How many of us underwent a life transition in 2020, either in our relationships or in our work? Certainly many of us made changes. Many began working from home for the first time. Some of us home-schooled children or supervised as they began to learn remotely. We waited for appointments to get vaccinated. We wore masks as we shopped, and curtailed many elective activities, such as eating out, whether out of choice or the fact that venues were closed. We juggled work life and family life in the same crowded space.
There were many changes, but a change does not necessarily give rise to a transition.
When I wrote and published Keeping Christmas Magic, I intended telling a hopeful Christmas story with a happy ending. When the story opens, the Morrison family is spiraling apart from the financial impact of the 2008 recession. The chief earner, father and husband Bob, has gone a year without a job and his prospects at the beginning of December are no better. With increased financial strain, family relationships deteriorate. But Keeping Christmas Magic is also a story of transition.
A life transition is the inward processing of our unfolding adult lives that involves loss of an old self, and uncomfortable period of uncertainty, followed by a movement toward a new beginning. Change, by contrast, is a random, external life event. Change happens TO us. In 1967 two psychiatrists, Richard Rahe and Thomas Holmes, studied whether stressful events contributed to illness. The result of their medical study was a stress scale that assigned “Life Change Units” to each of 100 significant events, from death of a spouse to taking a vacation. Based on this scale they could predict that those who scored 300 or more in a given year had an 80% of a major health breakdown or illness. Some of these are more significant than others.
Do changes always trigger a transition? In my experience, no. For example, changing from one job to another, especially a new job that we have chosen will certainly involve learning new skills and dealing with new people. But unless we are already on the cusp of a transition, say questioning whether our career choice is still right for us, there isn’t much inner work to be done with a new job. When I lost a job that I really loved in 2012 and quickly found another in the same field, there wasn’t much involved except learning the new job requirements and all the new business vocabulary. There was no inner stirring or questioning of my path.
On the other hand, my divorce when I was nearly 30 ended my identity as a wife and plunged me into a sense of loss and confusion that led to too much drinking, serious financial mistakes, and a very poor selection of friends. I must have moved four times in five years before I took a job as an Employee Assistance Program administrator that finally brought me some stability. The irony was that I initially identified with the troubled clients we were serving.
Regardless of its origin, the process of transition follows a predictable—if not wholly linear–path as outlined by William Bridges, in his excellent book Transitions. Endings are a period of “disenchantment” with where and who we are. In work transitions, this may happen as a precursor to a job loss or as a result of one. It may lead to a job or career change to better realign ourselves and our values with our work—a common mid-life transition. Bridges left a position teaching English in a college in California, not knowing what he would do next. The ending that begins a transition are not easy. We may become disoriented and lose a sense of who we are. Bridges describes this as “…a time of confusion and emptiness when ordinary things have an unreal quality about them.”[1]
As disorienting as endings are, the Neutral Zone—that void into which we enter before we can begin anew—is what most of us have difficulty with. We are not yet our new self, and we are not still the old self, but somewhere in between. Bridges compares the Neutral Zone to a form of chaos with the primal energy we will need for self-renewal. The first task of the Neutral Zone is to “surrender—the person must give in to the emptiness and stop struggling to escape it.”[2]
[1] P. 102, Transitions: making sense of life’s changes, William Bridges, 1980. New York: Addison-Wesley.
[2] P. 118, ibid.
In Keeping Christmas Magic, the father, Bob, needs to make a work transition. Bob’s Ford dealership laid him off in January, but his separation has not really ended how he thinks of his career. In spite of sending out resumes, making contacts, and attending a transition group, Bob is no closer to a new job as December approaches. He hasn’t participated in any retraining. His image of himself is as a successful car salesman and the main breadwinner in his small family. If only another dealership were hiring now, he could make the change to a new job with no work on himself. He could side step the messy transition and the Neutral Zone.
It is not uncommon for the transition of one family member to affect the others. At mid-life, Bob has a wife with a successful career in higher education administration. Stephanie has climbed the career ladder to assistant dean of students, but doesn’t see another option for promotion where she is. With only unemployment from Bob to help with the bills that she pays, she is weary of balancing creditors. When she applies for a new job in another state, she is only partly pulled by a chance for promotion. She is pushed by their worsening financial condition.
Michelle is a first year college student with little awareness of her parents’ financial challenge. She knows they have a college fund, but not the hardship it creates for them to not use it for their expenses. Michelle sees the strain in their relationship. In talking with her roommate, she says, “You know how they are now. They barely speak—and they never have fun—since dad lost his job.” Michelle is making plans to spend Christmas with her new boyfriend to avoid coming home.
I am reminded of a team building activity I helped facilitate a few years ago that we called River of Change. We instructed a small team (5-8 people) to use a couple of six-foot planks and a few carefully placed “rocks” to get everyone safely to the other side of a large (about 20 ft.) canvas of blue that represented an alligator-infested river. To do that, everyone had to balance on one plank while someone in the group put down the next plank in the direction of the other bank. It generally worked well until the group was mid-river and the planks no longer reached the next “rock.” Voices were elevated as everyone talked at once trying solve the problem. Neither going back nor leaving someone behind was an option.
An opportunity appears when Bob finds and rescues a nearly-frozen kitten. In searching for this kitten’s owner, he meets a small business operator who needs inside sales help. At his job group, he admits his daughter has encouraged him to check it out. But he can’t yet “see himself” in that position. “I just don’t see how much help I can be. I don’t even work on my own car… I can’t imagine selling something I know nothing about.” Bob is not ready. The new job doesn’t fit with Bob’s current identity as the main earner in the family. If he took the job at the auto parts store, his income would be cut in half. He would earn less than his wife.
His outlook changes somewhat when he visits the shop and it sparks ideas for how he might help the owner expand the business. The final push for Bob to accept the offer comes when he and Stephanie have a terrible argument over his continued unemployment. Stephanie tells him, “After twelve months of drawing unemployment, you still have no new skills.”
Where are you on the transition process? Are you still ending a major part of your life? Have you started testing new ideas and not settled on the next option for work or for love? Or, have you started, but the new solution doesn’t seem to fit you after all? If you feel disoriented or out-of-step with friends and family, you may just be cruising in the Neutral Zone.
I’ll end by sharing some of Bridges’ suggestions for working through the Neutral Zone.
- Find a regular time and place to be alone, just to think.
- Begin a log of your Neutral Zone experiences.
- Take this pause in your life to write a short autobiography. This should bring up other transitions in your life.
- Take this opportunity to discover what you really want.
- Think about what would be unlived in your life if it ended today.
- Take a few days to go on a passage journey (trip alone to a cabin in the woods, a day hiking alone outdoors). Be fully present and pay attention.
The inner journey takes time. When we are ready to make a new beginning, a new opportunity will appear.
