Deadheading Your Life: Letting Go Of What No Longer Fits

There is something that I do in my garden almost every day at this time of year. I walk around and I look for what's finished. Not what's dying, not what's failing, but what's just finished. I take my little clippers and I cut off the flowers that have kind of had their day in the sun, if you were. And even though they were beautiful and they did exactly what they were supposed to do, I mean some of them were actually spectacular. But now they're done. And here's what fascinates me. I don't stand there negotiating with them. I don't go, but you were so beautiful in June. I've put so much work into you and I watered you every day. What will the neighbors think if I cut you back?
No.
I just cut them off. Because I understand something in the garden that for some reason we find to have an incredibly difficult time understanding in our own lives. Something doesn't have to be bad to be finished. And I think that might be one of the hardest lessons in midlife, because most of us have been taught that we're allowed to change something only after we've gathered enough evidence that it's terrible. The job has to become unbearable, the relationship has to become toxic, the friendship has to blow up, the schedule has to exhaust us. And then finally we can give ourselves permission to say, I don't want this anymore.

But what if nothing dramatic happened? What if it simply doesn't fit anymore? What if you've outgrown it? What if the woman who chose it isn't the woman who's living your life today? And what if the reason you feel stuck isn't because you don't know what you want? What if you know exactly what you want, but you're afraid of what choosing it might change in your life?  Because you can't keep asking yourself what's next while refusing to acknowledge what's over. Because confusion isn't always confusion.

I hear some version of this from women all the time. I just don't know what I want anymore. And sometimes that's absolutely true. But sometimes I don't think they're confused at all. I think we're conflicted. And that's a huge difference. Because confusion says I don't know what I want. Conflict says, I know what I want, but I don't know how to choose it without disappointing someone. Yikes. You may actually know that you're lonely in a relationship that looks perfectly acceptable from the outside. And maybe you know that you don't want to spend the next ten years doing the work that you're doing. Maybe you want more quiet or more adventure, or maybe more passion. Either way, the problem isn't necessarily the knowing. The problem is that once you admit what you know, you might have to do something about it.

And that is where things get uncomfortable. Because wanting something different often requires us to stop maintaining something familiar. And sometimes the life that you have built can become a life that kind of silently traps you. Here's something nobody tells you when we're young. You can become incredibly good at building a life that eventually doesn't fit you, or maybe one that you've outgrown. You can succeed your way into the wrong life, or you can be excellent at a career that you just don't love anymore. You can create traditions that you're exhausted by, or you can become so competent at carrying everything that everyone assumes you're perfectly happy carrying it. And maybe once upon a time you were, and that's important to recognize. But I don't think that reinvention requires us to look backwards and declare that everything was a mistake, because maybe it wasn't a mistake, maybe it was exactly right for you at the time. So you're allowed to say that mattered to me, and that was an experience that I wanted to have, and it just doesn't belong in this next chapter. Because both things can be true at the same time.

There's an idea in economics called the sunk cost fallacy. And basically, we continue investing in something because we've already invested so much in it money, time, effort, energy. And us human beings, well, we're notoriously bad at walking away from things that we're heavily invested in. And we don't just do it with money, we do it with our lives too. We say things like, I've been friends with her for 30 years, or I've been at this job for 40 years, or I've already put so much into this that I'm afraid to let it go. But listen carefully to that language, because almost none of those statements answer the question, does this still belong in my life? Your history with something explains why you're attached to it, but it doesn't automatically justify its future.

And that can be like a really uncomfortable realization.

For me, I just this week actually had to step away from a nine-month relationship that I've been really working hard to build. And I thought I was doing everything right, and I was trying to understand where I needed to make some adjustments. And I just started to really realize that I was negotiating for my worth and my boundaries got out of whack. And I realized that the only way for me to truly be happy and stop all of this energy leaking, was to end the relationship. And I'll be honest with you, it was a really difficult decision. And it's it was a rough week. But I also felt a weight come off my shoulders once I actually had the courage to choose myself.

And that's an emotion that's really important to pay attention to because we know, we totally know when someone is not right for us, or when we're not feeling valued, or when we're maybe overgiving and doing more than our share of the heavy lifting in the relationship.

And people show us who they are, and it's our job to believe them.

It's very easy for our negotiation skills to kick in, and we can very easily let those boundaries slide if we're not paying attention. So maybe in your life, you know, you don't need to add more of anything, and maybe it's not as dramatic as letting go of a relationship that you were hoping was going to go somewhere, but maybe it's just for you. Maybe you just need to recognize what's right in front of you.

I was already feeling the quiet pull of needing to make a change. And here's what I love about the garden metaphor for this, because deadheading sounds brutal. It sounds like you're literally cutting something off. And you are. But you're actually not punishing the plant by doing that. You're helping the plant redirect its energy, and that's the part I really want you to think about.  I can tell you for sure that even though it's just been a couple of days since we parted ways, I can totally feel that my energy is being redirected back into the parts of my life that I wasn't giving enough attention to.

Our energy is everything, and it's finite.

Every obligation you have gets some of it. Every relationship gets some, every resentment gets some, and every role you continue playing gets some. But eventually we go, why don't I feel excited about anything anymore? And I can be very truthful that over the course of some of this relationship that I was in, I could really feel a dulling of my happiness. And that really hit me hard when I realized I'm just not as bright and shiny as I'd like to be. And a lot of it had to do with the fact that this was just consuming some energy that I just needed to put somewhere else.

So maybe your energy is simply being consumed by maintaining things that have already finished blooming, which obviously this has. But imagine what might happen if you reclaimed your energy. I imagine some of you listening are probably right in this same circumstance. You're either just leaving a relationship or thinking of leaving a relationship, or maybe, like I say, it's a job or a friendship or anything really. But we're so afraid of letting go of things that we don't realize that we're actually making space for something new.

This week, I invite you to walk through your life in a way that you would walk through an August garden. You don't have to place judgment on anything, but just take a little bit of an inventory. Take a look at what's thriving, what's still growing, and what's just starting out. And what quietly is maybe asking for a little more attention. And then ask yourself, what has completely finished blooming? What am I continuing simply just because I've always done it? And where am I spending my energy maintaining something that isn't feeding me anymore? And maybe even a a bigger question is what might I have room to bloom if I stop feeding what's already finished?

And I'm not talking about doing anything incredibly radical. You don't have to quit your job or end your relationship or blow your whole life up. Because this isn't about reckless deconstruction, it's just about ruthless honesty and being able to look ourselves in the mirror and really listen to those inner callings that are whispering to us day to day. Because before we can intentionally create what comes next, we have to be willing to tell the truth about what is here now. And there may be something in your life that you're desperately trying to make bloom again, and maybe it will, because people surprise us and life has twists and turns.

There's a difference between nurturing something that is still alive and refusing to accept that maybe its season has ended.

Only you know which one you're doing. And this is what I mean when I talk about writing your own recipe for a life that feeds your soul. It isn't just about bubble baths and fresh flowers on your desk and booking the trip when you want to, because those things are really important and beautiful self-care. But intentional living also requires courage. And it requires asking, does the life I'm living actually reflect the woman I've become? Because here's the thing about deadheading your life. You don't remove the old bloom because it wasn't useful or beautiful, you remove it because you're making room for what's trying to bloom next.

So this week, just get curious. Walk through the garden of your life, notice what's flourishing, and celebrate the heck out of what's beautiful. Nurture and water what's growing well. And maybe plant something new, or have the courage to deadhead what's done. Because this life of yours is still yours. And there's absolutely no rule in life that says the next thing that blooms can't be the most beautiful thing you've grown yet.

There's one more piece of nature I keep thinking about, and I think it's pertinent here because I spend a lot of time out in the garden looking at the nature that surrounds me, and what I'm talking about is the butterfly. And we love the butterfly as a symbol of transformation, but we tend to skip over the rather inconvenient part in the middle. Because a caterpillar doesn't simply crawl into a chrysalis, take a little nap, grow some wings, and emerge looking fabulous. Metamorphosis is far more disruptive than that. Inside the chrysalis, much of the caterpillar's old larval tissue is actually broken down. And all along, hidden within that caterpillar, are a group of cells called imaginal discs, cells that carry the developmental instructions for structures of the butterfly that will emerge.

Maybe transformation sometimes feels like disorientation, precisely because the old structure just no longer fits, and the new one hasn't fully formed yet. And I love this thought. The caterpillar doesn't need to be taught how to become a butterfly, because the instructions were already inside of it. And maybe some of yours are too. Maybe reinvention isn't about becoming someone completely different, but finally creating enough space for the part of you that has been there all along to emerge. So maybe you don't need to know exactly what comes next. Perhaps for now, you only need the courage to stop insisting that you remain a caterpillar.

Deadhead what's finished, trust what's changing, and go make room for your wings.