After the Map: What Endings Actually Ask of Us
Why resilience isn’t enough—and what it takes to stay with what’s actually ending
The leaders I’m working with right now aren’t struggling because they lack resilience.
Most have more than enough.
They’ve absorbed shock after shock. Reorganizations. Market shifts. The slow erosion of structures that used to hold.
They’re still standing.
But something quieter is happening underneath that resilience.
Something that isn’t being named.
In my last conversation with JJ Vega, we went further into that layer.
Not the disruption itself—but what it asks of us.
Because what’s ending right now isn’t just external.
It’s internal.
Ways of orienting. Ways of making sense. Ways of knowing who we are in relation to the systems we’ve been part of.
And most of us are trying to move forward without fully registering what’s actually over.
Resilience helps you carry what’s happening.
It doesn’t help you feel it.
And without that, something gets skipped.
JJ named a different capacity:
Permeability.
Not a wall. A membrane.
Something that allows you to stay in contact with what’s happening—without either shutting it out or being overwhelmed by it.
We also talked about what sits between endings and beginnings.
The Neutral Zone.
Not as a concept—but as something lived.
Disorienting. Unresolved. Often avoided.
And necessary.
If you want to hear the full conversation, it’s here:
Near the end, JJ said something that’s worth sitting with.
That these kinds of moments don’t just ask more from us.
They offer something.
Not an upgrade.
A return.
Where might you be skipping an ending right now —
and what might need to be put down before something new can begin?
Some of you have asked what it looks like to actually stay with a question like that, without rushing to a resolution.
I’ve been using a simple Field Notes practice with clients for this.
Not a framework. Just a way of staying in contact with what’s real a little longer.
If you want that, you can find it here.