The last fish and chips got me.
Not because it was life-changing fish and chips. It really wasn’t. But because it was the last one.
We leave Oxford at the end of this week, and I’ve been noticing all the little lasts. One more trip into London to see a friend. A few more walks through streets that somehow became mine. The strange feeling of knowing something is ending while you’re still in it.
It’s hard to believe we’re already here.
This season has gone by fast and slow in that very odd way meaningful seasons do. Part of me feels like we just got here. Part of me feels like I’ve lived a whole little life inside these months. I think that’s how meaningful seasons work. They stretch time. They change us while we’re busy living them.
Oxford gave me a lot. A different rhythm. Space to think. Space to dream a little. Space to rest in a way that regular life does not always make easy. And I feel deeply grateful for that.
Not every season gives us the same thing. Some seasons are about pushing. Some are about building. Some are honestly about just hanging on and getting through. And some, if we’re lucky, let us breathe a little deeper and pay better attention.
I’ve had a lot of change in my adult life. I’ve moved many times. I’ve had to start over more than once. Figure out a new place. Find my footing. Make a life again.
And when I look back on that, I feel proud.
Not because I always handled it gracefully. Definitely not that. But because I have learned how to enter a new season and make something of it. I’ve learned how to leave, and I’ve learned how to begin again.
That still doesn’t make leaving easy.
I think we sometimes rush to turn transitions into lessons too quickly. We want the meaning tied up in a bow before we’ve even fully let ourselves feel the loss of what’s ending.
But not everything needs to be wrapped up right away.
Some seasons just need to be noticed while they’re ending.
Some things deserve a pause and a little more attention.
A quiet acknowledgement: this mattered.
I know I’m not the only one standing at the edge of a season.
Maybe yours looks different than mine. Maybe you’re leaving a role, finishing something important, watching a relationship change, sending a child into a new chapter, or just sensing that life is shifting under your feet a bit.
That in-between space can feel unsteady. But it can also be revealing.
It shows us what we loved. What we’ll miss. What we want to carry forward. And sometimes, it reminds us that we already know how to do this. We already know how to meet change, even when we don’t entirely like it.
As I get ready to leave Oxford, that’s what I keep coming back to: gratitude for this season, and a quiet trust in myself. Not a flashy kind of confidence. Just the steady kind that comes from having lived through enough endings to know I can make my way into a new beginning.
Maybe that’s one of the gifts of endings.
They remind us that life changes shape. And they remind us that we can change with it.
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