Honoring Endings
As the year winds down, our bodies often sense the turning of the season before our minds do. There is a natural pull to pause, to look back, to take inventory of what was gained and what was lost. Endings can stir up grief, gratitude, and everything in between, sometimes all in the same breath.
In Somatic Experiencing®, we know that every cycle in the body has a completion phase, the part of a survival response (like fight, flight, or freeze) where things settle, release, and come back into balance. The body seeks closure not as a tidy resolution, but as a settling, a deep exhale that says, "This chapter can rest now." When we honor what is ending, we create space for what is next.
"The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain." - Kahlil Gibran
The Grief That Comes With Release
Endings are not failures. They are information.
When we shed what no longer serves us – a belief, a relationship, a version of ourselves, a year – something in us dies. That is not dramatic. That is real. And it deserves to be mourned.
Your body knows this. It might feel:
A heaviness in your chest when you think about letting go
Resistance, even when you know something is not working anymore
Tender sadness alongside relief
The strange exhaustion of holding two truths at once
The unexpected welling of tears, not as a sign of weakness but as something important coming to the surface
This is grief. It is not the opposite of gratitude. It is the evidence that something mattered.
Grief opens the heart to make space for gratitude. They are not separate processes. They move together.
Gratitude as Witnessing
Gratitude does not require happiness. It requires attention.
You can be grateful for a friendship that is ending. Grateful for a year that broke you open. Grateful for the version of yourself you are shedding, even as you outgrow her.
Gratitude says: I see what this gave me. I honor what it cost. I am different because of it.
This is the kind of gratitude that lives in December, not the forced kind that skips over the hard parts, but the real kind that says yes to the whole year: the gifts and the losses, the growth and the grief.
So As This Year Completes, We Can Ask: What Wants to Be Released?
Ask yourself:
What have I outgrown?
What have I been holding that weighs on me?
What am I grateful for, even as it is ending?
What version of myself am I ready to let go of?
Your body already knows. It has been trying to tell you.
The Space Between
Endings create a threshold, a moment between what was and what is coming.
You do not have to have the next thing figured out. You do not have to be "ready" or "healed" or "grateful enough." You are allowed to be in the grief and the gratitude at the same time, to honor what is leaving while you make space for what wants to arrive.
This is where real change lives. Not in the pushing forward, but in the honest witnessing of what was.
As this year closes, let yourself feel all of it. The heaviness. The relief. The tender sadness. The quiet gratitude for a life that mattered enough to grieve.
That is honoring an ending. That is the settling your body has been waiting for.
Wishing you moments of rest, release, and quiet gratitude as you honor the endings that shaped you.
With care and gratitude,
Lillian