I’ve said my fair share of goodbyes throughout my life.
My college was over 500 miles from my home in Michigan. My closest friends there were from New Hampshire, New York, and North Carolina, and none of them had plans to move to the Midwest. A year after I graduated, I said goodbye to the town I’d grown up in for a job in the Chicago suburbs. A job change several years later took me away from Illinois to Wisconsin. And several years after that I said goodbye to the community there — one that I deeply loved and that shaped me significantly — to pursue grad school in Indiana.
I’ve learned that goodbyes don’t get any easier. Even in a world as digitally connected as ours, there’s no substitute for living in the same general location as close friends and family. The good news is that we can learn to navigate goodbyes with wisdom and grace and allow them to shape us for the journey ahead. Here are a few lessons I’ve discovered.
