Life Transitions
There are challenges we face in every phase of life. Mid life transitions can be especially difficult. Divorce, parenting challenges, career change, empty nest, and grief and loss can occur and be hard to face without help. Each stage offers the opportunity to reflect upon what works for you and what no longer does. Sometimes the transitional period can shake your foundation and create anxiety and fear. These times are unsettling but can also offer new opportunities: one door shuts while another door opens.
“The only way to make sense of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.”
–Alan Watts
Parenting Challenges
As a mother of three grown children, two of whom are twins, I have personal experience and clinical training in addressing challenges as they arise during the course of parenthood. Each developmental stage—infancy, toddlerhood, young children, adolescents, teens–requires new information and approaches. Sometimes it requires looking at your own history with parents and grandparents to understand when you are making assumptions and having expectations based on your past.
Many people are marrying and starting a family later in their life. As children reach puberty and teenage years, you may be also be facing personal changes like menopause, divorce, and career shifts. Often these transitions collide and we face parenting challenges for which we are unprepared, creating a tense and unrewarding home life. Learning new ways to approach your young adult can transform the relationship.
Divorce
Divorce and separation can lead to depression, anxiety, mood swings, insomnia, isolation and physical illness. It can be a roller coaster of emotions from excitement and relief about more freedom to sadness about the life you have left behind. Both feelings are a part of working through of the emotional/psychological process as a result of divorce.
Divorce can shake up the very foundation of your identity. While you’re dealing with where to live, how to divide financials, and most importantly how to share parenting, you may also feel a loss of self, of who you once were. It can be frightening and cause a great deal of anxiety.
You do not have to handle all of this alone. I work with men and women who are in the midst of deciding whether to separate, how to separate, and how to deal with the process of divorce itself. This time, while stressful, can also provide the opportunity to focus on you and offers the potential for enormous personal growth.
I can also provide referrals to mediators and other resources to guide you through the separation and divorce.
“Always remember: you’re braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.”
–A.A. Milne
Grief and Loss
There is no single way to endure grief and loss. You may have heard of the different stages that you are “supposed” to go through in a specific order over a predictable period of time. You may have been told “its time to move on,” once you walk through these steps.
Grief and loss is far more complex than that. Each person has their own unique way to process a serious loss. It may be a death, the end of a relationship, or grief from the past that has been buried and put aside. Grief and loss can lead to depression and anxiety, which in turn can cause headaches, loss of appetite, difficulty sleeping, fatigue, and other stress related ailments. You may feel a loss of identity, as your life goes on without the person you lost.
I believe in guiding the client to maintain healthy connections with the deceased through memory, reflection, or dialogue about and with the deceased. Together, we can walk through this sad, yet necessary process of grief and loss and come out the other end with hope for the future
Empty Nest
Many parents look forward to the day their child gains their independence by going to college, starting a career, or experiencing a serious relationship. These are big changes in the history of the family and its dynamic. You may find yourself feeling lonely, sad, and a bit lost as you adjust to this new reality.
Not only do you miss your children and the role you played for so long, you may also be facing menopause, career change, and other midlife transitions. It’s a time when you are redefining your relationship with your partner without children, which can put extra stress on your daily life. Yet it is also a time for renewal and refocusing your energies in a positive way.
“Give the ones you love wings to fly, roots to come back and reasons to stay.”
–The Dalai Lama