If you’re brave enough to say goodbye, life will reward you with a new hello.
~ Paulo Coelho
Not everything that ends is death; sometimes things reach their limit of what they were meant to be. Endings tend to appear right when we have outgrown what once fit. And the moment of release is often the moment a truth becomes too small to hold us. Some things don’t actually die; they let us go, and only later do we understand the liberation in that. That’s why dying doesn’t scare me; it excites me and challenges me, because every ending has always revealed itself as a beginning in disguise.
There is a specific moment when something is ending, but the next version of what is to be hasn’t revealed itself to you yet. Sometimes referred to as the threshold moment, it can be disorienting. It might feel final because what we once knew has fallen away, yet if we can trust its wisdom, what is actually happening is expansion. Your life is pushing beyond the confines it once had.
When this happens, you may feel your identity is being lost because you have not yet been reshaped. These times may be marked by high emotional benchmarks, relationship endings, career changes, or disrupted living situations. Endings arrive without any actionable steps in sight. You may feel emotionally flat, almost in a state of shock, possibly without the will to do anything. Then the conscious effort kicks in, and you say, “I’ve got this. I’m ready to step into the unknown and fly.”
Many years ago, I had such a moment. I had been competing and training for years to make the USA World Cup Endurance Team, and I was close, very close. My heart, soul, and a good deal of finances had been invested in a hoped-for outcome. Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, as hindsight has taught me, I didn’t make the team.
The day I received the phone call, I also split from a live-in relationship. Instead of processing any of it, I got on the phone, found a foreign team to crew for, and regrouped, pulling the people who had come in to crew for me to crew for this other team. I needed to act because stillness felt unbearable.
Once the games were over, and I returned home to an empty house, my life appeared before me—a blank slate of sorts. I triaged what needed to be addressed, got some work coming in, painted and saged my home, creating a fresh start. and questioned my future involvement with competition. The silence was loud, but it was welcoming.
Then, “What now?” loudly resounded. I took a break; I never stopped riding, but I did choose to stop competing. I trained friends and helped them with their horses, quietly knowing this phase of my life was over. There was grief in that knowing, but also a strange relief.
Casting work was busier than ever, a full steam ahead comeback. There was a certain pride in the fact that work was plentiful. I decided to do other activities I had put on the back burner. As time passed, a niggling feeling was calling. Then, in 2018, I started to write; The Let Go was created, and it breathed new energy into my purpose. Writing became the bridge between who I had been and who I was becoming.
As life has a way of coming full circle, I was then called by a friend, asking, ” Can you train my new horse and me for Tevis, and by the way, I have another horse I can’t ride, can you ride her?” I hadn’t expected the door to open again, but there it was – quiet, familiar, and unmistakably mine.
That’s when Sheba came into my life, and endurance slowly moved back to the forefront. Fortunately, timing is always impeccable. With COVID in full lockdown, I had plenty of time. Sheba arrived not as a replacement for what was lost, but as a reminder of what had never left.
The rest is history, or at least history in the making.
The ending of a successful phase in my life could have spiraled me downwards. Yet I trusted the wisdom of timing. Everything happens at the precise moment it is supposed to. The trick is to see the opportunity amid perceived turmoil. I am not professing that it is easy to see your way through it. I spent many of those years in deep self-analysis, searching for the beliefs and behaviors that no longer served me. The letting go of dreams and relationships, of course, is hard; endings hurt, but stagnation wounds far deeper.
And again with the wisdom of trust, if things are meant to be, they will find a way back into your life. Just as competition and horses never really left, Sheba, my chestnut mare, carried a piece of my future I didn’t yet know I was ready for.
Endings are just new beginnings waiting to happen. Trust when things or people start to fade away. There is an old wives’ tale that when an animal comes into or leaves your life, it is a time of change; heed the message. Something is about to blossom beyond your perceived reality. What may feel like dying is often the moment life makes room for who you are becoming. Take a deep breath, grab the reins, and say “I’m ready”.
And suddenly you know: It’s time to start something new and trust the magic of beginnings.
~Meister Eckhart
