I’ve wanted for some time to share with you this book about transitions. I’ve returned to it again and again over the years.

I’ve written about transitions before. I focused on the seemingly small transitions we make throughout the course of a day. If you are highly sensitive, It’s so easy to underestimate—or to fail to see the true cause of— the overstimulation these transitions can create in you. If you haven’t read the article, I’m guessing you’ll find it useful.

Today, though, I want to talk about bigger life transitions, and specifically to tell you about a book I’ve returned to again and again over many years. It’s called Transitions: Making Sense of Life’s Changes*, by William Bridges, and it has perennially been one of the most valued books on my shelf.

My dad’s career transition

I don’t remember when I first pulled Transitions off my dad’s bookshelf. I think Dad might even have given it to me as a gift, though I can’t remember what I was going through that might have prompted that. I do know, though, that when the book was published in 1980, Dad was several years into a massive life transition. He had been granted tenure as a university professor of English. Then, he realized he wanted to work with others in a different way than teaching them.

After a period of doubt and anguish, Dad returned to school to become a psychiatric social worker. He worked with chronically mentally ill people in the partial hospitalization program at the community mental health center where I grew up in Indiana. He loved his colleagues, He loved the work.

From my adult perspective, I understand why Dad so highly valued and resonated with William Bridges’ book. The concepts must have been both practical, and reassuring for him, and he and Bridges had striking parallels. They were both born in the mid-1930s, got Ivy-League educations, and taught college literature. They both left teaching to do helping work (Bridges became an author, speaker, and organizational consultant.)

Even better, like my dad, Bridges loved literary references. The book is full of them, from Oscar Wilde to T. S. Eliot to Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex. There’s nothing pretentious about the book, though. Bridges is a good teacher. His writing is lucid and accessible.

The concept of the neutral zone

Having seen my dad and then my mom through their final transitions in the past few years, I’ve been forcibly reminded of a concept I first learned about from Transitions. Bridges calls it the neutral zone. The neutral zone is the space between endings and new beginnings. Bridge writes,

In other times and places the person in transition left the village and went out into an unfamiliar stretch of forest of desert. There the person would remain for a time, removed from the old connections, bereft of the old identities, and stripped of the old reality. This was a time “between dreams” in which the old chaos from the beginnings welled up and obliterated all forms. It was a place without a name—an empty space in the world and the lifetime within which a new sense of self could gestate.” (p. 112)

We’re great in Western culture at new beginnings. We’re not so good at endings, but we recognize them, at least. However, when it comes to the neutral zone, most of us are completely in the dark. I was. For me, grasping that concept was life-changing.

My own neutral zone

I spent four days at a retreat center in November. I had completed many of the major tasks associated with the death of my last living parent: the dispersing of my parents’ belongings, the settling of their affairs, and the end of six decades of a home base in Indiana.

I see now that I was spending time, much-needed time, in the neutral zone. I was away from home, unbound by my normal schedule. I walked, meditated, and rested. I also did something unconventional. Not knowing why, I had brought along an inch-thick folder of letters my dad had exchanged with a dear friend Sam.

Sam was an elderly professor with whom Dad could share his deepest longings, his doubts, his fears, his anguish, and his spiritual aspirations. I spent many hours reading the letters. I can’t explain how, but they helped me live forward the neutral zone questions I hadn’t even realized I’d been asking: “Who am I now? Where have I come from? Where am I going?”

A powerful resource

Bridges stressed that in our contemporary culture, we too often try to move on from an ending directly to a new beginning, without allowing time and attention for the neutral zone. This takes a toll on us. A field needs to lie fallow, to stay healthy, and we need this liminal, in-between time.

Transitions is a wonderful resource of awareness and strategies for these times of transition. Over the years, I’ve particularly valued Bridges’ list of practical suggestions. They are deceptively simple. Take your time. Arrange temporary structures. Don’t act for the sake of action. Recognize why you are uncomfortable.

There are more of these, but I think my favorite is, “Find out what is waiting for you in the wings of your life.” That phrase has stayed with me over the years. Even when things seem uncertain or scary or even bleak, there is something new waiting in the wings. Just remembering that can help you when everything feels up in the air, messy and unresolved.

Photo ©2026 Kaitlyn Wyenberg. Thank you so much Kaitlyn.
* Bridges, William (1980): Transitions: Making Sense of Life’s Changes: Philippines: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company.