We’re in the thick of spring (complete with rain, earthquakes, and even an eclipse) and the changing seasons has got me thinking about how to approach change.

Even though change is perhaps the only constant we will ever experience, it has always terrified me. I cling onto old notebooks, newspaper clippings, and birthday cards because I fear losing sight of the past — of where I came from. I cried when we moved houses as a kid — even though we were moving down the street — because I didn’t want to say goodbye. I will forever be able to recall the intense feeling of stress that overcame me at college graduation, and that was because I was bombarded by the thing that I despised: moving on. 

Change is the unknown. It’s the whiplash of life. Change is a broken promise, a farewell, a first kiss. Change is my grandfather’s last words on this earth. Change is beginning and end, kinetic and potential energy, loss and renewal, black meets white, the last leaf that falls from the trees and the bud that grows back months later. 

I realized recently that change is really just the surrendering of control.

It’s a scary thing, to feel as though you’re giving it up. To be so certain of yourself and where you’re headed. But we never had that control in the first place. No matter how much you do right, how much planning you may do, how much you may have worked out every scenario in your head, change will win every. single. time. 

So, in the spirit of change, I started to shift my perspective on it. If I can’t control what life has in store for me, the least I can do is make it easier for myself to sit through all of those changes – the good, bad, and ugly. I cannot fight something that is not mine to address, but I can control how it affects me. 

And, the truth is, every single change in my life has taught me something new. Losing friends, facing illness and death in my family, moving to different states, moving within the same state, starting a new career, taking up a new hobby. 

Embracing change, rather than abhorring it, has helped me look up and appreciate the constant — what I have in my life, at this moment in time, that I want to look at a little longer before it is gone. What I once had that I would like to try and bring back. What’s missing, and what can be added. All are changes. Some will be uncomfortable to sit with, impossible to figure out, short-lived or never-ending. 

But all are necessary to our story.