the good in goodbye.

You know when you’re watching a movie and one of the characters has been through it, and their life is in shambles and they’re talking to a complete stranger and their main sentiment is, “I never thought this would happen to me”?

Well, that’s pretty much been my life this year.

I really don’t think I’ve had my ass handed to me more than I have in the past 12 months. I found myself in a place I truly thought that I wouldn’t be, and that’s saying a lot since I tend to err on the depressing side of things. In other words, despite my knack for predicting and anticipating unfortunate occurrences, I managed to somehow still screw up the few things I thought I could never break—and man, I really never thought it would happen to me.

So, what did I do? Well, something else I was really good at:

I gave up.

Not at first though. At first I tried to figure it out and fix it and beat myself up and cry until I just felt nothing at all. Helpful tip for you—these options only work for a limited time and actually don’t move you to a better place. Wish I had known that, but I guess misery loves company, or maybe I just loved being miserable and didn’t want any company. It’s hard to say.

Either way, I did the whole angst thing for a while before I realized that I couldn’t actually fix all the things I had broken by continuing to try and fix myself. I guess I just thought that if I could just be better than my life would be better. And sometimes, I do think there are seasons when we are working on ourselves and problem solving and getting to the root of processing healing and growth. But for me, during this time, that didn’t seem to be working. Everywhere I looked, endings were happening despite my best efforts to bring things back to life.

Goodbyes became my new normal.

I think it’s no coincidence we call them goodbyes. It struck me as I was leaving one of the places that I loved most, a place where I really grew up: camp. I had been with this camp for almost ten years of my life. It’s where I spent my summers as a college student, and where I started my career as a professional counselor. It’s literally the reason I moved to NYC, to be closer to the kids and friends I had come to call family.

Camp was who I was.

But camp was ending. Adulthood had settled in and we were all moving on.

The goodbye was here to stay, whether I was ready or not.

If you were to talk to my camp friends, they would all tell you that I am notoriously bad at goodbyes. I would become despondent and sullen about a week before camp truly ended, because I was that sad to leave. So, imagine my extreme anxiety and panic at realizing, ten years later, that camp truly does have to end. I remember walking off camp grounds, remembering all the times I had said goodbye before, not knowing that I would still be standing on that very ground as a 28-year-old, professional counselor. And this time, truly saying goodbye because I had finally quit my job and decided to move forward with my life.

It was a bittersweet feeling, and here’s what I am learning—that good byes are in fact good. They signify growth and change, they signify new life. You cannot simultaneously hold on and let go, you have to do one or the other. And I was trying so hard to hold on, terrified of losing this community, of losing myself. Of not knowing what was ahead, if it would be as great as what was behind. Of not knowing who I was outside of this life I had created for myself.

In his book Necessary Endings, Henry Cloud speaks on goodbyes as a natural and healthy part of living. He says that oftentimes when we delay goodbyes, when we try to avoid endings, it can make us sick. We find ourselves stagnant and frustrated and incredibly unwell.

Boy did this sound familiar to me.

You see, I had been trying to go back and fix the problem, time and time again with no success. But the truth was, I could only solve it by moving forward. I needed to take the tools I had developed over the years, the lessons I had learned and the growth that had occurred and keep walking. Even if I didn’t know what I was walking towards, I needed to stop treading water because I was tired and it was slowly sucking up all my energy until I found myself physically drowning.

I needed to swim out of there.

And because God is gracious even when we are quite stubborn, a door opened at just the right opportunity. I got a new job—a new chance at living. It wasn’t easy, and it involved some risk—some not knowing, some change. And no matter who you are, change is scary.

But goodbyes, they can be good.

And no one ever started something new without having to leave something behind.

So. I’m embracing the goodbye. It doesn’t mean it isn’t painful, that it doesn’t involve grief. It is letting go of something that was sweet, after all. It lets us know that the thing we are leaving was powerful and meaningful enough to carry us to where we are today, and strong enough that it laid the foundation for us to do what we are still meant to do. It was in itself, good.

But its time has ended.

So say thank you.

Soak up the memories.

And swim towards new horizons.

It won’t be the last time you have to say goodbye.

But who knows what waits behind that next hello—

And what treasure you may find at the shore.