Before the Bloom: Making Peace with Change

As an integrative health and wellness coach, I find that the start of a new year often brings change into sharper focus.

Many of my clients are standing at important thresholds right now—becoming empty nesters, selling or leaving a longtime family home, navigating illness, entering retirement, or feeling unexpected shifts in friendships and community. Some of these changes are chosen, others arrive uninvited. All of them ask something of us.

I often remind clients that change itself—whether we label it “good” or “bad”—can be deeply challenging.

Even positive transitions carry loss. In many ways, change can feel like a small death: the ending of a role, an identity, a rhythm of life that once felt familiar and steady. It makes sense that we may feel sadness, fear, disorientation, or grief alongside hope or relief.

Nature can be a gentle and wise teacher here. Every year, without fail, we witness the seasons turning. Fall asks us to let go. Winter invites stillness and rest. These seasons can feel barren and uncomfortable, yet they are essential. Without the small deaths of fall and winter, there is no fertile ground for spring. No blossoms. No new growth.

In our own lives, these quieter, harder seasons serve a similar purpose.

They slow us down. They ask us to feel, to grieve, to reflect, and to release what no longer fits. While we may wish to rush through them, it is often these very passages that soften us, deepen us, and prepare us for growth.

If you are facing change in the new year, I invite you to allow yourself time and space to grieve what is ending. Do so with compassion, patience, and trust. Just as in nature, growth does not disappear—it gestates beneath the surface. And when the time is right, the energy of spring arrives, carrying new insight, new possibilities, and a renewed sense of life moving forward.