The truth is that although endings always involve us in pain, whatever comes into our lives and transforms us is to be celebrated. We don’t curse the person who brings us a bouquet of flowers because a few days later the flowers wilt and we have to throw them away. We celebrate the gift and think it is appropriate to say, “Thank you.” We’re glad to have had a chance to enjoy the bouquet as long as it lasted….
Whenever a relationship is given to us, we need to be grateful and rejoice. Even when a relationship ends, we should celebrate the fact that something has been exchanged that has been of value to both people. When we come to the end of our journey together, we should acknowledge that we are being delivered to the next place in our lives much more safe or whole, more at ease, or more expanded and complete as persons than we were when we entered the relationship. The selves who made the union are in much better condition at its end, even though the suffering and confusion of the ending often make this difficult to see.
If we look only at the relationship, then we must grieve; but if we look at the individuals who loved one another, then we can celebrate. Along with saying that the relationship has ended — something is gone — we should tell ourselves that something wonderful has been accomplished. What we have at the end of a relationship is two transformed human beings, people who have changed so much that they are now ready for the next miraculous stage of their personal development.
— Daphne Rose Kingma, Coming Apart,, p. 54-55