"Why do you have to make hard choices?"

When my friend texted me this message, I put my phone down, looked at the wall in my bedroom, and let the tears come...

It had become increasingly clear that the shape of my relationship and the shape my life has been evolving into were no longer compatible — no matter how much I tried to make them fit.

On the same day I submitted my manuscript and returned from an entrepreneurial retreat, I asked my partner to come have a conversation with me.

One of the women at the retreat noticed my energy shifting. My body was shutting down.

She assumed it was stress about my manuscript. I let her believe that.

But after walking through a timeline exercise of our lives together, I couldn’t deny it any longer.

Our relationship had reached its natural completion.

This wasn't us “breaking up" and I didn't use those words. It was me recognizing that the shape of our relationship was changing.

"We're complete," I said to him.

I've never ended a relationship with someone I still love.

We've been together for over six years. There was so much goodness in that time. Growth. Safety. Honest conversations. Stretching into new edges.

Every relationship before this ended in fire.

This one ended in acknowledgment.

A therapist friend told me, “That’s growth. To recognize completion before resentment.”

And yet...

Even when something is no longer aligned, it can still break your heart to choose it.

I've been re-watching the last episode of The Good Place. There's a scene that I play repeatedly:

Picture a wave. In the ocean. You can see it, measure it, its height, the way the sunlight refracts when it passes through. And it's there. And you can see it, you know what it is. It's a wave.

And then it crashes on the shore and it's gone. But the water is still there. The wave was just a different way for the water to be, for a little while.

You know it's one conception of death for Buddhists: the wave returns to the ocean, where it came from and where it's supposed to be.

He then says, "None of this is bad."

Another character asks his partner,

"Can you just remember the happy times and forget all the bad stuff?"

"There was no bad stuff. It was all good. I'm never going to forget you."

And that’s how I feel about our relationship.

None of this is bad.
Even the parts that didn’t become what I once imagined.
It was all good.

Lately, many of my clients have been navigating grief — they just didn't know it.

Grief has a way of revealing what’s complete, even when we’re not ready to name it.

Grief for the version of life we thought we’d have.
Grief for beliefs, identities, and coping mechanisms that no longer fit.
Grief for systems and truths that can no longer be counted on.

Grief isn’t loud. It’s quiet. Slippery. It shows up in the in-between moments.

It doesn’t follow a timeline.
It asks to be felt, not fixed.

If you’re moving through something tender right now, you’re not alone.

I’m in it too.

Mahalo,
Judy