Every Ending is a New Beginning in Disguise

Goodbye home sweet home

We are selling our home and I have spent the last few days saying goodbye to every section of my home.

As I take down every picture, put away my children’s drawings, and paint over their growth chart on our wall with tears in my eyes, I’m reminded that I’m creating a blank canvas for someone else to start a new beginning while I make amends with the ending of my home for the last 15 years.

A home where my husband and I moved in as newlyweds and where both our boys were born. The only home they’ve known. It is in my living room where we watched them take their first baby steps and heard their first sweet words. The decision to sell our home proved to be more painful and traumatic than I could have imagined. A decade and half of life and love.

So, we leave our home now, empty and bare, just like it was when we first came in.

There is no doubt that endings and goodbyes are hard

Have you noticed that endings have become a lot more common now that we’re in our 40s or more? Whether it’s selling your home, watching your aging parents wither away, leaving a job you’ve had for a long time, seeing marriages end, friends dying, or sending your children to college, goodbyes are happening at a much more frequent pace.

I don’t know if my soul can handle it

Because even though we’re older, wiser and more experienced, I still want to run into my mother’s open arms for consolation. I mean who doesn’t, right?

But being older means knowing how to nurture and care for ourselves. So instead I go on a strenuous hike and with every step I take, I say goodbye to my home and all the wonderful memories that will forever be tucked away in my heart.

There’s something about working out hard that is very cathartic for me and produces a sense of tranquility and perspective. It opens up my eyes, and allows me to see that every ending is really just a new beginning.

A beginning of something different

We may not know it at the time, but eventually this transition settles in. It becomes an opportunity to embrace a new perspective, a new role, and all the possibilities it might hold. Since we now have to adapt to many endings taking place, we must also learn to gracefully accept them as another stage of life.

We must accept its happenings without surrendering to it, that’s how we move forward.

So, while it breaks my heart that this chapter of my life in our home is coming to an end, I’m excited to see what new beginnings are in store for me moving forward. For now, we’ll restart the growth chart on a wall in our new house, but this time, it’ll be higher, in every sense of the word.