Transitioning into Adulthood
June is graduation month. I love to see the photos online of this batch of students graduating - full of hope to begin the next phase of life, overwhelmed by the chapter they just lived through and unsure about what's to come.
It seems fitting to start my series on life transitions with the one most of us first experienced: the transition into adulthood.
You may be tempted to click away, thinking this does not apply to you. If you have already moved through that season of life, the assumption is that the work is done.
What if that transition left behind a feeling of loss that has never been recognized as grief?
That grief might look like restlessness, a persistent sense of not-quite-belonging, or the feeling of never quite arriving at the life that seemed promised.
It could be showing up in your life in ways you don't recognize.
Transitioning Through The Phases Of Your Life
Transitioning into adulthood takes a few years. The path from high school might lead straight into higher education, include a break to travel and work, or veer away from the traditional route altogether.
In the rush of it all, there is rarely time to pause and name what that transition actually means, or to identify with the feeling of being in between a chapter that has ended and one that has not yet begun.
Transitioning into adulthood means letting go of the structure that school provided, the social connections it offered, and the daily rhythm that dictated where to be and what was expected.
Brain, Jock, Theatre or Band Kid, Leader, Party Queen/King. Those identities gave us a clear sense of where we belonged, who our people were, and what we were good at.
Whatever the role, if we found our identity in it, we may feel the grief of leaving it behind, and the existential question: Who am I now?
When we move forward without acknowledging what we are leaving behind, that grief does not resolve on its own.
Transitioning From Expectations Into Choices
Most people are handed a detailed picture of what adulthood is supposed to look like long before they have any say in it.
Work hard in high school, graduate post-secondary, get a job, find a partner, buy a house, start a family: do it all in roughly that order and by a certain age.
Those were the expectations set by the generation before, passed down through family traditions, cultural milestones, and the assumption that each step would be taken in that order and would be called success.
When the life in front of us does not match the one we were promised, most of us assume we missed a step, made a wrong turn, or are just not as capable as the people around us seem to be.
We look at our peers and construct a story about how well they are doing compared to us, rarely accounting for the fact that they are likely doing the same thing.
The internal dialogue is one of falling short, and we tend to locate the source of that feeling in ourselves rather than in the gap between an inherited story and a life that was never going to unfold exactly as described.
What we’re really feeling, most of the time, is grief.
It is the grief of a life that does not look the way we were told it would. We were prepared for opportunity, for forward movement, for the next chapter. When the next chapter turned out to be different and often less certain than the promise, we feel sadness.
Identifying it as grief, rather than failure, is the first step in transitioning from surviving to thriving.
Breaking Old Patterns
Grief is a legitimate response to losing something we counted on, even when what we lost was never guaranteed.
It was hopes and dreams that the previous generation had for us. And calling it grief instead of failure helps us to make the transition from feeling like we’ve failed to feeling like we can move forward and find purpose.
We can let go of what was promised and start to write our own story.
Graduation is one of the first times we’re able to make our own decisions about who we want to become and what our goals are. When we take the time to grieve a transition, we are closing the chapter that came before and giving ourselves space to focus on what’s ahead.
The stories we inherited from our families about who we are and what we are capable of will not resolve on their own.
The milestones set for us cannot simply be set aside. They need to be acknowledged, along with the hurt that those expectations caused, before we can genuinely move past them.
This is some of the hardest work we do as we move into adulthood.
Letting Your Authentic Self Emerge
We often align ourselves with our family's values to fit in. Doing otherwise risked being ostracized or labelled the 'black sheep', so most of us found a way to fit. We can do this with our peer groups in adolescence, too.
Transitioning into adulthood is often the first real opportunity to step outside the mould we spent years trying to fit into, and to ask whether that shape was ever actually ours.
Many of us reach early adulthood without ever having asked who we are when we are not performing for someone else.
The identities we built in adolescence were often assembled around survival: fitting in with our family, finding our footing with peers, avoiding conflict.
Some of us pushed back against that, but even rebellion can be a reaction rather than a genuine expression of self.
It is important to examine who you are and what you want in your life. Because it is YOUR life.
Finding Your Resilience
You made it this far. That on its own is proof of resilience. You were able to continue putting one foot in front of the other. That said, this is a time to examine the trauma responses and coping you may have used to survive up until now.
Thriving in adulthood will mean challenging assumptions and narratives that were written for you.
You can question those milestones and expectations. You need to question them! Transitioning into adulthood is a time when we can find our identity, or move out of the label we wore and into one that fits better.
Resilience isn't only about bouncing back.
In the context of transitioning into adulthood, it means having the capacity to change shape and continue moving even when the structure we depended on has fallen away.
Resilience reminds you that you survived, that you can cope, and that you have skills that have served you, even if you did not recognize them at the time.
What's Next?
Examining inherited stories and unprocessed grief is not a quick undertaking, and it does not have an expiration date.
Take a few minutes with these questions before moving on with your day:
What roles or identities did you leave behind in the transition into adulthood, and have you ever grieved them?
What did you believe your life was supposed to look like by now, and where did that picture come from?
What coping patterns or habits have followed you into adulthood that you have never traced back to their source?
There is no pressure to answer all of these at once. It's a good idea to take your time in healing work.
Whether you’ve just graduated or find yourself in any other of life’s transitional periods, the work you do at this stage will set you up for a lifetime of questioning and examining.
The next stage of early adulthood is largely about finding where we belong. Belonging can mean building your village, the friendships and communities we choose rather than inherit.
If you're reading this and you feel you missed a step, that's ok. Keep reading. I'll be working my way through the developmental milestones in my summer blog series.