Some transitions are exciting, wonderful changes we never expected. Others we dream about for many years before finally taking the plunge and making them happen. Still others are sad losses that—expectedly or unexpectedly—alter our world. Since all of us dream of doing things that will change our lives, this section will start with a discussion of elected transitions: the ones we choose.
Some elected transitions are ones that are part of our culture—our social milestones—and others are ones we choose. Let’s look more closely at examples of these two types of chosen changes: social milestones and individual choices.
Many of the transitions in our lives are ones we initiate. We have been brought up to expect—and elect—certain transitions because they are major events in the lives of most people in our society. These social milestones include graduating from high school, moving away from home, getting your first real job, marrying, having a baby, and retiring. Not everyone chooses to experience all these transitions, but many people do, and there is strong social pressure to do so.
As transitions go, social milestones are cushioned for us in a number of ways. Because these events are expected, we usually have time to plan and rehearse for them. And there is usually an abundant supply of role models to show and tell us how to handle them. In addition, as we enter these transitions, we often get a helping hand from members of our community who celebrate our change in status.
Even though we expect to experience certain transitions in our lives, we still have difficulty since any change, even elected, alters our roles, relationships, routines, and assumptions. In addition, the fact that these transitions are common doesn’t mean that everyone experiences them in the same ways. A few examples should make this very clear.
Jane has just graduated from high school. Graduation was an expected transition, and her school and family helped her make plans to go to college after graduation. But she did not feel ready to grow up. In fact, she stopped studying during her final semester, ending with a grade point average below C. The admissions counselor at the only college that had accepted her called to say they needed to rethink her admission; she wouldn’t be allowed to start in the fall. She has left high school, but she does not really know what is next.
Most of her friends handled this transition quite differently. They graduated with reasonably good grades, found summer jobs to help pay for tuition, and despite some trepidation are looking forward to entering college in the fall. For them, high school graduation is an exciting opportunity to take the next step in life. But for Jane it is a threat; she resents being pressured to grow up and move out of her family’s home.
Retirement illustrates another example of social milestones. When I compared the contents of interviews with newly retired people and recent high school graduates, an interesting point emerged. Despite the different issues facing each group, both were trying to figure out how to “get a life.” Both had a strong sense of being in between who they were and who they were becoming.
This was highlighted when Zandy Leibowitz and I ran a workshop for partners and their spouses who were about to retire and some retired partners from a large accounting firm. The firm had an unwritten policy that required everyone to retire at age sixty, despite legislation eliminating age as a factor in retirement policies. During the two days we spent with them, it was clear that they were now facing what they knew was inevitable: giving up an immensely important part of the life they had known and valued for many years.
We discussed how this expected transition was likely to change their lives. As one wife said, “I don’t think Don realizes how important his relationships at work have been. What will he substitute for them?”
One former partner who had retired two years earlier reported his surprise and dismay when he returned to the firm to have lunch with an active partner and realized that the partner viewed the occasion as a duty. For the retired partner, the biggest shift was the transition from being needed—indeed, central to the success of the company—to being marginal, even an annoyance. He hadn’t yet found a new place to anchor his identity.
Another retired partner saw retirement in a different light. He had recently remarried and was thrilled at having much more time to spend with his new wife, get to know her family, and fashion a new life with her.
Thus a social milestone, whether it is high school graduation, retirement, or any other major expected event, is intrinsically neither good nor bad. It marks the end of one episode of life and the beginning of another. For those who focus on what is ending, it can be a threatening change. For those who focus on it as a beginning, it is an opportunity to explore and conquer new worlds.
Other elected changes include individual choices that are outside the social timetable and are therefore more idiosyncratic. Some of these choices, such as shifting jobs or moving, are commonplace; they are generally socially condoned, as long as we don’t hop around so often that we seem inordinately restless or unstable. Other individual choices, such as separating from a spouse, moving back into your parents’ home, or changing religious affiliations, may even run counter to the prevailing social norms. Nevertheless, we sometimes choose such changes when it looks as if they may somehow improve our lives or at least make them less difficult.
Let’s look at Paul Gauguin, who abandoned his career as a Parisian stockbroker to devote himself to being a painter in the idyllic setting of Tahiti. As he once wrote to his friend, Swedish playwright August Strindberg, “You suffer from your civilization. My barbarism is to me a renewal of my youth.”
Why does Gauguin’s story have such appeal? Maybe it touches our secret dreams of starting out fresh. Almost all of us respond in some way to news stories of men and women who shed their lovers and their jobs to take off in an entirely new direction.
Few people actually abandon all their ties to the past. But at certain points in life many people do choose new jobs, new communities, or new loves. Let’s consider a few examples of the kinds of individual choices people make.
One day Terry, an editor in a publishing house, sent a letter to one of his clients, who was writing a book on midlife. “Dear Jean, I have enjoyed working with you on the book. As you know, I think it is a real winner. In fact, it is so good that I have taken it to heart and am writing to tell you that I have resigned from the company; I am leaving publishing and am opening a boutique in Carmel. As I was working on your manuscript, I kept thinking, ‘What about my life? Is this really how I want to spend it? Isn’t there more to life than editing other peoples manuscripts?’ As you can see, I decided to give it a try and change gears. Thank you for inspiring me to take the leap, and good luck to you.”
Lisa also shifted gears but in a different way. Recently relocated from Omaha to Atlanta, she had moved for several reasons. In general, she was ready for a change, but she also wanted to be geographically closer to her partner of many years; she had also found a good job there. In her new city she had a ready-made support system of friends, a house to move into, and a prestigious job. Nonetheless, when we had lunch about a year after her move, Lisa said she felt very confused and depressed. Since her relationship with her partner and her job were both working out pretty well, she couldn’t understand why she felt this way.
Lisa didn’t realize that although the change she initiated was a positive one, it still required many adjustments: daily life with her lover, a challenging new job, an unfamiliar city. She had been part of another world with set relationships, roles, routines, and assumptions. Now all these were changed. She hadn’t foreseen how long it would take to learn the new “rules” and figure out where she fit in.
We often think that confusion and discomfort happen only in response to negative changes. But any major transition, even ones we dream about and freely choose, requires adjustment.
Although many of the transitions in our lives are ones we initiate, there are many we can never anticipate. In brief, they’re surprises, both good and bad. Your closest friend is in a serious car accident. You’re fired. You make a killing in the stock market. You’re passed over for a key promotion. A major film studio buys the rights to your first novel. You find romance in your eighties.
If the unexpected happens, you’re in for a surprise—and possibly a transition. Whether the surprise is terrible or delightful, it can tax you emotionally and challenge your coping skills. Here are a few examples:
After thirty-five years of marriage, Dolores’s husband announced that he felt too young to “dry up”; he had fallen in love and was leaving to join the new woman in his life. What really stunned Dolores was that her husband had fallen in love with a woman his own age. She couldn’t even rationalize his behavior as one of those midlife May-December flings. “It completely knocked me off my pins,” she said. After two years of depression, she decided to return to school, where she is now getting a nursing degree. She is still angry and somewhat depressed, but as she puts it, “At least I’m working on something.”
Bill, too, had been depressed for several years, but for a different reason. His thirty-year marriage was going strong, but he was very unhappy in his work life. He had taken early retirement from a high-level position in the United Nations—a job that required a great deal of political know-how and made him feel useful and important. Knowing he was not ready to quit working, he had joined a small consulting practice where his focus shifted from “saving the world” to “getting clients.” He hated worrying about every “billable breath,” but he felt that at age sixty-four, this was the best he could do. He would come home at about 4:30 every day, putter, and watch TV. Bill told his wife he felt like a “has-been.” Several friends suggested therapy, but he resisted. He was a classical example of a man caught in an unsuccessful transition.
One day, out of the blue, Bill was offered a top position that enabled him to return to public service. He accepted it on the spot and left the consulting firm. The new job, he said, is “just what the doctor ordered.” He has been rejuvenated. Although he now works twelve-hour days and is on a grueling travel schedule, he said, “I am the luckiest man in the world—at sixty-four to be given the chance to do an important job.” He had taken a risk, but he was ready for it. “God willing, I plan to spend another ten years at it.”
Bills story is unusual in several respects. First, a totally unexpected opportunity made the real difference. Instead of spending the rest of his life in low gear, he is on the road, growing and contributing. Second, since he had never adjusted well to his consulting job, the shift back to a more familiar and congenial type of work was liberating, not disturbing. True, his routines are disrupted by lots of travel, but his assumptions about himself have been reinforced by his new job: he is a man who loves public service and who also has had the good fortune to find a second rewarding career.
Maggie, an employee with the United States Postal Service, was forced to take her five-year-old grandchild away from her son and daughter-in-law, both of whom were heavily into drugs. Maggie did not want to bring legal action against them, but she worried about what would happen if her son demanded his child back. Although she was stressed, she loved her granddaughter and was committed to bringing her up. In addition, she worried about what would happen if she died.
This transition is not one most grandparents expect. However, about 4.5 million children under eighteen are being raised by their grandparents. There are many reasons for this increase: parents are abusing drugs and alcohol, parents are incarcerated, parents neglect or abuse their children, and parents have died as a result of accidents or illness. Whatever the reason, these grandparents are experiencing a major change to a caregiving role, a major change of routines back to a schedule determined by a child, a changed relationship with one’s adult child, and a changed set of assumptions about the way life is going to be lived.
We can be just as surprised when expected events don’t happen as we are when unexpected ones do. The expected ones that fail to materialize—called non-events—can pack just as powerful a wallop in our lives.
For many, the non-event of infertility is major. When they finally realize that pregnancy will not occur, this non-event kicks off a transition. The impact of infertility is often much greater on women than on men. But once women accept the fact that they cannot have children, they begin to make different assumptions about their relationships and roles—especially their work roles. For example, one woman in the study had been coasting along on a series of low-level temporary jobs. But when medical tests confirmed that she could not become pregnant, she began to make plans to return to school and become a speech therapist.
Lost dreams can and do happen to everyone. In a series of studies, reported in Going to Plan B: How You Can Cope, Regroup, and Start Your Life on a New Path, Susan Porter Robinson and I described the variety of non-events people experience.1 For example, people have expectations about their lives—about what will happen in their love and family life, their careers, and their personal development, and about the legacy they might leave. When these expectations are unmet, when their dreams are not realized, people can experience a feeling of heartbreak.
I was discussing the concept of non-events with Marshal, a graphic designer with whom I was working. He commented, “I have no time for non-events. I am running a business, caring for two children, dealing with parents and parents-in-laws. I am overwhelmed.” A few minutes later he said, “I just realized my father is a walking non-event. At fifty he realized his career was going badly. He retired feeling like a failure. Now he tries to micromanage my business and life. His disappointments affect the rest of us.”
Non-events come from many places. Some are personal, such as “I did not get the promotion I expected”; others ripple from someone else, like Marshals; or non-events can result from an event such as the accident that resulted in a disability and stopped the person from leading the expected life. There are delayed non-events: For example, a woman thought she would never become a grandparent because her children did not have children. After many years, this non-event became an event. It was merely delayed.
Non-events in our lives are often more difficult to handle than events. They are usually not public; others cant see them, and unlike many expected events—especially social milestones—there are rarely any rituals to help us cope with them. For example, the realization that one will never be promoted to a coveted position at work can alter a persons self-image and expectations for the future. Yet, one does not announce this transition to the world or mark it with a ritual. Here’s how one person reacted to this non-event.
Harry had been waiting for years for a promotion to bureau chief at his newspaper. “At first,” he said, “when I did not get my promotion, I thought it was because I was so young. As the years passed, I began to wonder: When? Finally, at age forty-five, I came across an article that explained that many organizations stop promoting people after they turn forty, and I suddenly realized that the answer to my question was Never! It was upsetting to realize that some people defined me as too old, even though I felt no different from what I was like in the past. I was not getting something I had always wanted. I blamed myself, and I blamed the system.”
After wrestling for many months with his anger and frustration, Harry started to look for a new job, but he found nothing better than the one he already had. He then set his sights on a new goal: early retirement. Although he continued to perform his duties well, he stopped being a workaholic and started to see himself as “putting in time.” Instead of working late and taking work home on weekends, he started using his free time to explore investment opportunities and new career paths that he might follow later.
Harry’s non-promotion was a classic non-event and very painful at the time. But some non-events, like the one described below, can be opportunities.
Beth was an active, vibrant woman who worked as a freelance writer. Her work, though emotionally and financially rewarding, was isolating and hard. When she learned she had a rare and fatal illness and had little time left to live, she gave up her career and decided to spend her last months being close to her children, bravely preparing to die. But to everyone’s surprise and delight, Beth’s illness remitted, and she lived. Strangely, even this almost miraculous turnabout was a transition and required adjustment. But she joyfully embraced the non-event and returned to her work as a writer. This time, though, she was less compulsive about work and built in more family time.
“Life on hold” is a transition waiting to happen, poised between an event and a non-event but really neither. For a variety of reasons, usually beyond your control, you cant bring about the change you want, but you haven’t given up on it either. A few examples will show you what I mean.
Ted had always dreamed of being a journalist. After graduating from college, he landed a job as an editorial assistant at a national magazine. But he soon discovered that he had become a glorified clerk-typist, and the job was a bore. Although he was encouraged to write in his “spare” time and the magazine printed a number of his short articles, Ted still felt that he was wasting his time doing other people’s “dog work” and that his plan to work his way up the organizational ladder was not panning out. Staff turnover at the magazine was rare, and he feared it would take forever to get a real writing position there. Ted was raring to leave.
When an exciting new magazine advertised for writers, Ted applied immediately and got exactly the job he had wanted. He was to start in a month. But during that month he started having strange physical symptoms and began a round of medical tests. No one could quite figure out what was wrong. Some doctors suggested it was “nerves,” and others suggested a number of dire possibilities. He started some treatments, but they only made him feel worse. By the time he was to start the new job, he was embroiled in medical tests with indefinite results and lacked the energy to take on the challenge of the new venture.
Suddenly it wasn’t so clear that he should leave the old job for the new one. Ted knew that he was valued in his old job and that he would have the support of his boss and office friends even if he took a lot of sick leave. He also had health insurance coverage for his mounting medical bills, but it wouldn’t start at the new job until he had passed a three-month probationary period.
It was a heartbreaking decision, but he turned down the new job and put his career growth on hold. He decided to stay temporarily in his outgrown position and concentrate on finding someone who could diagnose and treat his puzzling disorder.
Vicky, like Ted, was working in her first job after college graduation. She had found a “dream” position in a prestigious design studio and had taken it even though it meant she’d be three hundred miles away from Shep, her lover, who was completing his graduate work. Since Shep had often talked about finding a job in her city after he got his degree, Vicky initially expected that they’d be separated only a year, until he graduated.
To overcome the strain of separation, Vicky and Shep called and wrote to each other regularly and maintained a commuting romance. Many of their weekends together were spent at the weddings of friends, who kidded them that they were “next.” They both felt a growing sense of commitment to one another and at times talked about marriage, although they weren’t engaged.
But then one year stretched to two, and Vicky began to worry that it might never lead to a long-term commitment. When Shep’s dissertation was almost completed, he announced that he was starting to look for jobs in other cities as well as in hers. Vicky became angry. She felt it was time for them to live together and test their relationship under conditions more normal than weekend trysts. Shep said that he felt the same way but that he didn’t want to confine his job search to one city. When Vicky hinted that she’d give up her job and relocate if that was the only way they could be together, he said he couldn’t ask her to do that, and it might not even be necessary if things worked out right.
Vicky feels caught in a bind. Her life is on hold. She feels too committed to Shep to date other people, but she cannot wait for him indefinitely, and she doesn’t want to resort to “tricks” to make him join her. She has decided to back off from the issue of commitment and the crucial issue of the next step. There’s a major transition in sight, but it’s not clear yet whether it’s a breakup or an engagement.
Jody married and moved to a small town in Virginia. She and her husband planned to move to New York City after they got established. On her sixtieth birthday she was in a deep funk. She realized that the move never would occur and that she would spend her days regretting their inaction. She felt her life had been wasted. Her husband pushed her into therapy so that she could put this in perspective. They faced the fact that they spent years deluding themselves about their move. As Jody said, “We decided to face our regrets and see how we could get part of our dream. We actually bought a time-share in an apartment in New York City and now we go up twice a year for a week to shop, eat, and visit museums.”
Many transitions have an identifiable beginning point, such as a wedding, a move, or the death of a loved one. When they start, we’re well aware that change is under way. But some transitions, called sleepers, start much more subtly and just creep up on us over time. It may be a gradual process of packing on pounds or slipping deeper and deeper into drinking, smoking, or using drugs. Maybe it’s a matter of ignoring a worsening health problem, or a pattern of increasingly slacking off at work or spending more and more time away from the family.
We don’t consciously choose to do these things, but they can and often do change our lives eventually just as if we had. At some point we realize that there’s been a big change, sometimes for the worse. We have arrived at the point where our roles, relationships, routines, and assumptions have been altered.
On the other hand, some sleeper transitions can bring you—equally unaware—to a new place in your lives. Perhaps you’ve been growing and developing on the job, becoming more skilled and confident. You may be finding work less challenging but haven’t given any thought to other career opportunities. Or perhaps you’ve become more worldly, interested in new foods, books, ideas, or friends, while your partner is stuck in a narrow sphere of interests and aspirations. Many people find it hard to imagine that over the years they have grown apart from someone they love.
At times, constructive and destructive sleeper transitions happen together. Frustration with a relationship or a job we have unwittingly outgrown may contribute to avoidance or to sliding into harmful habits as a way of coping. Being utterly absorbed in an avocation we love may lead us to ignore many other commitments, obligations, and relationships—even our health.
Sleeper transitions are tricky because we are usually in the midst of them before we recognize them. Even if you’re growing, if you don’t recognize the changes taking place and they’re leaving you out of sync with your existing world, you can be in a very precarious position. By the time you realize how much you’ve changed, your behavior may already have kicked off a chain of events that precipitates an unexpected major transition. Jane is a case in point.
Jane wrote the following.
“The disquiet in my soul was triggered by my husbands long illness and my uncertainty about his health has gradually enlarged to the realities of aging.
“I have never been much for realities, preferring the sunshine of denial; this is particularly true in relation to chronology. I never thought I was too young for anything and never too old. But reality has reared its ugly head.
“As we trooped from doctor to doctor, I thought I’m not ready for ‘old.’ I find myself focusing on all those who have died or older friends who have moved to retirement communities, or friends who have various illnesses. One friend just had emergency quadruple bypass; two friends are facing hip replacements; two women in my office, in their early 50’s, have cancer, and so it goes.
“Meanwhile I am having pain in my upper back and my foot, probably arthritis. I find I cannot do the gardening I once enjoyed; one of my colleagues asked if I was thinking of retiring.
“When did all this happen? But as I think how this crept up on me I remind myself that much of life is very good: beautiful blooming spring, concerts, lots of guests, eating, and being FAT.”
Here’s the story of Dan, a friend who told me about his experience of waking up just in time to take advantage of a sleeper.
He was a much-valued technician in a biology laboratory, a man whose “magic” solutions for thorny technical problems had earned him the nickname “Dr. Fix-It.” He enjoyed his work and his excellent reputation, but over the years Dan found himself increasingly absorbed in his weekend avocation, handcrafting stained glass. He had started by making little window hangings and had progressed to more ambitious and time-consuming projects such as elaborate decorations for Victorian doorways. He entered a few craft shows, sold a few pieces, and started to receive commissions, first from friends and then from strangers who had seen and admired his craftsmanship.
Dan found himself designing projects and sketching whenever he had a spare moment—even at his regular job. But one day as a result of a bad evaluation by his supervisor Dan realized that his heart was no longer in the lab, but in his home studio. With a wife and young son to support, Dan had never considered his stained-glass projects as more than a hobby. But the shock of the poor job evaluation made him look more carefully at how his time and energy were invested, and he realized that he would like to devote all his energy to working with the stained glass. To his surprise, when he shared his dreams with his wife, Bev, she was very supportive.
After taking a business course for artists and craftsmen, he saw that with careful planning, hard work, and a little luck, he might be able to shift careers and still make ends meet—barely. Together, Dan and Bev developed their “five-year plan”: He would set up a formal business and try to establish himself as a professional craftsman while continuing in the lab. Bev would serve as his business manager and publicist. In a year or two, if the business seemed to be taking hold, he’d try to shift to doing the stained-glass work on a part-time basis, and a few years later, he would finally work on the stained glass full time. Once their son was a little older, Bev would return to work to help finance the business.
With this plan and goal in mind, Dan was able to keep his two work worlds separate. He went to his job in the lab with new energy and enthusiasm, and his work improved.
Because our lives are often intertwined with other people’s, our own lives may change when people close to us undergo major transitions. Mary’s life had become a perfect example of what sociologist Gunhild Hagestad calls “countertransitions”—multiple transitions, many of which are connected to others in our lives.2
Although the case examples I’ve given on the preceding pages are drawn from real life, you may have noticed something unreal about them: for the most part, they sound as if people deal with a single transition at a time—even a single type of transition. But we all know it never seems to happen that way. Events and non-events never seem to come in single file. You might elect a transition, look forward to it—and then all of a sudden things begin to fall apart all around you: you’re going to have a baby, and then your husband tells you he has just lost his job; you just moved in with a lover, and you discover that your mother, in failing health, wants to move in with you. Events in one area of your life trickle or tumble into other areas, and each one makes managing the others somewhat more difficult.
At times it feels as if the stars must be out of joint; surprises spring up, all unconnected, but all disruptive. At other times the transitions are part of a chain reaction in which one transition sets off a host of others. I call these pileups of related or unrelated transitions countertransitions.
Sometimes one event sets off a chain reaction, and your life feels like one crisis after another. Trouble erupts at every turn, for you and for everyone around you. Fortunately, for most people, these situations are fairly rare. Tough as these situations are to weather, most people manage to get through them. As the old saying goes, “When the going gets tough, the tough get going.”
It doesn’t take a string of catastrophes to add up to an overload of transitions. Even a run of good but disruptive transitions can bring on Excedrin headaches and more. Here are a few examples of the way some transitions can pile up at difficult times in our lives.
The story of Ben, a man in his sixties, makes it clear that transitions often come in sets and can ricochet in unexpected directions. Ben began, well in advance, to make plans for his mandatory retirement from his company. He had no control over its timing, but because it was expected, he had time to prepare for it. He returned to graduate school to study accounting. As he said, “My strategy was to get into something new and leave the old completely behind. I resolved not to be a hang-around, not to keep going back to the old outfit.”
Although older than many of the other students, Ben made friends easily and even started a support group for incoming students to the program. At first he was excited about preparing for a second career, but the school transition unexpectedly triggered some upsetting family transitions.
His wife, Ava, became increasingly critical of the fact that Ben was a student and no longer producing income. Somehow this unleashed mutual hostility that had been pent up for years. They decided to separate; but to save money, they lived separate lives in the same house until Ben received his degree and got a job. Later, Ben and Ava divorced, and not long afterward he remarried.
The multiple transitions in Ben’s life seemed to start with just one—retirement. That prompted a return to school, followed by marital problems, eventually followed by a new job, a divorce, and remarriage. Ben’s story illustrates the reality that transitions rarely happen singly. Rather, one elected transition can lead to an unexpected one, and then a whole train of other transitions may follow.
Martha, a freelance magazine writer, told me, “As for being overwhelmed . . . it’s part of my personality to take on too much. And this past year and a half has been particularly difficult—lots of losses. My dad’s twin brother and one of the homeless guys in my writing workshop both died. I was with him when he died. In addition, I broke off a five-year relationship and my friends were either adopting or having babies. Suddenly I felt completely alone. I kept the same job but it is isolating because I work at home. During this time I was also working on my advanced degree, and running the creative writing workshop at the shelter. I don’t know if this happens to other people as well but everything always seems to happen to me at once. About seven or so years ago, I ended another long-term relationship, got sued, was in a car accident and had a melanoma removed.” Martha sounded frantic as she described the pressures she felt.
Mary, a middle-aged graduate student, is a study in transitions. Before she had a chance to grieve for the deaths of both her parents, her in-laws decided it was time to move to a retirement home. Because her husband, the breadwinner, couldn’t afford to take leave from his job, she commuted out of town regularly to help his parents plan their move. At the same time, Mary’s daughter, unable to afford her own apartment, moved back home; and her son and daughter-in-law had a baby just as he lost his job. To an outsider, Marys situation was obviously overloaded with transitions. Yet, she was so unaware of the cumulative impact of these changes in her life that she could not understand why it was so hard to complete her graduate degree!
Transition events and non-events that change our lives come in many sizes, types, and combinations. But it is not the actual event or non-event that overwhelms us. Remember, it is understanding how much these changes alter our lives—our roles, relationships, routines, and assumptions.
Elected: Some are social milestones; others are individual choices
Surprises: When the unexpected happens
Non-events: When the expected doesn’t happen
Life on Hold: The transition waiting to happen
Sleeper Transitions: You don’t know when they started
Countertransitions: It never rains but it pours
And many others
Is it an event?
If so, is it an expected event?
Is it unexpected?
Is it a non-event?
Do you see your event or non-event as positive, negative, or neutral?
Has it, or will it, change your roles, relationships, routines, and assumptions?
Putting all this together, would you consider your transition event or non-event a BIG transition?
Do you feel overwhelmed?