Change or Be Changed: That is the Question
We are not fixed. We are an endless Becoming. The more we yield to the transformation that Time inevitably brings, the easier life become. “ – Ann Mortifee, In Love with the Mystery
In life we have a choice: we can either change and adapt or be changed. As human beings our mission is to grow and evolve. When we resist that calling, the Universe has a way of introducing change to set us on the right course. I know this based on my first- hand experience of both resisting and alternatively being attracted to change in my own life.
Resistance is simply fear. Whatever we resist persists, until finally we are in enough pain to change. It is human nature that most of us need to experience significant pain before we are willing to change. Probably the best way to explain it is by the fact that I have four personal planets, including my sun, in Scorpio in my eighth house in my astrological birth chart. The eighth house in astrology known as the house of Transformation, of death and rebirth, endings and beginnings. A Scorpio’s life path is often full o of intense experiences including crisis that can propel them into deep transformation.
The first half of life my energy was more often directed to creating a false sense of security by being more focused on changing other people and circumstances outside of myself. There was an illusion of safety and comfort in feeling “in control”, in knowing how things were going to transpire. It explains why I married at the relatively young age of 25, when I was still far from knowing myself. It also explains my choice of career in a field that is all about being in control
Being an environmental lawyer was ultimately about trying to control, protect and defend possibly the most uncontrollable entity, the environment! About 7 years after practicing law I found myself questioning my life and my career choice. I was the mother of a toddler, 9 months pregnant and my father died somewhat unexpectedly. Trust me when I say that grieving another while welcoming new life into the world is one of the most conflicted and raw emotional experiences we can ever go through.
Out of this deep emotional pain, I developed that clarity that I was no longer interested in the constant acrimony and conflict of “pushing” against a system of rules and regulations. I desired more of a relational career one that allowed me to lean more into the nurturing or “yin” part of myself that was itself needing nurturing. Little did I know that it would take ten years from the time I left the practice of law until I became a Life Coach.
It turns out there are three phases to any life transition. The first is the Ending. It’s about grieving our losses. My father’s death was a catalyst and therefore a gift of unimagined sorts in helping me to transition from a career that no longer suited who I was Becoming. .
A few years after I made the decision to leave the practice of law, it became clear that my 15- year marriage was over. Who I had become at 38 was very different than the person I was at twenty-five. So, as I turned forty, I found myself in the midst of navigating another Ending, this time as a single mom with two young children and a mortgage to pay. As I celebrated my fortieth birthday I found myself very much in a state of transition. And this is how life goes. It is filled with uncertainty, much to our disfavor.
Most of us spend the first half of life building our identity about our value and why we matter to the world, our roles, our “status” and then something happens to challenge our fixed sense of self. A marriage ends, children leave, our job changes, we experience a health scare or an aging parent demands more from us.
This is after all, where the term “mid-life crisis” arose. The crisis is nothing more than the contractions of life pushing us out of our comfortable identity and toward another that is calling to us, and that we can’t yet quite see. Who we Became is now our chief obstacle. We are being called to evolve.
The second stage of transition is the Neutral Zone. In this phase we allow ourselves confusion and give ourselves time to explore new alternatives. It’s often referred to as the “liminal zone.” It’s here that we give ourselves permission to be curious, without knowing the answers as to our ultimate destination. It’s also often the case that as we change one area of our life, and grieve a loss and accept an ending, another area shifts in response to the changes we’ve made. Sometimes we may not always be fully aware we are in a liminal space. It is when the critical psychological realignments and repatternings take place.
When I left my marriage and was single for several years, I was very clear I was in the neutral zone. But I didn’t have a full awareness when I left the practice of law that it would take several phases of endings and beginnings before I would land at being a Life Coach. There was another career transition I would need to go through, from being an employee to starting my own business that would eventually lead to coaching.
My career neutral zone was spread out over a much longer period of time where I was gaining new insights and awarenesses about strengths and creativity that had largely remained dormant while practicing the law. I was also becoming comfortable with taking more risks. I still maintain that shifting my identity from a lawyer to a Life Coach who uses astrology was by far a more challenging transition than going from being divorced to single to remarried.
The key in the Liminal Zone or Neutral Zone is allowing ourselves to be curious and detached. If we get it right, we set ourselves up for a rebirth in the second half of life. I believe this ability to be detached and curious was one of the key aspects that made it possible for me to navigate the liminal zone of dating and to actually enjoy it, something I could not quite have imagined when I was newly single. I viewed meeting new people as simply research and information that I was gathering to learn about how my preferences had changed, and maybe just maybe I might meet someone interesting along the way.
When I finally did meet my now husband Tim, I felt ready to enter the Third Stage---making a new beginning. This is when people develop the new identity, experience the new energy, and discover the new sense of purpose that makes the change begin to work. I was ready to open myself up to discovering a new approach to partnership, one that my 25-year-old self could not have envisioned.