Life Is in the Transitions

Life Is in the Transitions Plot Summary

Introduction

The phone call came without warning. "I've been let go," my friend whispered, her voice cracking with emotion. After fifteen years at the same company, her position had been eliminated in a corporate restructuring. Beyond the practical concerns of finding new employment, she faced deeper questions: Who am I without this job? What comes next? How do I rebuild my sense of purpose? As we talked through the night, I realized how unprepared most of us are for life's inevitable transitions. Life transitions—whether chosen or thrust upon us—represent some of our most challenging and potentially transformative experiences. These pivotal moments disrupt our sense of identity, belonging, and purpose, forcing us to confront fundamental questions about who we are and what matters most. Yet despite their universal nature, we often face these transitions feeling isolated and unprepared. Through powerful stories of people who have successfully navigated major life changes, we discover that transitions follow recognizable patterns and can be approached with practical strategies. By understanding these patterns and developing the right tools, we can transform periods of upheaval into opportunities for growth, meaning, and even joy.

Chapter 1: The Nonlinear Life: Navigating Change in Modern Times

Christy Moore always hated school. "I hated it from the very first day," she said. "I would pretend to vomit at the bus stop. My mom got to the point where she'd make me show her where I'd gotten sick in order for me to stay home." A tomboy with no interest in girly things, Christy became a rebel in high school. She started dating a football player, became a cheerleader, and played hooky. Then, the summer after her junior year, she became pregnant. She told her boyfriend Roy upfront, "I'm having the baby. If you're gonna be in our lives, I'll keep it. If not, I'll put it up for adoption." Roy was offended; of course he would stick around. Six weeks later, they were married. He dropped out of college and got a job at Kentucky Fried Chicken. Christy dropped out of high school. "I thought this not only ruins our lives, this completely changes the trajectory of our lives," she said. "I really had no desire to have kids, I was gonna be a really good aunt. But I instantly went from I'm never gonna be a mom to I'm going to be the best stay-at-home mom ever." In the next eight years, Christy and Roy had three children. He worked multiple jobs in fast food; she took a paper route from three to six in the morning. They eventually bought a small Japanese restaurant, but Roy's health issues tumbled them into medical debt. Then something unthinkable happened: during toddler time at the public library, exhausted and pregnant with her second child, Christy grabbed the nearest book—Wuthering Heights. "I didn't understand half of what I read, so I had to read it twice." When she finished, she moved on to To Kill a Mockingbird. "That book changed my life," she said. Every Tuesday and Thursday, Christy would go to the library and slowly make her way through the shelf of classics. And there, in that chair, she found her answer: she would go back to school. On the day she dropped her third child at preschool, Christy drove straight to Armstrong Atlantic State University. "I cried the entire way. What have I done? I'm a stay-at-home mom. I sat through my first class, in psychology, and thought, I have no idea what this man is talking about." But she persisted, studying at red lights, even at Disney World. Four years later, she earned a bachelor's degree in respiratory therapy, followed by a master's, and eventually a PhD. The traditional life path—with its predictable progression through education, career, marriage, children, and retirement—is increasingly rare. Instead, we're living what could be called "nonlinear lives," where major life events happen out of sequence, overlap, or repeat. As Christy reflected, "Although my life is completely out of order, if I had done it in the expected order, I wouldn't have the husband I have, the children I have, or the life that I have, which I adore." Her journey from high-school dropout to PhD exemplifies how embracing life's unexpected turns can lead to profound fulfillment when we remain open to new possibilities and willing to rewrite our stories.

Chapter 2: Lifequakes: When Disruption Transforms Your Identity

Lisa Ludovici was born in Pittsburgh to two alcoholics who divorced when she was three. "I feel like I raised myself," she said. "My dad didn't pay any child support. My mother knocked down my door when I was twelve and said, 'Get a job!' I said, 'I'm twelve. What can I do?' She said, 'Go be a mommy's helper.'" On top of that, Lisa had seventeen migraines a month beginning the day her father moved out. "I would be up all night, screaming, projectile vomiting, head in the toilet, clawing at my eyes trying to rip them out." Despite these challenges, Lisa graduated from Penn State, worked as a location scout, and eventually landed a job at America Online. Eleven reorganizations, nine bosses, three moves, one failed marriage, and seventeen years later, Lisa was a powerhouse internet ad executive in Manhattan with prestigious clients. But she was working fourteen hours a day, still suffering from migraines, and hated her boss who belittled employees. She cried every night at her desk. One day, Lisa overheard colleagues talking about her relentless drive and all-around sourness. She walked home, calculated her savings, and realized if she eliminated her cable, stopped eating out, and bought no more clothes, she could hold on for eighteen months. She quit the next day. Two weeks later, watching public-access television (she'd cut the cable), Lisa saw a woman speaking about the power of the subconscious. She tracked the woman down and after a phone call decided, "This is what I'm going to do with my life. I'm going to help people live better." She enrolled in coaching school in Santa Fe. On her tenth day in class, suffering from a migraine, the director hypnotized her and walked her through a guided exercise to rediscover her unsick, unpained self. "That was the very last day I ever had a migraine," Lisa said. Two months later, Lisa entered hypnotherapy school. A decade later, she was the leading certified medical hypnotist in New York City, working with patients facing Parkinson's, cancer, and traumatic brain injuries. She was hired by the VA to treat Vietnam vets still suffering from gunshot wounds fifty years after the war. "I'm the first hypnotist to be hired by the United States government to work in the world's largest healthcare system, and we published work showing a 50 percent success rate eradicating chronic pain." These profound disruptions—what might be called "lifequakes"—are forceful bursts of change that lead to periods of upheaval, transition, and renewal. Like earthquakes, they can devastate our foundations, but they also create opportunities for rebuilding. The average person experiences three to five lifequakes in their lifetime, and they come in different forms: voluntary or involuntary, personal or collective. What matters isn't just the disruption itself, but how we respond to it—whether we choose to transition through it, as Lisa did, transforming from corporate ad executive to healer, completely reshaping her identity and purpose in the process.

Chapter 3: The ABCs of Meaning: Agency, Belonging, and Cause

Christian Picciolini was born to Italian immigrants in Chicago. He felt like an outsider growing up, watching other kids through the window while he stayed inside with his grandparents. "I was lonely for the first fourteen years of my life," he said. When he was fourteen, standing in an alley smoking a joint, a car screeched to a halt. A man with a shaved head grabbed the joint from Christian's lips, smacked him, and said, "That's what the Communists and Jews want you to do. You're Italian. Your ancestors were great warriors and thinkers and artists. It's something to be proud of." That man was Clark Martell, founder of the Chicago Area Skinheads. Overnight, Christian became a zealot, tattooing his body with swastikas and participating in gang attacks. "For the first time in my life I had purpose," he said. "And that purpose was saving the world." When Martell went to prison, Christian became the leader of America's neo-Nazis, opening branches across the country and appearing on CNN at seventeen. At nineteen, after performing in Germany, he watched as skinheads rioted. "It was at that moment when I started to recognize the impact of my lyrics." Back in Chicago, after a violent confrontation with Black teenagers, Christian had an epiphany. While beating one of them, "I connected with his eye. And I thought: This could have been my brother, my mother, my father. It was my first moment of empathy." Running a record store that sold various music genres, he began interacting with people from different backgrounds. He fell in love, had a baby, and realized his son "could be manipulated, and maybe I had been, too." He began withdrawing from the movement, eventually losing his livelihood, family, and community. For five years, he sank into depression and rarely left home. Finally, a friend pushed him to apply for a tech job at IBM. His first assignment was at the high school he'd been kicked out of for attacking an African American security guard. Recognizing the guard, Mr. Holmes, Christian approached him and apologized. "He told me he forgave me and asked me to forgive myself. And he encouraged me to tell my story." Christian went on to generate a quarter billion dollars in sales for IBM and eventually co-founded Life After Hate, an organization helping former extremists transition out of violence. When asked what shape represents his life, he chose a bowl. "A bowl is a place for people to spill their guts into... It's the place I help provide today, where you hold people in your hands and help them feel like they belong." Through hundreds of life stories, a pattern emerges revealing three essential ingredients that give our lives meaning: Agency (the ability to control our destiny), Belonging (connection to others), and Cause (dedication to something larger than ourselves). These "ABCs of meaning" correspond to three personal narratives we all carry: our "me story" (where we're the hero), our "we story" (where we're part of a community), and our "thee story" (where we serve something greater). Each of us tends to prioritize one of these elements, creating different "shapes" for our lives. Christian's journey shows how someone can transform from seeking belonging in a hate group to finding deeper meaning by helping others belong in healthier ways.

Chapter 4: Shape-Shifting: Rebalancing Life's Core Elements

Jamie Levine remembers his childhood in Worcester, Massachusetts, as a time of bliss. "No divorce, no relatives died. I was happy-go-lucky," he said. There were tensions—his dad's mill went out of business and his father had to reinvent himself as a florist—but it hardly derailed him. Tall, handsome, and ambitious, Jamie expected to go to Harvard. When he was turned down, it was "the first time I remember, emotionally, thinking, Damn, I did not get what I wanted." What he wanted to be was ultra-rich. He went to Brandeis, majored in economics, and later earned an MBA at Wharton. Jamie was hired by Goldman Sachs. "It was my ticket," he said. "Finally I felt redemption for what happened to my dad and for getting turned down from Harvard." He plunged in, worked around the clock, and started climbing. "I totally drank the Kool-Aid. I was happy to be on the treadmill, and if somebody just pressed the button higher, I was going to run faster." He transferred to London, married a junior associate, Rebecca; they got pregnant and bought an expensive house in Chelsea. "The upward trajectory continued," he said. Then Jamie and Rebecca went for their eight-week scan. Their baby had a hole in its abdominal wall that allowed its intestines to escape. Scarlett was born without a third of her intestine, a condition so rare even top doctors in London hadn't seen it. She remained in the hospital for ten months. Every night, for the rest of her life, she would need an IV to survive. At first, Jamie tried to keep up his pace, going to work at dawn and visiting the hospital until midnight. He made partner a few months after Scarlett was born. But everything else was imploding. Rebecca was overwhelmed, their marriage was falling apart, and Scarlett's liver was failing. Then an email came from America about a doctor who had found a way to give kids intravenous nutrition without destroying their livers. The cocktail worked, and the family moved to Boston. Jamie commuted to the Goldman office in New York. But the strain proved too great, and eventually, he was let go. "So, um, I got fired," he said. "It really forced me to reexamine myself." He was out of work for a year before taking a job at a smaller biotech firm. He changed his leadership style—working closely with employees, being sensitive to their personal lives, encouraging family time. He and Rebecca went to counseling. "We had to decide, were we going to separate or stay together? And staying together meant making our relationship a bigger priority." This process of rebalancing the relative weight we give to agency, belonging, and cause when our lives are upended might be called "shape-shifting." Jamie's life, once tilted heavily toward his own achievement (agency), became more balanced with greater focus on relationships (belonging). Shape-shifting happens naturally during transitions as we adjust our priorities in response to life's challenges. Some people shift from agency to belonging when they leave high-powered careers to focus on family. Others move from belonging to cause when personal tragedy inspires them to help others. These shifts aren't failures but necessary adaptations that help us find new sources of meaning when old ones no longer serve us.

Chapter 5: The Transition Tool Kit: Seven Steps to Renewal

Fraidy Reiss was the second youngest of six in an ultra-Orthodox Jewish family in Brooklyn. Her father was "extremely violent and abusive," so her mother raised the children alone. At eighteen, Fraidy was put into the marriage pool. When her first arranged match confessed he'd tried marijuana, she turned him down. Her next match was a chain-smoker with dozens of violations for reckless driving. Because Fraidy had spent her "one reject card," she agreed to marry him. Six weeks later, they were husband and wife. He threatened to kill her on their wedding night, describing in graphic detail how he would strangle her. Though he never actually harmed her, the threats and menace were nonstop. Fraidy spoke to his father, who was offended. She spoke to her mother, who walked out of the room. When Fraidy was twenty-seven, a friend slipped her the name of a therapist outside the community. The therapist used the expression "domestic violence" and said Fraidy might be eligible for a restraining order. "It was a mind-boggling experience," Fraidy said. "I went home and thought, At least I'm not crazy." Fraidy became the first person in the Orthodox Jewish community in Lakewood, New Jersey, to get a restraining order. But the next day, the rabbi sent a lawyer, and she was hauled before a judge to retract her claim. She stayed with her husband for five more years, secretly saving money in a cereal box. When she'd saved $40,000, she enrolled at Rutgers University. "You're not going to college," her husband told her. "What exactly are you going to do to stop me?" she replied. Soon, she stopped wearing her wig. Her mother sat shiva for her, the Jewish ritual of mourning the dead. When her husband threatened to break into their bedroom one Shabbat, Fraidy drove the children to the mall and watched a movie. The neighbors were horrified. When they returned, her husband was gone. "I realized this was my chance, so I changed the locks," she said. Fraidy filed for divorce, graduated from Rutgers with a 4.0 average, was elected valedictorian, and got a job as a reporter. A few years later, she founded an organization that helps women escape forced marriages, calling it Unchained at Last. Through extensive research, a pattern emerges showing that transitions follow a nonlinear path with three phases: the long goodbye (leaving the past behind), the messy middle (exploring new possibilities), and the new beginning (embracing a fresh identity). Unlike previous models that suggested these phases must happen in strict sequence, people move through them in highly individual ways. Some start in the middle and work outward; others move back and forth between phases. What's more, transitions take longer than we expect—an average of five years. Given that we go through three to five major transitions in our lives, that means we spend nearly half our adult lives in transition. Fraidy's journey demonstrates how a transition that begins involuntarily can become voluntary as we take agency over our response.

Chapter 6: Accepting Change: The Power of Emotional Awareness

Charles Gosset was born in Oklahoma City into a close-knit family filled with anger, rage, and what he called "isms," including alcoholism. "I loved school," he said. "I loved learning. I was consistently in the top 1 percent of nationally standardized tests." But he also felt disconnected from the world. "I remember feeling from the age of five that something was off." As he entered adolescence, Charles became depressed and aggressive. He turned to psychiatrists and preachers for help, to little avail. "Then I found alcohol at fifteen and the clouds parted. Everything was possible." Charles drifted in and out of relationships and at nineteen attempted suicide by swallowing a bottle of pills. Just before he passed out, he visited a classmate he had a crush on. She called for help. Several years later, they were married. Christy became an elementary school music teacher; Charles became a city forester. They had two daughters. But Charles continued to drink, downing a pint of whiskey every afternoon between work and home. Finally, Christy took the children and moved out. This time he checked into a treatment facility. "While I was there a word came up on the screen during one of the sessions," he said. "The word was acceptance. I'd heard the word so many times in meetings before, but this time I really thought about it. I had been tumbling down a cliff, and now, for the first time, I stopped. I had to accept, at that moment, that my life had become unmanageable. That I was an alcoholic, and, lo and behold, that an alcoholic can't drink successfully. Alcohol was not my solution; it was my problem." Charles completed the program, but Christy remained skeptical, so he was banned from seeing his children. "Rightfully so," he said. He lived in a sober house, mowed lawns, and started the painful process of finding his true self. "I was looking for an authentic connection to who I am," he said. "I wanted to serve." He started volunteering with at-risk youth, counseling people in recovery, and helping schools identify budding addicts. He became a certified life coach. Eventually, Christy forgave Charles and welcomed him back to their family. The first tool in navigating transitions is accepting the reality of your situation and identifying the emotions that come with it. Research shows that fear (27%), sadness (19%), and shame (15%) are the most common emotions people struggle with during transitions. Each requires different coping strategies. For fear, many people create a mental equation where fear of the future becomes less than fear of the present. For sadness, some find comfort in relationships or radical honesty. For shame, the key is often taking action that directly confronts the source of shame. Charles's breakthrough came when he finally accepted his alcoholism and the damage it had caused—not just intellectually, but emotionally. This acceptance became the foundation for rebuilding his life.

Chapter 7: Creating Anew: Finding Purpose Through Expression

Zachary Herrick was the premature child of African American crack addicts in Kansas City who was adopted by white parents. With various learning issues from birth, Zach found school difficult and unappealing. After graduation, he worked in construction until his father, a Vietnam veteran, suggested he join the army. "I loved it from the very first day," he said. "I made the most friends I'd ever had." He was transferred to Hawaii for training, then deployed to Afghanistan. Three months into deployment, Zach was on a mission in the Arghandab valley when his unit was ambushed. "We started to engage the enemy. They were about thirty meters away. There was this one guy, sitting outside a mud hut. I could look into his eyes. I mean, it was a close fight. Boom! Then I got hit by a sniper rifle—or an AK—I'm not sure. It felt like a firecracker going off in my mouth." The medic rushed over, his eyes widening at the sight of Zach's injury. "He starts shoving my face full of gauze. 'Just keep awake,' he says." Zach was airlifted to Walter Reed medical center, where he discovered the devastating truth: his face had been shot off. There was virtually nothing left of his oral cavity, lips, nostrils, and mandible. In the coming years, he would have thirty surgeries, including sewing his tongue back on, inserting a new jawbone, and reconstructing his face. He ate exclusively by feeding tube and was confined to a wheelchair from losing so much weight. "It was a long road," he said. "Not only physical, but emotional. I basically couldn't function." He made a plan to take his life. But then something unexpected happened. As Zach began to recover physically, he decided to take up cooking. "My mom encouraged me. 'You like eating,' she said, 'you should make your own food.'" He learned to make lamb chops, baked chicken, grilled salmon. "I love it all, I love experimenting, I love creating things." But cooking wasn't the only creative outlet he embraced. "Writing really helped me," he said. "I started at Walter Reed. I learned how to identify things that were difficult for me to say or get out of my head, but I could put them on paper." Then he started to paint. "Flowers, trees, stuff like that. But I'm an infantryman, what I really enjoyed was exploding paint on the canvas. That was exciting! It was aggressive in a way that wasn't damaging another human being." A remarkable pattern emerges in transition stories: during periods of upheaval, people often turn to creativity as a healing force. They cook, write, paint, dance, garden—creating something new at the very moment their lives feel most chaotic. This creative impulse serves multiple purposes: it provides structure during unstructured times, offers a sense of agency when life feels out of control, and becomes a laboratory for experimenting with new identities. For Zach, creativity became a bridge between his old identity as a soldier and his new identity as a civilian. "Instead of taking down the enemy with a gun, now I take down the enemy with a strong vocabulary or a strong voice," he explained. "I'm still Zach, but now I'm Zach, the creative guy. I'm still strong physically, but now I can shift to other ways of being. I'm the full 360."

Summary

Life transitions are not the exception but the rule in our modern world. Research reveals that we experience an average of 3-5 major "lifequakes" during our adult years, with each transition taking approximately five years to navigate. This means we spend nearly half our lives in some state of transition—making the ability to navigate these periods not just helpful but essential to our wellbeing. The stories of Christy Moore, Lisa Ludovici, Christian Picciolini, Jamie Levine, Fraidy Reiss, Charles Gosset, and Zachary Herrick demonstrate that transitions, while often painful, contain the seeds of profound renewal. The most powerful insight from these stories is that transitions are a skill we can master. They follow a pattern—accepting our emotions, marking the change through rituals, shedding old mindsets, creating new expressions, seeking wisdom from others, launching our new selves, and telling a fresh story. But unlike previous models that suggested rigid stages, transitions are nonlinear and deeply personal. Each of us has different strengths and challenges in navigating change. What matters most is finding balance among the three pillars of meaning—agency, belonging, and cause—and being willing to "shape-shift" as life demands. When we embrace transitions as opportunities for growth rather than disruptions to be endured, we discover that our most challenging moments often become the foundation for our most authentic and fulfilling lives.

About Author

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Bruce Feiler

BRUCE FEILER is one of America’s most popular voices on contemporary life. He is the author of six consecutive New York Times bestsellers; the presenter of two prime-time series on PBS; and the inspiration for the drama COUNCIL OF DADS on NBC. Bruce’s two TED Talks have been viewed more than two million times. Employing a firsthand approach to his work, Bruce is known for living the experiences he writes about. His work combines timeless wisdom with timely knowledge turned into practical, positive messages that allow people to live with more meaning, passion, and joy. His new book, LIFE IS IN THE TRANSITIONS: Mastering Change at Any Age, describes his journey across America, collecting hundreds of life stories, exploring how we can navigate the growing number of life transitions with greater purpose and skill. For more than a decade, Bruce has explored the intersection of families, relationships, health, and happiness. His book THE SECRETS OF HAPPY FAMILIES collects best practices from some of the country’s most creative minds. The book was featured on World News, GMA, and TODAY and excerpted in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and Parade. THE COUNCIL OF DADS describes how, faced with one of life’s greatest challenges, he asked six friends to support his young daughters. The book was profiled in PEOPLE, USA Today, and Time and was the subject of a CNN documentary hosted by Dr. Sanjay Gupta.Since 2001, Bruce has been one of the country’s preeminent thinkers about the role of spirituality in contemporary life. WALKING THE BIBLE describes his 10,000-mile journey retracing the Five Books of Moses through the desert. (“An instant classic,” Washington Post). The book spent a year and a half on the New York Times bestseller list and has been translated into fifteen languages.ABRAHAM recounts his search for the shared ancestor of the monotheistic religions. (“Exquisitely written,” Boston Globe). WHERE GOD WAS BORN describes his trek visiting biblical sites throughout Israel, Iraq, and Iran. (“Bruce Feiler is a real-life Indiana Jones,” Atlanta Journal-Constitution). AMERICA’S PROPHET is the groundbreaking story of the influence of Moses on American history. THE FIRST LOVE STORY is a journey across four continents exploring how Adam and Eve shaped our deepest feelings about relationships. (“A miraculous thing—the literary equivalent of breathing new life into a figure of clay,” New York Times Book Review; “Feiler’s best work yet,” Publishers Weekly).A native of Savannah, Georgia, Bruce lives in Brooklyn with wife, Linda Rottenberg, and their identical twin daughters.

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