Reason. Season. Longer Term. Learning to honour the relationships that shape us—even when they change.

Have you ever looked at an old photo of yourself with someone and thought, What happened to us?

Not necessarily with anger.

Maybe even with tenderness.

There was a time when this person was deeply woven into your everyday life. You knew their stories. They knew yours. You assumed there would be more birthdays, more conversations, more milestones, more ordinary Tuesday afternoons.

And then life changed.

Maybe you changed.

Maybe they changed.

Maybe the relationship simply couldn't come with you into the next version of your life.

And yet, when you look back, you wouldn't erase it.

Because whatever happened afterward doesn't change what that connection meant while you were living it.

One of the things I have come to understand through my own life, my work as a psychologist, and the many people I have had the privilege of walking alongside is this:

Not every meaningful connection is meant to last forever.

And that doesn't mean it wasn't meaningful.

Sometimes someone comes into our life for a reason.

Sometimes they walk beside us for a season.

And sometimes they become part of the longer arc of our lives.

We don't always know which it will be when we meet them.

My philosophy in therapy is the same.

Therapy can be a reason, a season, or longer term.

I will always be a strong believer in the power of individual therapy. Therapy can be life-changing. It can help us understand ourselves in ways we couldn't access on our own, process experiences that have shaped us, develop healthier ways of relating, and build the emotional capacity to live differently.

And I sometimes wish more of what we learn in therapy was simply part of our broader education as human beings.

• How to recognize and process emotions.

• How to communicate honestly and compassionately.

• How to navigate conflict without abandoning ourselves or harming another person.

• How to set boundaries from a place of self-respect and care.

• How to recognize manipulation, coercion, emotional abuse, and other unhealthy relational dynamics—and understand that we cannot always heal a relationship through our own willingness to change when the other person has no interest in changing their behaviour.

These are not niche psychological skills.

They are life skills.

And yet, many of us aren't taught them until something hurts enough that we seek help.

Sometimes that help is needed for a reason.

You may come to therapy (or personal healing and growth work) because something specific is happening in your life. You need support navigating a relationship, processing an experience, making a difficult decision, or finding your footing again.

You may work together for a relatively short period of time.

And then something shifts.

You have what you came for.

You understand yourself differently. You have new tools. You feel more empowered. You can move forward on your own.

The work comes to a natural completion.

That is a part of the process.

Sometimes the work is for a season.

Other times, therapy becomes part of a longer season of life.

Maybe you're not in crisis at all.

Maybe something deeper is happening.

You're beginning to question old patterns. You're becoming aware of the ways you have learned to cope, survive, perform, please, over-function, disconnect, or abandon yourself.

You are beginning to ask:

• What is actually mine to carry?

What am I still doing because it once kept me safe?

• What have I outgrown?

What kind of life do I actually want to create now?

This kind of work can take time.

It can involve significant life transitions, identity shifts, relationship changes, deeper emotional work, and learning to inhabit yourself differently.

It isn't necessarily about fixing something that is broken.

Sometimes it is about becoming more fully who you are.

What are you ready to release?
What are you ready to reclaim?
And who are you becoming?

That can be a season of therapy.

And sometimes, there is a longer relationship

There are also people we may return to throughout our lives.

A long term friend who knows us well and will tell us the truth (with love). A therapist who knows our history.

Someone who understands the landscape we've travelled through and can recognize patterns we may not see ourselves.

Someone we trust enough to tell the truth to and who knows us enough to call us out (with love) on our stuff that is getting in the way of who we want to become and the life we want to build.

Someone who can help us notice when we've drifted away from our values, lost touch with our intuition, or slipped back into an old way of being.

You may work together closely for a period of time, take a break, and return years later when another season of life calls for deeper support.

This can become part of an ongoing practice of self-development rather than something we only turn to when things fall apart.

And I think there is something beautiful about that.

We don't always know at the beginning

The same is true of our relationships outside of therapy.

We rarely know at the beginning whether someone will be a reason, a season, or a longer-term presence in our lives.

• A friendship.

• A mentor.

• A partner.

• A lover.

• A colleague.

• A therapist.

Sometimes someone comes into our life and changes something in us before moving on.

Sometimes we walk beside someone through an entire chapter.

And sometimes, somehow, our paths continue crossing through many chapters of our lives.

We don't always get to know which one it will be when the relationship begins.

Perhaps this is one of the places where we can practice trusting ourselves, and trusting life a little more. That we have the tools to navigate change, loss, unexpected transitions and to continue to keep our heart open and to keep expanding our capacity to love and to be present to life.

Because we can spend an enormous amount of energy trying to hold onto things simply because they have been meaningful.

But meaningful does not necessarily mean permanent.

And an ending does not necessarily mean something went wrong.

The sacredness of endings

There are natural cycles of release and renewal woven through life.

Birth and death.

Beginning and ending.

Expansion and contraction.

Holding on and letting go.

Symbolic death and rebirth.

Change is one of the few constants we can count on.

And there is grief in that.

But there is beauty in it, too.

We can grieve what is ending while remaining grateful that it happened.

We can honour the people who have shaped us without needing to keep them in the same role forever.

We can recognize that some relationships were meant to teach us something, some were meant to walk beside us, and some were meant to become part of our longer story.

We can carry the wisdom forward without needing to carry everything else with us.

Healing isn't only learning how to create healthy relationships, it is also learning how to honour relationships as they change.

To know when something has reached completion.

To grieve what we have lost.

To appreciate what we received.

To release what we have outgrown.

To process and accept the changes that we didn’t want or see coming.

And to trust that making space is sometimes part of becoming.

The meaningfulness of a connection isn't measured only by how long our paths were intertwined.

Sometimes a person changes your life in a year.

Sometimes in a conversation.

Sometimes in a season.

Sometimes over decades.

And sometimes the most loving way to honour what something meant to us is to allow it to become what it is meant to become next.

Reason.

Season.

Or longer term.

All of it is part of the web of life and consciousness.

And perhaps, beneath all of the changing forms our relationships take, there is a larger connection we can always return to.

A sense of something greater than ourselves.
A deeper relationship with our own inner knowing.
A connection to life itself.

A part of us was never actually separate from it.

No one person is meant to be our sole source of belonging, meaning, love, or connection. Our relationships with others are important, beautiful, and deeply transformative, but they are not meant to replace our own relationship with ourselves, with life, or with whatever we experience as sacred or greater than ourselves.

Perhaps that deeper connection is the foundation from which all of our other relationships can grow.

With ourselves.
With one another.
And with life itself.

Reflection Questions

• Who has been a meaningful part of your life for a particular reason or season?

• Is there a relationship you are grieving because it didn't become what you thought it would?

• What did a past relationship, friendship, therapist, or mentor help you discover about yourself?

• Is there something, or someone, you may be ready to release while still honouring what the connection meant?

• What are you being invited to become in this next season of your life?

• Where might you be looking outside yourself for something you are being called to cultivate within?

• What season are you in? 

Take a moment to reflect on what you are being invited to release, honour, and become. You don't have to have all the answers. Sometimes awareness is the beginning of the next chapter.