Death Is But One of My Names: Learning to Embrace Change

What happens when death keeps showing up — in books, in cards, in music — and you finally stop to listen to what it’s really saying?

Death is but one of my names. My real name is Change.

This past week, I’ve had death arise in a variety of ways. I started reading a book series revolving around a woman who can see spirits and helps them to move on. I’ve pulled the Apocalypse card from The Wild Unknown Archetypes deck. A character on a TV show died. I’ve been drawn toward remembering those I’ve known who have passed. As I started writing this, the song Born to Die by Shaboozey came on.

It felt like the universe was trying to get my attention.

And I’ve learned — when something keeps showing up, it’s worth pausing to ask what it’s really pointing to.

When Death Keeps Knocking

There can be a lot of fear around death. Losing loved ones. Ending of relationships. Closing of chapters. Our personal death in this lifetime.

For myself, I can say that I’ve never feared physically dying. Not stemming from a belief that I’m invincible, but from a place of disconnect from my life. From a longing for relief that the pain I carried would be released.

I was the tortured soul on the inside while appearing as an empathic ray of sunshine on the outside.

Physical death has almost felt familiar while living has always felt uncomfortable. And the wild thing is that life always includes death. In lots of ways. You cannot have one without the other.
And while I was okay with leaving this life, I have disliked death as its true name: change.

The Thing I Actually Fear

Growing up, I avoided change as much as possible in the ways I thought I had control over. Thought being the key word since the only true constant is change.

If I thought any kind of relationship was going to change, I’d pull away first. I’d find ways to disappear or blow them up so that I could walk away angry rather than hold the pain.
I wouldn’t watch the last episode of series finales. It took me 8 years after Psych ended to finally watch the last episode. I hated endings — whether from fear that they’d be disappointing or the ache of it no longer continuing.

I held tight to perfectionism and tied myself in knots trying to predict life while still feeling like I was getting shocked by the unexpected.

I felt so out of control internally that I did everything I could to control my external, which actually created more external chaos that then added to what was happening within. It was a cycle I spent many years in.

The Decision to Flow Instead

Until I decided that I didn’t want to exist in that cycle anymore. I didn’t want to fight change since it always inevitably happened. I wanted to flow with it. I wanted to learn to regulate my emotions, feel safe in my body, and dance with life rather than trying to control it.

I still find myself on occasion wanting to fight the flow rather than be guided by it. And during these times, I turn toward the tools I’ve gathered on my journey.

I journal. I talk to myself with my hand over my heart. I move my body. I create.

These aren’t just practices — they’re the way I come back to myself when change feels like too much. When the ending is arriving faster than I’m ready for. When something I loved is shifting into something I don’t yet recognize.

What the Synchronicities Were Saying

I’m not sure if there’s more to what all of these synchronicities are pointing to, or if it was simply to inspire this post.

It’s what makes this life magical — the beauty of witnessing all these messages and flowing with them rather than fighting them, or being so lost in my head that I don’t see them at all.

When we can stay present enough to notice what keeps showing up, life becomes a conversation rather than something happening to us. The cards, the songs, the storylines — they’re not coincidences. They’re invitations.

The Invitation

If you can truly embody change in all its forms, you master this human experience. I know I won’t achieve that in this lifetime — I’m not meant to — but I am devoted to doing the best I can. One day at a time. Minute to minute. That devotion is its own kind of love letter.

For death is but the beginning of something new. And change is the invitation.

So wherever change is finding you right now — in the ending, the relationship shifting, the chapter quietly closing — I hope you can soften, just a little. Let it name itself. Let it move through you.