Navigating Endings: Reflections on Loss and Letting Go
Recently, I found myself faced with a significant ending in my personal life. As is often the case with these moments, it prompted me to reflect on other losses and endings I’ve experienced over the years—those that have marked and shaped me, each leaving its own imprint. From my mum passing away when I was a teenager to losing my best friend in my early twenties, these losses echo even now, layered into the experiences of relationships, jobs, and friendships that have also ended along the way.
Endings like these come with a unique blend of emotions: a mix of sorrow, reflection, gratitude, and, sometimes, an uneasy relief. There’s a rawness to losing someone we love or something that’s given our life meaning, but it’s often tangled up with quieter emotions that don’t always make sense on the surface. Even after all these years, I still notice how deeply personal losses feel, no matter how much time passes or how familiar I am with the process. They never fade entirely—they change shape and become part of who we are.
As a therapist, endings are a part of my work as well. They come in many forms: sometimes a client will announce a decision to stop therapy, and other times, they simply don’t return. There are moments when I know an ending is approaching, where we have time to process together, to reflect on what was gained and perhaps what’s still unresolved. But other times, therapy ends abruptly, with little chance for closure. Clients sometimes disappear without explanation, leaving me wondering if I could have done more or if something in the work we’d done together had fallen short.
This constant thread of endings is both challenging and humbling. Therapy has taught me that while some endings can feel incomplete or sudden, they’re just as meaningful as the ones with a carefully planned goodbye. I’ve had clients walk away from therapy without returning, and while it can feel jarring, I trust that even these seemingly unfinished endings have their own resolution outside the therapy room. In a way, these experiences remind me that, as much as we try to prepare for and control how we say goodbye, some endings simply defy those expectations.
Looking back on my personal life, I see the parallels—relationships and friendships that ended without closure, and jobs I had to leave before I felt ready. Each of these experiences taught me something different about loss, resilience, and self-compassion. I learned that it’s okay to carry fragments of unfinished endings with me, to allow them to live on in whatever way feels meaningful. It’s not always about having neat resolutions; sometimes, it’s about letting the loose ends be.
The work of a therapist is not to “resolve” these endings for our clients or ourselves. Instead, we can hold space for the grief, the joy, the moments of gratitude, and the sense of unfinished business. By embracing the complexity of endings, we become a little more capable of navigating them, both in our work and in our lives. And while they’re not always easy, these experiences deepen our understanding of ourselves and remind us that letting go doesn’t mean forgetting. It means making room for what comes next, whatever that may be.