The Grief and the Joy Hiding Inside "Back to School"

The Grief and the Joy Hiding Inside "Back to School” (especially when it is early)

There's a particular ache that shows up this time of year (well generally in the midwest this  “ache” is a few weeks away - but here in SoCal we are moving into back to school), and it rarely gets named for what it is. There's also, right alongside the ache, there is a particular delight - new backpacks, fresh notebooks, a kid genuinely excited to see their friends - that doesn't always get named either.

We call it "getting back into routine." We call it "adjusting." We post the first-day-of-school photos and talk about how fast the summer went. (for us it was particularly fast as we are shifting the days of the school year). What we don't often say out loud is that transitions - even good ones, even "excited-for" ones - carry both loss and joy inside them at once. Every new season asks us to let go of the one before it, and to step toward something we're genuinely glad is coming.

I think about this a lot in grief and transition coaching. A transition isn't just the practical shift - new schedule, new backpack, new grade, new job, new chapter. It's an ending and a beginning happening in the same breath. The slower mornings end, and a kid who's finally ready for the bigger classroom arrives. A particular version of a child ends, and a new one - one you're excited to meet - begins, sometimes overnight. For parents, for teachers, for anyone whose year bends around September (even in early August), there's a quiet mourning and a real gladness both tucked inside the busyness of "getting back to it."

Transitions are grief and joy standing in the same doorway.

That's not a contradiction - it’s kind of the whole point. You can be genuinely excited for what's ahead and still feel the loss of what's ending. Both are true. Neither cancels the other out. If grief is unexpressed joy - love with nowhere left to go - then a transition is often the moment that love needs somewhere new to land, and hasn't found it yet.

The joy deserves the same attention we give the grief. It's easy to let excitement pass by unspoken - that pride, that hope, folded quietly into logistics instead of said out loud. We name the loss because it's harder to see. But the excitement is just as real, and it's worth saying plainly, not just implying through a first-day photo: I am genuinely happy about this. Naming the joy on purpose - not as a footnote to the grief, but as its own true thing - is part of what lets both live in you at once instead of one quietly outweighing the other.

A few ways to move through a transition instead of just through it:

• Name the ending, not just the beginning. Before you fill out the calendar, take a moment to say what's actually over. "The slow mornings are done." "That stage of parenting a five-year-old is done." Naming it doesn't make it sadder - it makes it real, which is usually a relief.
• Name the excitement just as directly. Say what you're actually looking forward to, in specific terms - not "it'll be good for them" but "I'm excited to see who she becomes in that classroom." Give the joy its own sentence instead of folding it into logistics.
• Expect the ambush - in both directions. Transitions often don't hit in the big moments (the first drop-off) but in small, unguarded ones - a wave of grief while folding away last year's too-small shoes, or a wave of pure delight watching them run for the bus. Let both catch you without judgment.
• Give the in-between its own space. You don't have to be fully in the old season or fully in the new one right away. There's a threshold in between, and it's allowed to take longer than a weekend.
• Ask what wants to come with you. Not everything from the last season needs to be left behind. Some rhythms, some closeness, some ways of being together are worth carrying forward on purpose.

Whatever transition you're standing in this month - a child heading back to class, (or to college) a schedule resetting, a life stage quietly closing - it's worth pausing long enough to say both out loud: what you're grieving, and what you're genuinely excited about. You don't have to pick one, and neither one needs to stay quiet to make room for the other.

If you're in a season of transition and could use a companion for it, I'd be honored to walk alongside you — through transition coaching, or simply a conversation.