A part of growing up is learning when it is time to move forward. Whether it is leaving your hometown for a new opportunity, ending relationships or even changing a job, we all have a moment when we will have a moment of conflict and struggle. It is through this struggle we find growth and new purpose, even if there is some pain along the way.

You may be wondering, why must we go through pain just to evolve in grow? Why can’t we get to another point in our life without the risk of torment to our mind, body, and soul? Well, the simple answer is that life is never easy. There is a reason we say growing pains. This is why we root for the underdog in our stories, because of the struggles they go through to get to the very end of their stories.

So how can we accept these moments? How do we come to terms when things come to an end and we need something new? For me, I like to do different variations of the stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. You don’t need to follow all of the stages and sometimes you can even go through them out of order, but usually, when we have to move to a new part of our life whatever it may be, we all have to face some form of it.

For love, we can see this happening in different ways. With breakups, whether you are the dumper or the dumpee, you will see your share of denial that it is happening, anger that this happening, begging to be different or trying to do something else to keep it from happening, depression from the result of it happening before finally accepting and working to move on.

But then, what happens if there is a new love in your life? You may go through a similar stage with that, even if you are letting something new in. You could be in denial that something so nice and new wants to be welcomed, angry it didn’t come sooner or it wasn’t there for you during the last love, you beg that this is true, you fall into depression thinking you are not worthy of it, until you finally accept that it is your time to welcome this and embrace it.

The same thing can be applied to leaving and finding new work. I know when I was looking for something new there was the conflicting feelings of the actions. Denial that I can find something else because of my position in life, anger that I couldn’t find anything with my major or something better, bargaining with myself that if I did specific things the job I was at now could work out, depression that nothing else was working until finally an acceptance that you do deserve change or be happy.

Change can be difficult, moving on can be a struggle, but we do these things because we are a creature of growth. Many things in our lives are only supposed to be for a season, whether it be for a day and or for ten years. But when it is time, we must embrace it and let it say goodbye. Maybe there will come a time where it will come back or not, but in the end, what matters is what is learned and how you remain afterward.