Transitions – General « Conscious Transitions

What You Choose Determines What Comes Next

By Sheryl Paul, on May 6th, 2018

Transitions, as breaking and renewal points, offer choice-points that determine how we unfold into the next stage of our lives. Many people find me during their wedding transition when when they’re broken open not only by relationship anxiety but also by the earthquake of feelings that erupt because of the transition itself. The same is true for the transition into parenthood, career changes, moves, and deaths. Because we’re not schooled in the language of transitions and we’re terrified of big feelings, people tend to feel burdened by what feels like an unfair onslaught of anxiety: “Why does everyone else seem to happy when I’m so sad and anxious?” My response, as I’ve shared many times here and in my courses, is, “You’re one of the lucky ones. You’re being shown your core stories, and the seeds you plant now toward healing the flawed stories will serve you in your next … Click here to continue reading...

Loneliness and Love

By Sheryl Paul, on April 29th, 2018

There’s a fundamental loneliness that is part of the fabric of being human. It arrives in the corners of night, when shadows form from curtain folds and the backs of chairs. It seeps in just before twilight, when afternoon exhales its last breath and evening hasn’t yet inhaled. It lives on the edges of exaltation, in the space between the golden hour when the gods breathe their jeweled breath over meadows and in the splintered crack just before night’s multi-colored ink begins to sink into dreams.

There are acute times when loneliness appears. Holidays, transitional ebbs in the day or week, birthdays. This is often when the shame stories bleed into loneliness and tell you things like, “Everyone else is having fun right now. Everyone else has a family and is off on an adventure and I’m alone. Or I’m not alone – I’m with my family or my partner … Click here to continue reading...

The Tumultuous Twenties

By Sheryl Paul, on March 25th, 2018

*Note: If you’re past your twenties, I invite you to share your thoughts and insights in the comments section about what helped you get through that decade, what you learned, and what wisdom you can import to those still struggling through that difficult decade.

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“Recently, I met a women in her early twenties who was deeply depressed. Looking at her, I saw myself fifteen or twenty years ago. I recognized every desperate feeling, every horrified thought. I asked her why she felt so sad. She told me she felt misunderstood by her father, who didn’t’ want to pay for her therapy or for her to move to another city. She said she was trying to make her way through the world but kept falling down. She couldn’t stay with any career for very long; she felt fat; she felt inadequate; she felt embarrassed and kept thinking that other people … Click here to continue reading...

Entering Midlife: A Personal Post

By Sheryl Paul, on March 11th, 2018

Dear Readers: In the early days of this blog, I would share more frequently about my personal life, specifically around raising my children. As the blog evolved and my audience grew, I felt more private about sharing my day-to-day experiences, and also felt a need to protect my sons’ privacy. But now, as I’m entering midlife, I feel called to share a bit about what’s happening in my inner world. This is my next transition, and it’s a big one and a long one. When I turned 43, I felt like I had walked through a portal, much like I felt when I got married and became a mother. Something inside me was turning upside down, and, as always, I needed to write about it in order to make sense of it.

Everything I’ve learned over the past two decades about transitions is buoying me as I walk through this … Click here to continue reading...

Invisible Lines of Hope

By Sheryl Paul, on December 17th, 2017

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing
and rightdoing there is a field.
I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass
the world is too full to talk about.

Rumi

When we’re being asked to unpack a new layer of wound that will lead to healing, it can feel daunting, overwhelming, and hopeless. The questions circle and dart like bats in the dark of night. The doubt eats away at serenity. The physical symptoms can cause you to want to withdraw from life and ball up in bed, and sometimes you do. In the darkness and suffering, it’s so easy to forget that the questions will resolve and that the new layer of healing with unshackle and shake itself to the surface like bulbs emerging in spring. In the dark of winter, we often cannot see the shifting that’s occurring underground. It’s during this time that we must … Click here to continue reading...