Life Stages & Transitions

The mental and relational challenges our clients face are often dependent on the stage of life they're in. In these articles, we explore how leaders in the field support their clients as they navigate transitions across the lifespan. Whether it's leaving home, changing careers, facing an empty nest, or entering retirement, each stage comes with unique challenges and opportunities. Join us as we explore how major changes across the lifespan can impact identity, relationships, mental health, and meaning-making.

Featured

Just This, Nothing Next

Facing Old Age with Trepidation and Grace

Far From Home

An Immigrant’s Search for Belonging
Sarah Jin
More Articles on Life Stages & Transitions

It’s never too late to change your story Read more

A woman in a life transition takes her son on an eventful road trip. Read more

According to Michael Gelb, a world-renowned speaker on innovative approaches to enhanced learning and author of How to Think like Leonardo da Vinci: Seven... Read more

Our heads may tell us that we need to embrace inevitable changes as we grow older, but our hearts often tell a different story. Read more

A new retiree discovers the elusive secret of the endless present. Read more

There’s something about healing from the deep emotional suffering that feels like death and rebirth—not the quick kind that some claim to receive in... Read more

Saturday Night Fever comes to the bar mitzvah. Read more

Reconnecting with old memories in a father's special place. Read more

Understanding your place in the great circle of life is often a matter of where you choose to look. Read more

The difficulty young people have leaving home is producing confusion amongst parents and their children. Read more

Barbara Graham

As the boomers discover the joys and sorrows of becoming grandparents, they're putting their own generational stamp on a role that's as ancient as parenthood. Read more

Esther Rothman

You think the toboggan ride of your 401(k) has been rough? A survivor of the Great Depression muses on what that era taught her about managing the unmanageable. Read more

Many of us struggle to achieve some balance between our work and the rest of our lies. But in today's world, living a more fulfilled life may actually require... Read more

We're living through a breathtaking realignment of our consciousness about money, no longer lulled by the ever-sweeter melodies played by the Pied Piper of our... Read more

April Lane Benson

Now that we've been frightened into prudence, our shopping habits have become more deliberate and fraught with anxiety. But with this new economic pressure... Read more

A father and son reflect on a life path that isn't about money Read more

Life in the empty nest can be humbling, exhilarating, and occasionally, just plain weird. Read more

A parentless woman recalls her childhood Christmas rituals. Read more

With the life expectancy of the elderly rising, today's Boomers, much maligned for their presumed selfishness, are facing a far more daunting challenge in... Read more

As they've aged, the Boomers have kept redefining previous generations' ideas about the stages of the life cycle. But while the pop bromide may insist that "50... Read more

From the May/June 1997 issue I have just completed my first, and very likely my last, close encounter with the fierce business that has occupied my... Read more

Every response, belief, action, and emotion can be seen as a wave of memory. The present is gauged by how much it joins or fails our memories. So what is the... Read more

Nydia Garcia-Preto

Immigration means learning to live in two worlds. Read more

From the July/August 1994 issue I HAD NEVER HEARD OF KURT COBAIN UNTIL THE OTHER day when he killed himself. Apparently, between suicide attempts, he had been... Read more

Eric E. McCollum, Ph.D.

A new best-seller turns old age into another version of youth. Read more

Howard and Arthur Waskow

We cannot get through. My father, brother and I huddle in the hall. Arthur says, "It's up to Dad." Dad blinks in pain, his hazel eyes filmy behind his... Read more

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