Transitions
And an invitation to help me connect some threads
I've been thinking about transitions lately. Not so much the arbitrary turning of the calendar ones, like the new year, but the shifts in our lives. Sometimes they are big and obvious— starting a new job, graduating, getting married, having children, or caring for a parent. The beginnings of things. On the flip side, endings of similar things cause an equally seismic shift.
But sometimes transitions are quieter and less obvious. Things like shifting parts of your role at the same job or moving just across town. Or more internal shifts like holding boundaries you haven't in the past or changing your relationship to a particular creative practice. Maybe you used to always say yes to those boozy brunches, but you've decided you'd like to drink a little less and do something else with your Saturday mornings. Maybe it's a creative shift, you've always written fiction, but you're feeling pulled toward essays; knitting seems way more fulfilling than photography.
I'm curious about it all, the big stuff that can't be ignored and little stuff that likely shouldn't be.
As I was thinking about this, I had this vague memory of the adult development theories I studied in grad school. Didn't one of them talk a lot about transition? A quick search showed that it was probably Levinson's theory I was recalling, as the entire thing is based around the idea that our adult lives are made of periods of stability and transition. Times of transition are centered around making new choices, reevaluating previous choices, redefining commitments, exploring new interests or re-exploring old interests. Levinson's theory puts forward that these transitional periods are then followed by a period of relative stability when we are committed to the choices and interests we've defined or re-defined during the periods of transition. Early adulthood and middle adulthood are transitional times (as is very specifically, age 30).
As I skimmed through this information I wondered about more recent research around these transitions. Levinson's work was first published in the late 70s and based only on men's experiences. He later conducted a study with women, but it's still pretty significantly in the past.
While my deeply steeped in academia brain defaults to starting with this traditional research when I'm curious about something, the part of my brain that has more recently begun to embrace and understand design-thinking as a framework, wants to start with the people.
Who feels like they are in transition? When? Why? And what does it feel like? Like really, feel like in your body. Is it tension in the shoulders or an expansive deep breath? Some of both? Something else entirely?
Are we better at seeking support for the giant obvious shifts and changes than than the more subtle ones? Do we even acknowledge those small ones as shifts that might require attention and support?
If we lean on Levinson's theory, transitions aren't to be skipped over or run past, they are to be moved through. First the transition, then the stability. So how might we not shrink away, but move through these moments and feel the anger and the grief and the joy and the promise and the trepidation and the excitement?
I don't know the answer to any of these questions, but I know there isn't just one right way to navigate life's transitions. And yet I'm equally certain there are connective threads between people's individual experiences and that we owe it to ourselves to start the conversations that braid us back together.
Beautiful Thing of the Week
Just one little something I loved.
🍁 Leaves transformed! (Definitely click through to watch the creation of these.)
As I dig into the topic of transitions, I'd love to hear from you! How would you answer the questions above? What questions of your own do you have? Comment on this post, hit reply to the email OR join me over in Substack's chat to talk (you’ll need the Substack app to access the chat)!
And, if you'd like to have a longer conversation about any of this, feel free to reply to this message or reach out at marychrisescobar@gmail.com and we can grab coffee/tea (of you know, sip our coffee and chat on Zoom, as you do).
For context I was pregnant with my first child from summer 2021-winter 2022 when my daughter Pancha was stillborn. I was grieving but postpartum. Then three months later I was pregnant again and I gave birth to my 2nd daughter in March 2023. New research suggests the body is in a postpartum period for seven years. So I’m in a transition period where I am again 10 months postpartum but this time also caring for a baby who is 10 months old. She’ll be transitioning from babyhood to toddlerhood and I can already see those shifts in her. She loves to push our boundaries, she wants to help with everything, she loves playing and running...
It’s strange to think about both myself as a person and myself as a mother (to my child and my body) who are both on the precipice of change and that that change is hurdling towards us quickly and not in uniform shape.
I couldn’t find your exact question you wanted answered here. Was it where do you feel the change in your body? Well, all over! My body is changed from the steeping in pregnancy chemicals for two years straight while also being postpartum for two wavering years. My hips are bigger. My breasts are different. My muscles capacity are both stronger and weaker. My brain is a hotshot of anxiety as I am on the lookout for any potential signs of harm to my baby. I have also gone from someone who is not at all forgetful to not remembering what we talked about a couple hours ago.
Becoming a mother is like being in pubescence again but with the adult language center alive to speak to the experience and yet, in our country those in power don’t listen. This is HARD. And we don’t know how to show up for each other in the hard - in a transition.
And I wonder about how that lands for you? Did you move just across town and find yourself feeling left out, uncared for, not held? Did no one show up for you because you were just moving across town? Is this curiosity held in the seed of why don’t we show up for each other? Why don’t people show up for me?
I with certainty can say it is because showing up for each other in times of hard (even subtly) hard is un-American. We believe in pulling from our bootstraps. The underdog hero. We don’t help people because those who need help are taking advantage of us... and we have so little to give (or maybe to gain). Helping each other succeed isn’t something we do even in school.
But that is not an all encompassing answer, I know. Nor could I give one. But I know that helping people is a new felt sense I am trying to tap into.
“All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.”
Shakespeare’s often quoted line doesn’t mean to say that everyone is an actor playing a role. What it does imply is that we are products of many factors, such as our age bracket and stage of life, our occupations, and our family roles – in short, the part we play in society and the larger culture. To all of that, add our biology, our personality, and our life experiences.
"What should I be doing?"
This is a hard problem to solve. We need to take into account everything large and small, close and far -- our spouses, families, and friends, micro- and macro-economics, the local, national, and geopolitics, environmental concerns, and so on. There are trillions of variables. Combinatorial explosion increases the number of possible solutions to the question exponentially as each new variable is added. It’s literally impossible for people to organize themselves independently.
The human solution is framing. People, both individually and groups, from lone wolf incels and hermits all the way up to massive organizations and cultures, inhabit various frames. A frame is a scheme of interpretation made up of myths, stories, narratives, stereotypes, labels, and filters through which people view the world, simplify it, and make sense of it to the degree that action is possible. This is what Shakespeare is really getting at in the quote I began with. What he means by "stage" is a frame, and we all have one.
Transitions are changes in frame. Even a tiny alteration in one's frame has huge implications to a massive number of variables. The entire hierarchy of one's being, from what's most important at the top all the way down to the bottom, gets re-juggled. And that's no small matter.
Sometimes the transition is an expansive breath. Other times it's a dagger to the heart. But it's always deeper and more complex than we realize.
Great post -- very thought provoking!