Endings and Beginnings

Mourning the end of summer

Source: Free download: whitetopaz/Pixabay

Having recently returned from a holiday in sunnier climes, to find myself reaching for the light switch and fluffy socks by 6pm, I’m beginning to mourn the end of summer. I, like many others, experience a genuine dip in mood that correlates with the waning sunlight. There are evolutionary explanations for this – it’s safer and more productive to be out in the daylight and to rest when its dark – but my feelings about the end of summer got me thinking about our collective mindset around endings and beginnings in general.

Generally speaking, there is a split in western cultural consciousness that suggests beginnings are good and endings are bad. We hear of a birth or someone entering a new relationship or being offered a new job and we think of it as a happy time of celebration and send congratulatory greetings. Beginnings are usually a time of hopefulness and anticipation, perhaps coloured with a healthy dose of apprehension. We don’t usually embark on a new relationship or start a new job imagining how or when it will end. If we did, we would be thought of as pessimistic, neurotic or even paranoid.

Instead, we fantasise about the relationship or job lasting forever and satisfying us more than our previous relationships and jobs ever did. When we embark on a new relationship, we imagine the new person in our life becoming a cherished companion for evermore. Parents feel this way about their new babies, however they come into their lives—through biological conception, surrogacy, adoption or some other way. The beginning of a new life is such a cause of celebration that even strangers offer their congratulations. Adolescents in fledgling relationships imagine themselves living together happily ever after. A 12-year-old boy told me about his ‘longest ever girlfriend’ and fantasised about them getting married and having a family of their own. They had been a couple for two-and-a-half days and he could not bear to think that this special relationship might one day end.

In contrast to beginnings, when we hear about an ending—of a relationship or job, or the end of a life—we imagine suffering and pain and share our condolences. Often, but not always, things end because they are in some way ‘bad’. The job or relationship might not satisfy us anymore and so we leave or are left. As a rule, good relationships don’t end and people don’t resign from satisfying jobs. People die because they are old or unwell or have been involved in a tragedy, not because they are young and healthy and full of life.

We are pitied or consoled because of our losses. Usually, but again not always, endings happen for reasons beyond our control, whereas beginnings generally imply more of a choice, even if that is not actually the case. Splitting is a psychological defence. It’s one of the ways we try to manage difficult emotions by avoiding them and attaching them to ‘other’. Attaching all the negative feelings to endings and putting them in a box marked ‘bad’ means we can keep beginnings good and untarnished.

Therapy beginnings are often preceded by an experience of an ending. As the famous poem states, ‘The end is where we start from’.¹ For children and young people in particular, endings are beyond their control and usually happen without their consent. Experiences leading to therapeutic referrals of children and young people regularly include the end of their parent’s marriage, the end or imminent end of a loved one’s life, or the end of their time at a familiar school or in a familiar home or country of origin. Many young people come to therapy carrying the burden of broken or damaged relationships that have ended. For children in care, referrers frequently list numerous placement endings, which also, of course, incorporate the end of many significant attachments to birth relatives as well as carers, placement ‘siblings’, teachers and peers. It’s not unusual for children in foster care to experience dozens of placements amounting to hundreds of goodbyes. That’s a lot of endings to lug around, inevitably impacting every new beginning. It’s hard to believe that the days will lengthen and the sun will shine again when lived experience suggests the opposite is true.

Based on: Connor, J. (2020) Endings and loss in Reflective practice in child and adolescent psychotherapy: Listening to young people. Routledge.