A letter for the space between the chapter that ended and the one that hasn't started.
Nobody prepares you for the middle
The part nobody warns you about
A letter for the space between the chapter that ended and the one that hasn't started.
Something ended, or it's ending, or it's close enough now that you can see it from here.
And then the quiet.
Maybe you sold the thing you built. The wire cleared, and whatever the number was, it was the number. And the first Monday after felt nothing like you expected.
Maybe the title disappeared. Decades of being the one they called, and then a last day, and a nice dinner, and an email address that stops working on a date somebody else chose.
Maybe someone you loved died, and the world expected you to be functional again by a certain week. You have been functional. That isn't the same as being all right.
Maybe a marriage ended, and underneath all of the legal parts there's a question you can't ask your attorney, which is “who am I now, on my own, with all of this?”
Maybe money arrived. An inheritance, an exit, a settlement. Everyone assumes it settled something. It did settle some things, and it opened others. You feel like there's no one you can say that to without sounding ungrateful.
Maybe the house simply went quiet, and the quiet is not restful.
The part nobody warns you about
People will say the thing they're supposed to say. “Congratulations.” “I'm sorry.” “You're so strong.” And none of it reaches what you actually need.
So you say thank you. You say how lucky you are, or how fine you are, and you half mean it.
If that's where you are, nothing has gone wrong with you.
Why this part is so disorienting
I have a thought about why. Take it or leave it.
Whatever ended was doing more than it looked like it was doing. Every morning, it answered a question for you: who you are, and what you are for. The company answered it. The title answered it. The marriage answered it. The person answered it. A house full of people answered it.
Now it isn't answering. The question is just there, in the room, at a volume you're not used to.
Nothing is wrong with you. Something ended, and endings do this.
The strange part is that nobody prepared you for it. Not because this is rare, but rather because it's one of the oldest human experiences there is.
Older cultures understood this. They knew that a person doesn't step straight from one chapter into the next. There's a middle. They built rituals for the middle, and they gave people guides to walk them through it, because they understood that the middle is where a new life gets decided, and then stepped into.
The thresholds are still here. The rituals are mostly gone, and so are the guides. So people arrive in the middle with no language for any of it, and decide they must be doing it wrong.
Whatever else is true right now, you are in the middle.
What usually comes next
Here's what usually comes next. None of it is wrong.
Some people start the next thing quickly. There's real relief in it, at least for a while, and real relief in having an answer when someone asks what you're working on. Sometimes the next thing turns out to be exactly right. Other times, a year in, they notice they've built the same life again, and whatever was unsettled before is still unsettled.
Some travel. It's wonderful. And somewhere around the fourth trip, they notice the question came along with them. Who am I now? What is this next chapter for?
Some turn all of that attention onto the people they love, who did not ask to be optimized. The household, it turns out, does not want a chief executive.
Some stop altogether and rest. Rest is often exactly what was needed, and I wouldn't talk anyone out of it. Yet, the research on people who leave a role they held for a long time keeps finding the same thing. The role was providing four things besides money. A shape to the day. People to see. A place in the world. A reason to get up (Jahoda, 1982). Rest replaces the first one for a while. It doesn't replace the other three. Which is why so many people describe a lift at first, and then a dip a few months in that catches them entirely off guard (Atchley, 1976). The days stop having a shape, and the question is still there when you get up.
The ones who come through well
Some people come through this well. By well, I mean this: a year or two on, they're living something they chose on purpose, and they can tell you why.
What I notice about them isn't what they did first. It's that somewhere along the way, before they committed to anything, they got honest about who they are now and what they want moving forward. Which is rarely the same as who they used to be, or what they used to want, or some idea of what would look right.
Clarity first. Then what you do about it.
Done in that order, the previous chapter gets finished well. And the next one is the one you chose, rather than the one that happened to be nearest to fill the emptiness.
Getting there usually asks for the one thing most people skip. Stepping back far enough to see the whole picture at once. Everything you've built. Everything you've been carrying. Who is actually around you. What do you want from here?
It's very hard to see what's next while you're standing inside the thing that just ended.
And almost no one sees it alone. Not because they aren't capable of it. It comes clear out loud, in front of someone who has no stake in your answer except that it's true.
One more thing.
People will ask what's next. They'll ask soon. You do not owe anyone an answer yet. “I'm taking some time to work that out” is a complete sentence, and the ones who love you will accept it.
Live well,
Jennifer Love
If you'd like to read about what finishing a chapter well looks like, there is a letter for that: Why the Word Legacy Stings After Something Ends.
References
Atchley, R. C. (1976). The sociology of retirement. Schenkman.
Jahoda, M. (1982). Employment and unemployment: A social-psychological analysis. Cambridge University Press.
