Relational Field Theory

Standing on the Precipice

There are seasons in a life when the ground shifts under your feet, not because you did anything wrong, but because the world around you has reached its limit. I’ve been standing in one of those seasons lately—one of those quiet, trembling thresholds where the past and the future both feel close enough to touch, and neither one feels entirely safe.

It’s a strange thing to recognize that the work you once held with both hands no longer fits the shape of who you’re becoming. Stranger still to feel the guilt rise up, as if letting go of a season means betraying the people who lived inside it with you. I’ve carried that guilt like a stone these last few days. I’ve turned it over, examined it, tried to understand why it feels so heavy.

The truth is simple and devastating: some of the work I’ve done mattered because it kept people alive. And stepping back from that kind of work feels like walking away from a burning building while others are still inside. But I also know this—staying in a structure that can no longer hold me doesn’t save anyone. It only buries me alongside the rubble.

So I’m standing here on this precipice, grieving what I can’t carry forward, and honoring the part of me that tried so hard to hold the whole world together. I meant every moment of it. I meant the care, the urgency, the late‑night messages, the impossible hope. I meant the belief that we could build something safer if we just kept showing up.

But seasons end. Not because the work stops mattering, but because we outgrow the containers that once held us. And as painful as it is, I’m learning that letting go is not the same as abandoning. Sometimes it’s the only way to keep moving toward the world we’re trying to build.

There’s a melancholy hope in that—soft, quiet, but real. A hope that healing doesn’t always look like staying. A hope that truth can coexist with forward motion. A hope that we can name the trauma without letting it define the horizon.

I don’t know exactly what comes next. But I know this: we heal by telling the truth, by grieving what’s ending, and by stepping into what’s beginning with as much honesty as we can bear. This precipice isn’t a failure. It’s a doorway. And even with the ache in my chest, I’m choosing to walk through it.