When I left my tenured academic job, there was no goodbye party.
No schoolwide email. Not even a quiet handshake in the hallway.
One day I was there—the youngest tenured professor, top teaching evaluations.
The next, I was gone. Deleted from the website. Email account deactivated. Like I had never been there at all.
It wasn’t a bitter exit. I left on my own terms. I once loved being a professor, but I couldn’t become who I wanted to be without releasing who I had been. I ignored the colleagues who called me reckless for walking away from a guaranteed paycheck for life.
But even clarity doesn’t immunize you from the ache of a silent ending.
In the months that followed, I found myself stuck. Replaying old conversations. Mentally defending my decision to former colleagues. Resenting myself for staying as long as I did.
There was a heaviness I couldn’t name. A sense that I had left—but hadn’t let go.
Eventually, I understood what was happening: I hadn’t just left a job—I’d left a version of myself behind.
And I never got to say goodbye.
So I did what no one else was going to do: I held a funeral for my professor self.
I lit a candle. Wrote a eulogy. Retired the suits I used to wear to class.
It wasn’t dramatic. Just a simple ritual to witness the end of a chapter no one else had paused to acknowledge.
And that’s when the grip loosened. The past finally let go of me.
We all carry chapters that ended without ceremony. Relationships that fade out. Jobs we walk away from. Friendships that evaporate without a fight. Dreams that dissolve quietly when no one’s looking.
And most of the time, we don’t mark those endings. We don’t hold space. We don’t say goodbye.
We just move on—or try to.
But unmarked endings don’t disappear. They fester. They show up as guilt you can’t quite explain. As decisions you keep second-guessing. As a version of you who won’t stop knocking at the door, asking to be remembered.
We’re not built for that kind of silence. Endings need to be marked. Otherwise, they bleed into everything that comes next.
A friend of mine held a funeral for her marriage. She and her ex sat at the same café where they had their first date. They grieved what they lost. They honored what they shared. And then they said goodbye—so they wouldn’t drag the past into future love.
You can do this too.
Maybe it’s a career. An identity. A former version of you—the overachiever, the people-pleaser, the perfectionist who turned joy into a checklist.
What would it feel like to say: “Thank you. You got me this far. But it’s time to put down the checklist. I don’t want your flawlessness. I want my fullness. You can rest now.”
You don’t need an audience. You don’t need closure from anyone else. You can hold the funeral on your own, as I did.
Just a candle. A letter. A moment of witnessing.
Because grief needs form. And endings need shape.
Not just for the sake of the past—but also for the sake of your future.
Let it end.
So you can begin.
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