Every major transition follows a pattern, though each journey is unique:

The Death - Something ends—sometimes dramatically, often through a slow dissolving of vitality. What once gripped you no longer fuels you. Boredom arrives as herald (yes, boredom—that overlooked prophet of transformation). Restlessness disrupts your sleep. The life that fit yesterday feels like someone else's clothes.

This dissolution is necessary. Without death, there's no room for birth.

The Liminal Dark - Here's where things get interesting. Old images and stories that once guided you fade like stars at dawn. You're stripped bare—think Inanna at each gate of the underworld, or that rom-com montage where the heroine's entire wardrobe gets tossed before her transformation.

In this burning ground, what can't survive the fire reveals itself. The more we grip the old ways, the more painful this becomes. Yet we must honor and grieve what was. As U2 says, we can only carry forward "all that you can't leave behind."

New images begin glimmering in the dark. Stories you've never told yourself whisper possibilities.

The Emergence - New life rarely announces itself. It sidles up—a minor curiosity, a dabble, even what seems like distraction. It grows almost imperceptibly, gestating in your soul's belly. Then one day you look back and realize that the small thread has become the rope you're following out of the labyrinth.