from here to there

baby steps for adults experiencing change

Hi friends,

This week two readers emailed to say hello and tell me a little about themselves. Interestingly, they both shared their worries about some big changes they were experiencing. So in today’s Murmuration we’re going to think a little bit about change, how we experience it, why it feels hard, and how we might recognise it as an ongoing, spiritual process as opposed to a one-time event.

It’s scary, wrote Ben, who has just been made redundant after 25 years.

I’m missing my close-knit community, said Louise, having recently finished her degree course.

Neither were sure quite what their future held.

Reading their stories reminded me of feelings I’ve had frequently since leaving home at eighteen. A sense of being unmoored from the predictable environment I’d grown up in and thrust into a world where nothing feels certain. Right now, we’re living through a period of social and political upheaval which make even small shifts in our circumstances feel risky. Moving from the comfort and predictability of here to the unknown and mysterious there can feel overwhelming—only a fool would suggest otherwise. But it’s also a fact of life, so how can we deal with it when it comes our way?

Earlier this year I wrote about leaving the world of corporate publishing and going freelance to focus on writing, editing and being a parent in the only way I know how. Leaving my job as a commissioning editor has been a humbling experience. I can no longer publish books myself, and so have a different relationship with agents and writers, who once viewed me as a (very lowly!) industry gatekeeper. Ben’s email expressed a similar angst about a change of status. To lose your job after such a long time can feel particularly shattering as it seems to strip you of a clear identity, and an understanding of where you stand in the power hierarchy. Who are you when those two things are stripped away?

A change which involves a loss of status can be both terrifying and deeply liberating. When we move outside of the formal structures which we have been tied to, often for long periods of time, we quickly come to realise that the things we used to spend our days worrying about were inconsequential. I used to get very upset if I lost a book in an auction, for instance, but now I can see that there were lots more forces at work (money, mostly) and that a rejection that I took deeply personally at the time was much more about the £££ we were offering than my ability to win an author over. Being outside the system has helped me understand why I often felt so crap about myself when I was working within it. (Largely: capitalism).

I’m still in the early stages of my life as a freelancer. But terrifying liberation is definitely the phrase I would use to sum up my experience so far. It feels borderline insane to be relying on a newsletter to finance part of my working life (*cough* - feel free to subscribe!). But it also feels deeply grounding to be writing regularly about issues which I spend so much of my time thinking about.

So my first tip: recognise the dual nature of change. How it throws up big emotions and gives you space to understand yourself better. Change isn’t exclusively good, nor exclusively bad. It is change, the only constant in life.

Louise’s letter focused on her sadness at losing a community which she had relied upon so much during her studies. I think her ability to recognise this in the first place is interesting, because so many of us fail to appreciate what a lifeline these communities are for us when we are entering a different phase of life. Louise described how she felt as if this community of friends on her course were on the same page as her, suggesting that it might be hard to recreate this feeling of truly ‘being seen’ with new friends outside of university life.

When we left London and moved to Somerset I grieved deeply for the community we left behind. ‘We’ll never find a group like that again’ I lamented. And in some respects my prediction has been correct, we’ve not found a church like the one we used to attend in Holloway, which felt inclusive and artistic and politically radical. But perhaps that’s for the best. Perhaps that was the community we needed for that period in our lives, but in this next period we need to be around similarly sleep-deprived parents who are also experiencing their third cold of the month. I think the worst thing we could have done is try to recreate the same friendships we had in London.

My second tip: We can recognise the sacredness of friendships and communities, but sometimes we also need to accept that life is calling us into new places, and new relationships. That doesn’t mean that those friendships will end completely, in fact, those new relationships and communities will benefit from the time you spent connecting with ‘your people’, however sad it might be to leave them behind.  

Whenever I have moved towards change, my life has become emotionally richer and I have felt more alive. Moving towards change is an acknowledgement that life is a constant process of moving from here to there, and from there to here. This isn’t always a linear process, and it’s not always about making ‘progress’ in your career, or in even in your relationships. But it is about making progress as a human being. Listening to your feelings, and trying to understand why you feel so worried about change, can be an affirming and precious thing. Good luck!

I’d love to hear from any of you who are experiencing big changes right now. Do you have any advice or words of comfort to share? Let me know in the comments.

Thank you,

Grace

P.S Here are a couple of more pieces on ‘change’ that might be of interest to you if you’re new here.