy, not obligation. I stopped trying to prove anything. And in the middle of that season of self-connection, I met the man who would become my husband. A new chapter began rooted in love and partnership, and eventually, in motherhood.

And slowly, without really realizing it, the version of me that woke up in Thailand began to dim.

Over the years, I became a mama to two beautiful boys. I cultivated a stable career. I managed a household. I became, in many ways, the kind of adult we are told to strive for: organized, reliable, efficient, productive. I wore those traits like armor, and at times, even like a badge of honor. But beneath it, there was a soft ache.

I had flashes of her—that younger, aligned me—the one who had danced through temples, laughed with strangers, trusted the moment. I saw her in photos. I reread journal entries and marveled at how whole I’d felt. But the distance between us seemed too wide. I didn’t resent the life I’d built. I just felt like I’d built it around everyone but me.

Some seasons are shaped by who needs us and how we choose to show up. And when we decide to set aside our deepest longings for the sake of others, it can serve as a useful contrast.

Maybe that soft ache was there to remind me that while raising children, tending to aging parents, or holding together the invisible threads of a household can offer deep meaning and purpose… it’s not the whole of me.

Somewhere in my early forties, with my kids nearly grown and a job that no longer felt right, the stirring got stronger. Roaring and insistent.

Only this time, it didn’t send me packing to the other side of the world. It sent me inward. And I was ready for it now. I had the capacity to respond.

I began exploring new trainings. I started a side business that brought me alive in ways I hadn’t felt in years. I slowly reduced how much I was giving to my secure job to devote more time to the work that felt aligned with my soul. I was awakening again, but with responsibilities and relationships that complicated the path.

Eventually, I knew it was time to leave my job entirely. It was a leap that, while intentional, shook me more than I expected.

The weeks after submitting my resignation were not the liberating breath I’d anticipated. Instead, I felt untethered, afraid, and riddled with doubt. Who was I now? What if I failed? What if all of this was some naive midlife fantasy?

Every structure I had leaned on—title, paycheck, certainty—was gone. I felt like I was falling. And then it hit me: I’d been here before.

That lost, floating, what-the-hell-am-I-doing feeling? It was the exact same emotional terrain I’d walked through in Thailand. Only now, I had more to lose. The stakes were higher, so the fear was louder, but the lesson was ultimately the same.

To let go of structure without losing myself. To trust the process of becoming before I had evidence of it all working out. To believe that flow, intuition, and joy are valid guides, even in business.

This time, there was no Merrilee waiting for me on a bamboo veranda. But there was embodied memory. There was me. There was the version of me who had lived it once and come alive because of it. The gift of having that experience in my early twenties wasn’t just the adventure. It was the blueprint it gave me for how to find my way back when I felt lost.

I didn’t have to figure it all out from scratch. I just had to remember who I was when I felt most alive. What she trusted. How she moved. What she believed.

She didn’t need five-year plans or marketing funnels or perfect clarity. She needed space. And courage. And breath. She needed to like herself and to let that be enough.

And so, I began letting that version of me take the lead again.

Building a business, especially one rooted in healing, service, and soul, isn’t just about offers and strategy. It’s a spiritual path. It asks you to meet your edges, again and again. It confronts your conditioning. It stirs up your doubts. But it also calls forward your truest voice: the one that got quiet when you were busy being “good” and responsible and reliable.

For years, I looked back on that time in Asia with a kind of reverence—a fond and distant memory of a life I couldn’t believe I was once brave enough to have lived. I never saw it as a departure from real life, but I did place it in a separate category, a luminous chapter that shaped me, but felt hard to access again.

Now I see it more clearly. That moment was the original map of who I am when I’m not trying to be what the world wants. And now, in this middle chapter of life, I get to choose her again.

Not by backpacking across the globe (though I admit that’s tempting), but by waking up each day and building a life, a business, a version of myself that’s led by truth, flow, and trust. It’s scarier now. But it’s also richer. Because I know what it feels like to come home to myself.

And I know the ache of the contrast if I don’t.

Maybe you’re reading this and feel like you’re standing at a similar threshold, untethered, uncertain, trying to trust the pull of something deeper.

If so, let this be your Merrilee moment.

The path might feel blurry. You might question whether you’re wasting time, or if you are foolish for wanting more.

But what I continue to learn in new ways is that the process of returning to yourself and recentering your needs doesn’t always come with clarity. It often arrives with chaos. With fear. With silence. With the pain of letting go.

But what’s waiting for you on the other side of the unraveling is a more vibrant you. And that person is so worth meeting again.

About Natasha Ramlall

Natasha Ramlall is a trauma-informed mind-body health practitioner. She helps individuals see their pain in a new way which moves them into more evolved levels of mind-body health, wholeness and healing. To learn more or work with her, visit humanistcoaching.ca and get her Journaling Bundle to explore how this tool can support you.

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“Sometimes you have to let go of the life you planned to make room for the life that’s waiting for you.” ~Joseph Campbell

My new motto? Always have a backup plan.

Life rarely goes as you’d imagined.

January 16^th, 2001. That’s the day my life trajectory changed irrevocably. That’s the day that would lead me to, eventually, living alone—to being divorced. That’s the day my ex had a ski accident that changed the lives of every member of our immediate family. But today, I don’t want to talk about him or that. I want to talk about my story, about me. About my aftermath of living alone.

Several years ago, when the last of my daughters graduated from college, loaded her ‘how-can-she-possibly-carry-that!’ backpack, hugged me tight, and boarded a plane for South America with a one-way ticket, I felt a hole in my stomach the size of a meteor crash pit.

I knew so many things at that moment. I knew I had a world of worry ahead of me that would last the duration of her adventure-with-no-end-date.

I knew I’d be going home to an empty house—that was now going to stay empty.

I knew that the axis of my world had suddenly tilted—and nothing would balance the same again.

For years, my married-with-children life had been a whirlwind of stereotypical womanhood: mothering, managing, and multitasking. The house hummed with commotion, packing lunches, planning dinners, visiting teenagers’ shoes haphazardly piled near the front door, family events, lively conversations, and belly laughs—oh, and at a certain point, some derailing by hormone gyrations.

And now? Just me, my omnipresent ADHD-fueled piles of stuff, and a fridge that I wished someone else would clean and organize.

The divorce (after forty years of marriage)? Now, almost a decade in the rearview mirror. The full-time career hustle? Quieted (and mostly regretted). The calendar? More “me-time” than meetings or dates with girlfriends. And let’s not forget the increase in doctors’ appointments compared to before.

On almost every front, I was no longer needed the way I had been.

When my marriage ended, my ex took more than a suitcase and half of our belongings and money. He took our vacations, traditions, and huge parts of my lifestyle—and he unpacked them somewhere new, with someone new.

That reality offered me a chance at a whole new beginning that was all my own but was also utterly unnerving.

Once the noise of change and terrible transitions falls away, what’s left is the deafening question that every fiercely feeling, fabulously flawed woman eventually faces: What do I do with the rest of my life?

The Mirror Doesn’t Lie (But It’s Kind of a Jerk Sometimes)

Here’s the thing nothing can prepare you for when you find yourself alone and start spending real, unfiltered time in solitude:

You meet yourself.

Not the curated version of you that shows up for work, friends, family, or festivities. The real you. The unedited, unmoored, occasionally unhinged version. You with the foibles, flaws, fractures, fixations, fragile truths, and all. At least, that tends to be what you see at first. You’ll also see (sometimes it’s eventually) grace and grit, wisdom and warmth, compassion and courage, intuition and integrity.

And that self you meet, they have questions.

They want to know if you’re proud of how you’ve spent your life. They want to know what you’ve been postponing. And they really want to know why you walked into the kitchen three times today and still forgot what you were looking for.

Being alone strips away distractions. It’s like standing naked in front of a full-length mirror under too-bright lighting. Every flaw feels fluorescent. Every fear comes forward. And every false story and excuse you’ve told yourself asks to be rewritten.

And then there’s the way the outside world begins to see you…

Ma’am? MA’AM?!

I have a calmer demeanor than I used to, but I still feel vibrant. Vivid. Volcanic, even. I know more about the world and myself than I ever have—enough even to realize how little I do know, and that’s half the fun.

And yet, I’ve entered the bizarre “Ma’am Zone.”

You know the one. Where the teenager at the store calls you ma’am while offering to carry your bag. Where the girl in the drive-thru hands you your latte with a chirpy “Here you go, hon.” Grrrrr. (I sometimes educate them that treating ‘older’ people like that is insulting vs respectful).

It’s the zone where people assume you’ve stopped wanting to have wild sex, don’t understand memes, or can’t connect your Wi-Fi extender without calling your child for help. (Um, guilty of the latter. But still.)

It’s where invisibility starts to sneak in—everywhere. You’re not quite old, but you’re no longer relevant or worthy of giving an opinion.

And the most jarring part? You still feel like your younger self is alive and well inside—just now with reading glasses, joint supplements, and a slightly shorter fuse for nonsense.

But here’s the truth: the Ma’am Zone isn’t a punishment. It’s a portal.

Because once you stop chasing approval from the outside, you finally make room for deep reverence on the inside.

Once you stop chasing approval from the outside, you realize your value isn’t measured by someone else’s opinion of you, by your waistline or taut skin, or your appeal to potential partners.

Your value is in how you carry your story, how you exemplify your self-worth, how you show up for others, and how much damn freedom you finally give yourself to just be.

Of course, there are still moments that rattle your chain—like when technology moves faster than your thumbs or when recalling a name or a word requires a full-blown brain excavation.

And it’s not just the memory lapses. It’s the quiet, creeping suspicion that you’re becoming a little… invisible. That in a world obsessed with youth and novelty, you’ve somehow been nudged toward the “used-to-be” pile.

But here’s my radical revelation: This isn’t the end of anything. It’s the beginning of everything.

Learning is My New North Star

This chapter I’ve found myself in—this curious, living-alone, transitional place—it’s a gift. And for me, that gift is the opportunity to dedicate copious amounts of time to learning. Not to impress, not to advance, not to earn letters behind my name. But to be alive.

Learning has become my reason for being in this last season of my life, however many decades that may be.

Oh, I still love deeply. I still mother, I still show up for friends, and I still need connection and community as much as I need air—but these next years of living alone? These are for taking in as much as I’ve given out.

I’ve begun to inhale books, devour documentaries, and dive headfirst into research rabbit holes like a woman on a mission to make up for all the times she didn’t have time and had to put her own curiosity on hold.

I’m back in therapy. I want to finally let go of the weight I don’t want to carry anymore. I want to learn to expand, to evolve, to live in full-blown self-worth, and to stay awake in a world that wants to lull me into irrelevance.

This isn’t just something I do—this is how I live now. Fully. Inquisitively. Intentionally.

I’m learning how to sit in silence without spiraling into regrets and should-haves. How to laugh at myself without lacerating my spirit. How to treasure time without tallying accomplishments.

My Best Friend at the End of My Pen

Amid all this sorting and shifting, quiet rooms and candid reckonings, new beginnings and necessary becoming, there’s one constant that’s never judged me, rushed me, or asked me to explain myself in under two minutes: my journal.

It’s actually been a good (almost better) substitute for my ex, who has known me since I was in my late teens.

No matter what kind of day I’m having—scattered, soulful, soaring, or stuck—it’s always there, waiting.

The page listens like no one else can.

It holds space when I can’t hold it together. And more often than not, I find my best thoughts, my bravest truths, and my clearest next steps scribbled somewhere between the rambling and the real.

That pen? It’s not just ink. It’s true: caring for and being honest with oneself.

And when my brain short-circuits—when I can’t remember if I paid a bill or why I walked into the kitchen for that third time—I turn to my journal. Not because it fixes everything but because it filters the fuzz.

Journaling is where I untangle the mental spaghetti. It’s my personal pause button, my brain’s backup drive, my place to dump the digital overload of modern life and actually hear myself think again.

Some days, it’s a sanctuary. On other days, it’s a sass-fest. But either way, it saves me. From forgetting. From overthinking. From disconnecting from the woman, I’m becoming.

Permission to Be Real, Forgetful, and Free

I’m learning to get curious instead of compliant.

I’m reclaiming my relevance not by proving myself but by being myself—beautifully, brutally, brilliantly real.

I’ve swapped out striving for savoring.

I’ve put down the perfectionism and picked up the pen.

And on the days when I forget what I was saying mid-sentence, I just say, “Well, clearly it wasn’t worth remembering!” and carry on.

No, I don’t have it all figured out. Thank goodness for that.

Life now feels less like a checklist and more like a what-kind-of-day-do-I-want-today? (Note: It’s sometimes a day in bed with snacks and a streaming obsession).

Some days are disco. Others are enlightening. Some days, I still feel sorry for myself. But all of them are mine.

So, if you’re standing in that strange, sacred space between who you’ve been and who you’re becoming, let this be your permission slip:

You don’t need to reinvent yourself.

You just need to remember yourself.

Not who the world wanted or told you that you were supposed to be. Who you are. Under the roles. Behind the titles. Beneath the noise.

There’s magic there. There’s freedom. And yes, there’s still plenty of fire.

A Few Questions to Light the Way

Who am I becoming now that no one’s watching?

What do I want to learn—not to be useful, but to be lit up?

Where am I still dimming my joy because I think it’s “too late”?

What would it look like to stop fixing and start feeling?

Where do I still matter most—to myself?

About Jill Grumbache

Jill Grumbache is the sometimes hilarious, always compassionate wit and founder of Holistic Journaling Ink. She is an unwavering advocate of women’s self-growth and education. She helps women find clarity, courage, calm, and a sense of humor through the written word. Jill is a lifelong journaler, communications specialist, beneficial journaling educator, certified journaling facilitator, and emotional intelligence coach, as well as an award-winning writer and recovering overthinker with ADHD (the latter being one of her favorite traits!). Reach her at jill@holisticjournaling.ca or www.holisticjournaling.ca.

See a typo or inaccuracy? Please contact us so we can fix it!

Retirement.

A big change. A new adventure.

Exciting but maybe also a bit daunting and uncertain.

To help you out with that I’d like to share 52 of the most witty, hilarious and funny retirement quotes.

I hope you’ll find something here that will make you laugh, relax and maybe release a bit of stress and uncertainty about this brand new chapter in your life.

Funny Retirement Quotes That Will Make You Laugh

“Retirement is wonderful. It’s doing nothing without worrying about getting caught at it.”
– Gene Perret

“In retirement, every day is Boss Day and every day is Employee Appreciation Day.”
– Terri Guillemets

“When a man retires, his wife gets twice the husband but only half the income.”
– Chi Chi Rodriguez

“There’s never enough time to do all the nothing you want.”
– Bill Watterson

“I’m retired – goodbye tension, hello pension!”
– Unknown

“I have never liked working. To me a job is an invasion of privacy.”
– Danny McGoorty

“I would like to extend my condolences to your employer for the devastating loss. Happy retirement!”
– Unknown

“When you retire, you switch bosses – from the one who hired you to the one who married you.”
– Gene Perret

“There are some who start their retirement long before they stop working.”
– Robert Half

“The trouble with retirement is that you never get a day off.”
– Abe Lemons

“I’m not just retiring from the company, I’m also retiring from my stress, my commute, my alarm clock, and my iron.”
– Hartman Jule

“A retired husband is often a wife’s full-time job.”
– Ella Harris

“Yes,” he laughed, “I’ve been attending lots of seminars in my retirement. They’re called naps.”
– Terri Guillemets

“I enjoy waking up and not having to go to work. So I do it three or four times a day.”
– Gene Perret

“Instead of saving for someone else’s college education, I’m currently saving for a luxury retirement community replete with golf carts and handsome young male nurses who love butterscotch.”
– Jen Kirkman

“Retirement is like a long vacation in Vegas. The goal is to enjoy these years to the fullest, but not so fully that you run out of money.”
– Jonathan Clements

“My retirement plan is to get thrown into a minimum security prison in Hawaii.”
– Julius Sharpe

“I’m tired of retirement jokes. I retired my hearing aid, my teeth, and the mortgage. The only thing left is my breath.”
– Phyllis Diller

“Retirement: It’s nice to get out of the rat race, but you have to learn to get along with less cheese.”
– Gene Perret

“Retirement at sixty-five is ridiculous. When I was sixty-five I still had pimples.”
– Bob Hope

Hilarious Retirement Sayings and Wishes With Lots of Humor

“Retirement is not in my vocabulary. They aren’t going to get rid of me that way.”
– Betty White

“Retirement adds 5 days to your weekend! Enjoy it!”
– Unknown

“You don’t stop laughing when you grow old, you grow old when you stop laughing.”
– George Bernard Shaw

“Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.”
– Mark Twain

“Some of the best memories are made in flip flops.”
– Kellie Elmore

“Retirement: that’s when you return from work one day and say ‘hi honey, I’m home – forever’.”
– Gene Perret

“My retirement plan is to get thrown off the golf course.”
– Rory McIlroy

“Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.”
– C.S. Lewis

“Don’t simply retire from something; have something to retire to.”
– Henry Emerson Fosdick

“We didn’t lose the game; we just ran out of time.”
– Vince Lombardi

“Every day is a chance to begin again.”
– Catherine Pulsifer

“Often when you think you’re at the end of something, you’re at the beginning of something else.”
– Fred Rogers

“Retire from work, but not from life.”
– M.K. Soni

“Our ultimate goal, after all, is not a good death but a good life to the very end.”
– Atul Gawande

“If all the economists were laid end to end, they would not reach a conclusion.”
– George Bernard Shaw

“Anyone can do any amount of work, provided it isn’t the work he is supposed to be doing at that moment.”
– Robert Benchley

“You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.”
– C.S. Lewis

“The purpose of life is to find your gift. The meaning of life is to give it away.”
– Shulamit Ambalu

“You can’t help getting older, but you don’t have to get old.”
– George Burns

Short and Funny Retirement Sayings

“The question isn’t at what age I want to retire, it’s at what income.”
– George Foreman

“I have four kids, seven grandkids, and four great-grandkids. Maybe I can become a great-great-grandfather if I hang on!”
– Dick Van Dyke

“It took me fifteen years to discover I had no talent for writing, but I couldn’t give it up because by that time I was too famous.”
– Robert Benchley

“Retirement: When you stop lying about your age and start lying around the house.”
– Bob Simmons

“Finish last in your league, and they call you an idiot. Finish last in medical school, and they call you doctor.”
– Abe Lemons

“Retirement is not the end of the road. It is the beginning of the open highway.”
– Terrence H. Seamon

“It is our habits that determine how we age, not our genes.”
– Steven R. Gundry

“The only thing better than a good education is a good retirement!”
– Franklin P. Adams

“Spreading sheets sounds more appealing than a spreadsheet.”
– Unknown

“The best time to start thinking about your retirement is before the boss does.”
– Sam Williams

“He who laughs last at the boss’s jokes probably isn’t far from retirement.”
– Unknown

“I can’t wait to retire so I can get up at 6 o’clock in the morning and go drive around really slow and make everybody late for work.”
– Roger Steves

“What do you call a person who is happy on a Monday? Retired.”
– Unknown

Want more funny quotes about life? Then have a look at these funny love quotes, the hilarious quotes about life here and also these funny friendship quotes.

Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.

When you can no longer think of a reason to continue, you must think of a reason to start over. There’s a big difference between giving up and starting over in the right direction. And there are three little words that can release you from your past and guide you forward to a positive new beginning. These words are: “From now on…”

So, from now on…

1. Let the things you can’t control GO!

Most things are only a part of your life because you keep thinking about them. Realize this. Positive things will happen in your life when you emotionally distance yourself from the negative things. So stop holding on to what hurts, and make room for what feels right. Do not let what is out of your control interfere with all the things you can control. (Read “Learned Optimism”.)

2. Accept and embrace reality.

Life is simple on the average day. Everything happens for you, not to you. Everything happens at exactly the right moment, neither too soon nor too late. For everything you lose, you gain something else; and for everything you gain, you lose something else. You don’t have to like it, but it’s just easier if you do. So pay attention to your outlook on life. You can either regret or rejoice; it’s your choice.

3. Change your mind.

Change is like breath — it isn’t part of the process, it is the process. In reality the only thing we can count on is change. And the first step toward positive change is to change your outlook. Prepare for the positive. Prepare for progress and the “new.” Allow the unknown to take you to fresh and unforeseen areas in yourself. Growth is impossible without change. If you cannot change your mind, you cannot change anything in your life. Sometimes all you need to do is look at things from a different perspective.

4. Hold tight to the good things.

When life’s daily struggles knock you into a pit so deep you can’t see anything but darkness, don’t waste valuable energy trying to dig your way out. Because if you hastily dig in the dark, you’re likely to head in the wrong direction and only dig the pit deeper. Instead, use what energy you have to reach out and pull something good in with you. For goodness is bright; its radiance will show you which way is up, and illuminate the correct path that will take you there. (Note: Marc and I discuss strategies for living true to these words in the Adversity & Self-Love chapters of “1,000 Little Things Happy, Successful People Do Differently”.)

5. Rest and regroup.

Strength isn’t about bearing a cross of grief or shame. Strength is about choosing your path, living with the consequences, and learning the way on the way. Sometimes you do your best and end up with a mess. When this happens don’t be discouraged. You tried your best. That’s really all you can ever do. You have not failed — you just learned what not to do. So rest, regroup, and begin again with what you now know.

6. Take necessary chances.

Making a big life change or trying something new can be scary. But do you know what’s even scarier? Regret. So realize that most of your fears are much bigger in your mind than they are in reality. You’ll see this for yourself as soon as you face them, so don’t let them stop you. Live your life so that you rarely ever have to regret the chances you never took, the love you never let in, and the gifts you never gave out.

7. Keep climbing.

Every person who is at the top of the mountain did not fall there from the sky. Good things come to those who work for them. You gain confidence and grow stronger by every experience in which you truly push yourself to do something you didn’t think you could do. If you are standing in that place of in-between, unable or unwilling to go backwards, but too afraid to move forward, remember that you can’t enjoy the view in the long run without being willing to climb at least a few small steps every day.

8. Give yourself credit for the lessons learned.

Just because you have struggled does not mean you are incapable. Every success requires some kind of worthy struggle to get there. Give yourself credit for the lessons learned and how far you have come. You’re not the same person you were a year ago, a month ago, or even a week ago. You’re always learning and growing from your experiences. So use your disappointments and frustrations to motivate you rather than annoy you. Remember, you are in control of the way you respond to life today.

9. Appreciate how every step is necessary.

Almost nothing is 100% wrong in life. We learn from nearly every step we take. Whatever you did earlier today was a necessary step to get to tomorrow. So be proud of yourself and notice your progress. Maybe you are not as good as you want to be, or as great as you one day will be; but thanks to all the lessons you’ve learned along the way, you are so much better than you used to be. (Note: “The Good Morning Journal: Powerful Prompts and Reflections to Start Every Day” is a great tool for this kind of daily self-reflection.)

Afterthoughts… on Tragic Endings

Let’s take a moment to address an obvious elephant in the room — the fact that the aforementioned points are infinitely easier said than done when tragedy strikes. For example, when someone you love passes away too soon, that’s undoubtedly one of the most difficult and heartbreaking endings to cope with. Although it takes a lot more time and work, the general principles for coping with this kind of tragic ending are applicable. Let’s visualize this together…

Imagine a person who gave meaning to your life is suddenly no longer in your life (at least not in the flesh), and you’re not the same person without them. You have to change who you are — you’re now a best friend who sits alone, a widow instead of a wife, a dad without a daughter, or a next-door neighbor to someone new. You want life to be the way it was, before death, but it never will be.

Marc and I have dealt with the loss of siblings and best friends to illness, so we know from experience that when you lose someone you can’t imagine living without, your heart breaks wide open. And the bad news is you never completely get over the loss — you will never forget them. However, in a backwards way, this is also the good news.

You see, death is an ending, which is a necessary part of living. And endings are necessary for beauty too — otherwise it’s impossible to appreciate someone or something, because they are unlimited. Limits illuminate beauty, and death is the definitive limit — a reminder that you need to be aware of this beautiful person or situation, and appreciate this beautiful thing called life. Death is also a beginning, because while you’ve lost someone special, this ending, like every loss, is a moment of reinvention. Although deeply sad, their passing forces you to reinvent your life, and in this reinvention is an opportunity to experience beauty in new, unseen ways and places. And finally, of course, death is an opportunity to celebrate a person’s life, to be grateful for the priceless beauty they showed you, and to begin again in their honor.

Now it’s your turn…

Yes, it’s your turn to make the best of what’s in front of you. So I hope you will have an inspired day today, that you will dream boldly and dangerously, that you will make some progress that didn’t exist before you took action, that you will love and be loved in return, and that you will find the strength to accept and grow from the troubles you can’t change. And, most importantly (because I think there should be more kindness and wisdom in this world), that you will, when you must, be wise with your decisions, and that you will always be extra kind to yourself and others.

And please leave Marc and me a comment below and let us know what you think of this essay. Your feedback is important to us. 

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