Live Your Extraordinary Life With Michelle Rios

When Good Changes Still Hurt: Navigating The Hidden Grief of Life Transitions

• Michelle Rios

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Ever wondered why positive life changes sometimes hurt more than you expected? That quiet ache when your child heads to college, the strange emptiness after leaving a job you outgrew, or the disorientation of entering a new chapter—these feelings aren't signs of weakness or ingratitude. They're evidence of transition grief.

Transitions drop us into liminal space—that sacred threshold between what was and what's becoming. When familiar patterns break, our brains interpret uncertainty as threat, triggering emotional responses that can feel overwhelming, especially for high-achievers accustomed to solving problems and moving forward. The tears that come at odd moments, the foggy thinking, the identity questions—these aren't malfunctions but necessary parts of transformation.

What makes midlife particularly challenging is what psychologists call "cumulative life disruption"—multiple significant transitions happening simultaneously. Your child leaves home as your parents need more care, while your body changes and your career no longer fits. This convergence isn't a crisis; it's a clarifier, asking you to examine what no longer serves and imagine what could be. But you can't move forward if you're shaming yourself for feeling sad or trying to bypass grief with forced gratitude.

Through personal stories and practical wisdom, this episode offers a roadmap for navigating life's thresholds with grace and self-compassion. You'll learn to name what you're grieving, mark transitions with meaningful rituals, allow your identity to evolve naturally, seek proper support, and reframe discomfort as becoming rather than breaking down. Because what you're becoming has the potential to be extraordinary—but only if you honor the process that gets you there. Ready to transform how you experience change? Your extraordinary next chapter awaits.

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This episode of the Live your Extraordinary Life podcast is brought to you by Transformational Coaching with Michelle Rios. Created for high achievers just like you, who've checked all the boxes yet still wonder is this really it? You've built success, but deep down, you're craving more, more meaning, more freedom, more joy. You're ready for your next chapter, one that feels fully aligned, deeply fulfilling and unapologetically yours? Through my transformational coaching, I'll help you break free from the patterns and beliefs keeping you stuck, clarify your vision for life and business in this next chapter of life, build unshakable confidence and self-trust, align your mindset, energy and actions so success feels authentic and easeful, and create extraordinary results without sacrificing yourself along the way. If you're done playing small and you're ready to rise, visit michelleriosofficialcom. Backslash coaching to learn more and apply. Your extraordinary life is waiting. Are you ready? If you're feeling tender, uncertain or emotionally foggy, you are not alone. You're certainly not behind. You're not broken. You're simply in a transition. Hi, I'm Michelle Rios, host of the Live your Extraordinary Life podcast. This podcast is built on the premise that life is meant to be joyful, but far too often we settle for less. So if you've ever thought that something is missing from your life, that you were meant for more, or you simply want to experience more joy in the everyday, then this podcast is for you. Each week, I'll bring you captivating personal stories, transformative life lessons and juicy conversations on living life to the fullest, with the hope to inspire you to create a life you love on your terms, with authenticity, purpose and connection. Together, we'll explore what it means to live an extraordinary life, the things that hold us back and the steps we all can take to start living our best lives. So come along for the journey. It's never too late to get started, and the world needs your light. Welcome back to the Live your Extraordinary Life podcast. I'm your host, michelle Rios, and today we're talking about something universal, deeply human and rarely talked about with the honesty it deserves.

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Transitions those moments when life quietly shifts under your feet, the before and afters, the turning points. You can't always plan for, but you can feel your way through. Transitions don't always come with big announcements. Sometimes they look like a child packing for college, or a career that no longer fits, or an aging parent who suddenly needs more help than you know how to give, or a relationship that has quietly run its course. Transitions are thresholds. They are the space between what was and what's next, and they often arrive with something we don't expect Grief, not because something went wrong, but because something meaningful has ended or is about to.

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This is the conversation we're having today, and I'm not speaking from theory. I'm in it right now. If you, I am so immensely proud. Beyond words, I'm also feeling it, feeling the shift in our home, that slow letting go of my little boy, who is now a man, and that ache of knowing he won't be here every day come fall. Everyone says, well, these are exciting times. You must be so happy, and I am.

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But what I wasn't prepared for was the sadness that accompanies these very happy transitions, the quiet grief that snuck in between the celebration and that realization that my role as a mother is very much evolving, from front and center to backseat, and it got me thinking about how so many of us, especially in midlife, are navigating transitions that look fine on the outside but feel like emotional earthquakes on the inside. So today's episode is an invitation to tell the truth about change, to understand why transitions, even the good ones, can feel heavy, and to learn how to move through them with more grace, more courage and more self-compassion. So if you're in the in-between. Right now, if you're feeling tender, uncertain or emotionally foggy, you are not alone. You're certainly not behind. You're not broken. You're certainly not behind. You're not broken. You're simply in a transition. And this space, it's sacred. So let's talk about it. So let's start here. Why do transitions, especially the ones we choose or even look forward to, so often come with this undercurrent of sadness? Why do we feel so off? Why do the tears come at odd moments? And why does a chapter closing whether it's a graduation, a promotion, a job transition, a move, a divorce sometimes hurt more than we expected? Here's what I've come to understand.

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Grief isn't just about death. It's about loss Loss of identity, loss of rhythm, loss of a role you once held, or at least an evolution of that role, loss of a version of life that felt familiar, even if it wasn't always perfect. And that's exactly what transitions ask of us To let go of the known before the new version of life is fully formed. They drop us into what psychologists call liminal space, a term that literally means threshold. It's that strange, sacred in-between where the old way no longer fits and the new hasn't quite arrived.

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And here's what's really important to understand your brain isn't wired for happiness. It's wired for prediction when the familiar pattern breaks. So when your child leaves home, or you change jobs, or your marriage dissolves, your amygdala, the brain's fear center, gets activated. The body interprets uncertainty as a threat. So if you felt anxious, weepy, unfocused or emotionally foggy during a transition, you're not being dramatic. You're certainly not broken. You're simply being human. Your brain is doing what it was designed to do, trying to protect you from the unknown.

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But the truth is, transitions aren't really danger moments. They're an invitation. Just because you choose the change, or just because you chose the change, doesn't mean you won't grieve it. And just because you grieve it doesn't mean you're doing it wrong. Grief is the cost of growth and the sign that something meaningful is shifting. So let me pause here and offer a gentle invitation to reflect. What are you grieving right now? It might not be traumatic or obvious. It might be something small, a routine, a rhythm, a version of you you no longer see in the mirror. But if it mattered to you, it matters, let that be enough. This reflection creates space for healing and for something new to emerge. Because here's the deeper truth Transitions are not just about what's ending. They're about what's becoming possible. Now I want to zoom out because, if you're like many of the women and men I work with, you're not just navigating one transition, you're navigating several all at once.

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And that's what makes midlife so potent. It's the stage of life where things don't just shift, they compound. For example, your child graduates and leaves the home, heads to college. Your marriage is changing, evolving or possibly even ending. Your parents are aging, you might be stepping into a caregiver role, complete role reversal. Your career is no longer as fulfilling as it once was. You crave something different. And your body? Well, I don't have to tell all of you other midlifers, you know. Well it's changing too, and this is not a coincidence.

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According to the American Psychological Association, midlife is the single most common life stage where adults experience overlapping transitions, what they call cumulative life disruption, and the emotional result Burnout, anxiety, identity loss or even just a quiet sense of disconnection, like you're going through the motions, but not quite in your life, and you start to ask yourself who am I now that I'm no longer needed? In the same way, what do I even want next? In the same way, what do I even want next? What if I'm too late to figure it out. And here's the truth Midlife is not a crisis.

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It's a clarifier. It asks you to look at what's no longer working and invites you to imagine what could. But you can't do that if you're shaming yourself for feeling heavy or sad, or if you're trying to bypass the grief with forced gratitude. That ache you feel it's not weakness, it's evidence that something mattered, and that's where the healing begins. And for those of you listening who are wired for high performance my achievers, my doers, the ones who are used to fixing, solving, moving fast I want to say this If slowing down feels foreign, if sitting in the unknown makes you restless or anxious, that's not failure. That's just a sign that your nervous system is recalibrating. Real power doesn't come from forcing your way forward. It comes from letting your truth catch up with your pace. You don't need to have the answers right now. You just need some space to feel what's real.

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So let's name some of the transitions that tend to hit us the hardest. You may be living through one or several right this very moment. You might not even realize that what you're experiencing is a transition until you find yourself feeling a little numb or lost, or even overwhelmed. These are the five most common transitions we see. Number one children graduating high school and leaving home. You're not just celebrating their future, you're grieving their presence. That 90% of in-person time by the age of 18 that's so often cited. That's not just data, that's felt truth. 90% of the time you're going to spend with your child you've already done by the time they reach age 18.

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Number two career changes or pivots. When that happens, when you go through that kind of job or career change or pivot, you lose your identity, your structure and often your confidence. Even when you chose the change. That blank space can feel terrifying. Number three divorce or relationship transitions. You're not just grieving a person, you're grieving the life you built with them. Even mutual endings come with some level of mourning. Number four midlife identity and physical shifts. Your body is changing. Your desires shift. Your drive might slow. It's not weakness, it's wisdom trying to take the wheel. But they're real. We're often not sleeping as well as we once did. We're looking at taking supplements, maybe even hormone replacement therapy. We're upping our time in the gym. We're trying to be more active to compensate for those changes physical changes that are happening. Caring for aging parents is number five. It's a role reversal with no manual. You're loving, grieving and leading all at once.

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Let me share a quick story here. A client of mine let's just call her Julia left a 20-year corporate career last year. Everyone around her kept saying congratulations, you're finally free. But she called me a week later in tears and said Michelle, I don't know who I am without this job. That's what transitions do? They strip away the identities we've worn for decades and ask us to rediscover the self beneath the performance. The truth is, julia didn't need a 10-step plan and ask us to rediscover the self beneath the performance. The truth is, julia didn't need a 10-step plan. She needed space Space to mourn, to feel and to remember who she was before the world told her who she had to be. And that's the invitation we all receive in this liminal in-between space.

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So now that we've named the most common transitions and the grief that so often accompanies them, let's talk about how we actually move through them. The first step is really to name what you're grieving. Say it out loud, write it down, honor it. Number two you want to mark the transition with some kind of ritual Write a letter, light a candle, frame a photo, let your heart catch up with your life reality. For me, knowing that my little boy quoteunquote, my six foot one strapping young man of a son is leaving was important to say out loud. And you know, while I get a few giggles and chuckles from him and even my husband, we know it's heavy on the heart because it marks the end of an era where we all live together under the same roof on a day-in, day-out basis, and now we go into this transition phase while he goes to college. I've marked this transition by writing a letter to my son. It was very helpful for me to put down on paper how I feel about him, how important he is in my life and how his presence in it shaped my life so profoundly, from the time before he existed, right when I was newly married or even single, before I became a mother.

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Number three, let identity be fluid. You don't need a label, everything right now. You need permission to evolve. So, yes, I'm still a mother, of course I am, but the mom, mom, mom rituals and calls that I get on a regular basis, you know, and certainly when he was much younger, just aren't going to be there. You know I'm going to get the text more often than not, and maybe not every day. Knowing that my role as a mother is transitioning and evolving is something I need to just allow for now.

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And number four ask for support. You're not meant to do transitions alone. It doesn't matter what they are. Please, whatever you're going through whether it is caregiving for a parent or sending your child to college, or going through a divorce or ending of a relationship or transitioning through a job please don't do it alone. Seek your friends. This is a great time to lean on them, but if you don't have a friend, you can talk to get a coach or a therapist. Support emotional, mental and physical is often incredibly important and cathartic as you're going through a transition. I certainly am spending more time with girlfriends, more time with my husband. I have a transition. I certainly am spending more time with girlfriends, more time with my husband. I have a coach. These are all very important parts of my support system as I navigate not just my next chapter of my life but my role as a mother.

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And number five reframe the discomfort. What you're going through in your transition isn't a breakdown, even if you're resorting to tears. It's just part of the becoming right. You've got to shed that old skin and that comes with a good amount of cleansing tears at times. Let it all out, but reframe the discomfort. You are not going through a crisis. You are not breaking down. You're in the process of becoming. You're entering a new chapter of your life and whatever that is whether it's career, whether it's family roles, whether it's in your relationship you are entering a new chapter. Let's call it what it is. So if you are in transition right now, like me, and if your life feels like it's in that in-between chapter, if something is ending or shifting, unraveling or unfolding, know this you are not broken, you are not behind. You are simply becoming. This is not the end. This is the doorway to what's next. So let yourself feel it, honor it and, when you're ready, walk through it, because what you're becoming has the potential to be absolutely extraordinary.

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Now, before we close, I want to offer you three simple journal prompts. The first what transition am I currently navigating, internally or externally? Navigating internally or externally? Number two what am I grieving, releasing or being asked to let go of? And number three what might be trying to emerge on the other side? You might know the answer, but just allow yourself to journal on it. You'd be surprised what comes up, particularly from our subconscious, when you just allow yourself to free write and let the heart lead instead of the brain. These questions aren't here to give you clarity immediately. They're really here to bring you home to yourself bit by bit, breath by breath.

Speaker 1:

I want to thank you again for joining me for this episode of the Live your Extraordinary Life podcast. If this episode spoke to something deep inside you, please share it. Send it to a friend, a sister, a partner, anyone standing in a season of change, and if you're navigating a transition and want support, reach out. You can DM me on social media or visit my website. You don't have to do this alone. Until next time, I'm Michelle Rios. Go forth and live your extraordinary life, and live your extraordinary life. Thank you for listening to today's episode. If you enjoyed this podcast episode, please take a moment to rate and review. If you have recommendations for future topics, please reach out to me at michelleriosofficialcom. Lastly, please consider supporting this podcast by sharing it. Together, we can reach, inspire and positively impact more people. Thank you.

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Michelle Rios

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