The quiet grief of a life transition

New job. New city. New baby. New chapter. We tend to greet these with congratulations, and rightly so. But often, quietly, they also ask us to grieve.

The version of you that fit the old life doesn't get to come along unchanged. There's a small mourning in that, even when the change is good.

You're allowed to hold both. The excitement and the ache. The gratitude and the disorientation. Neither cancels the other out.