Transitions: Making Sense of Life's Changes

by William Bridges

4. Take care of yourself in little ways. This is probably not the time to be trying to live up to your highest self-image, although it is time to keep your agreements carefully. Be sensitive to your own small needs and don’t force change upon yourself as though it were medicine. Find the small continuities that are important when everything else seems to be changing. A friend of mine took her elderly mother to the supermarket the day after she had moved to a new house and a new town. “Peaches, we’ve got to get peaches for your father,” her mother said. It was the wrong time of year and peaches were expensive, but in a situation where everything else in their lives had changed, it was important to hold on to a few continuities such as favorite foods or a schedule of familiar TV programs.