The Space After

Some endings we don’t choose.

Others, we walk toward.

After writing about grief and the many forms it’s taken in my life, I’ve been thinking more about the endings we do get to shape, the ones we can meet with some kind of intention, even if they still carry ache.

My recent voluntary redundancy is one of those. A decision, which wasn’t an easy one. A letting go that felt both deliberate and tender. I chose to leave before the leaving was forced. And even with that agency, there’s still the hollow hush that follows: What now?

Not all grief is dramatic. Some grief arrives quietly, when the day-to-day stops and you’re left alone with what it all meant. When the dream you held no longer fits. When your nervous system, long tethered to urgency, finally lets go and doesn’t quite know what to do with the space.

This is the space after.

No headlines. No urgency. Just a kind of stillness.

And in that stillness, something surprising: not silence, but presence.

Not answers, but orientation.

A subtle realignment with myself. Not who I was in that role, or what I thought I should want, but what actually feels true now.

This space is mysterious. When I slow down enough, small breadcrumbs show up — a phrase in a book, a line in a song, an unexpected conversation. Nothing logical, but everything timely. Little answers to the questions my mind can’t stop asking at 1am.

These moments don’t fix anything. They don’t complete the story. But they remind me I’m not lost. Just in between.

So I find myself wondering:

What kind of ending do I want this to be?

What needs to be acknowledged before I move on?

Who am I without that old doing?

What do I actually want?

What does my soul need?

We don’t always get to choose our endings. But when we can, how we leave matters.

What we honour. What we release. What we carry forward.

So what to do with the space? Nothing.

Let it be quiet. Let it be weird. Let it speak in signs and sidelong answers.

Let it change you.