Stages of life: what cycles do we need to close?

  Life isn’t a straight line - it’s made of chapters. Each phase comes with its routines, its familiar faces, and its rituals. It has its own rhythm, a certain kind of question that gets asked more often, a kind of silence we slowly learn to listen to. But sometimes, it’s hard to accept that one of those chapters has ended. Even when it no longer makes sense to keep flipping through it. And so, we stay stuck on old pages - like someone trying to go back to the beginning of a book that’s already been read.
  The phases of life can be many things: Childhood, marked by innocence. Adolescence, filled with discovery and growing pains. The start of adult life, where everything feels urgent. Then come the career choices, the relationships we think will last forever, the grief, the moves to new cities, the shedding of old skins, and the shift in purpose. Each phase demands a different version of us.
But the truth is, internally, we don’t always keep up with that change. We grow biologically, but we can remain emotionally tied to an older version of ourselves.
  Getting stuck in a phase might feel comforting - but really, it’s stagnation disguised. There are habits, routines, relationships, or even drea
ms that no longer serve us. They remain only because they remind us of a time when we felt safer, more seen, or more protected. It might be a relationship that should’ve ended long ago, but that still echoes a happier version of our past. It might be a friendship that drags on without true presence - kept alive by nostalgia alone. It might be a way of living that no longer fits the person we’ve become - but that we still hold on to, out of fear of the emptiness that change might bring.
  Closing a cycle doesn’t mean cutting everything off or erasing what happened.
Closing means accepting. It means recognising that a story has already served its purpose - and letting it rest, with gratitude. When we don’t close what should’ve been left behind, we carry invisible weight. And that makes it harder to live the present fully.
  There are also people who belong to phases, not to our whole life. And that’s okay. Some relationships were essential at a particular moment - and fulfilled exactly what they needed to. But we often insist on dragging them into the next chapters, as if their presence still made sense, just because they were part of a beautiful time. Recognising that a connection was important in its time, and letting it go without resentment, is a form of maturity.
  But how do we know when a cycle really needs to end?
When we no longer feel whole where we are. When what we feel is more nostalgia than desire. When we keep repeating old patterns simply because they’re familiar. When we realise that, no matter how much it hurts, keeping that phase alive is stopping us from growing.
  Closing cycles hurts. But it also frees us. And it’s in the space left behind, after the ending, that the new begins to grow. To grow is to lose things along the way - to leave parts of ourselves behind, to allow ourselves to change our minds, our habits, and our loves. Just as a tree needs to lose its leaves in order to bloom, we too need to let go of what no longer belongs in this season of our life.
  Closing a cycle is an act of courage - and of self-love.