Last week I wrote, "The Goodbye Season continues." I was wrong. It isn't continuing; it's exploding. My column about saying goodbye to my son sparked interest, but last week's column about saying goodbye to my dying mother ignited a fire. The column resonated because the truth is, we are all in a Goodbye Season. My stories aren't about my son and me or my mother and me. They were about your family, your loves, your children, your deaths. They are about you.

As your emails so clearly show: Goodbyes are not limited to a particular space, relationship or time. They are everywhere and they are always. Why? Why does it have to be this way? Why do we work so hard to find the right love relationship, or get the perfect job, or create an ideal home — or whatever it is we want so deeply — just to discover that we only get to stay on that delicious "Everything is Great and I'm Happy Plateau" for a few months or perhaps a few years, and then things begin their inevitable creep toward change. Why? Why does every radiant hello have to end in some kind of goodbye?

Because it is the nature of life. My mother came in as a helpless baby and she is going out as a helpless baby. In between, she was a strong, determined woman with an opinion on everything, an opinion with which you were much better off agreeing. She wrote stern, dense treatises on orthodox religion. She dressed formally, and her grooming was immaculate. But now, someone wipes her bottom and spoons pabulum into her baby-bird mouth. Now her hair, once a rigid Ann Landers helmet of brown, is a hopeless skelter of gray fuzz. She is completing the cycle of life.

It is no different with ideas that are radical when born, swell to popularity, and eventually fall to neglect when no one reads or discusses them. Those dusty books on library shelves once vibrated with power, and people clamored to check them out. Now they sit in silent testimony to the cycle of life.

And so it is with work. I know this all too well. Not just from personal experience, but from professional experience. In what seems another lifetime, I was a professional headhunter. All day, every day, I listened to corporate executives grumble about their people problems, and individuals bemoan the jobs they have, the jobs they want, and the jobs that got away. Here's what I learned from 11 years of headhunting: When you don't get what you want, take a deep breath and wait, because something different — something better — is coming. But here's the rub: You have to wait. You have to wait in the darkness. You have to wait in "The Place Between."

We all want safety. We want to choose the "right" career — the one in which we make more and more money and never get fired. We want the happy relationship that will last till death, the house that catastrophe can never touch, and the financial investments that only go up.

But safety, it turns out, is a paradox. To feel really safe, you first have to step out into the unknown, experience the fear, and discover for yourself that all is well. I can tell you for 10 pages or 10 hours that you are safe and loved, but until you feel it — feel it in the deepest place in your soul — you don't know it and certainly don't believe it. You have to step out into the space between here and there, between "Who I am" and "Who I could be," between "What I have" and "What I want," between "The job that pays the bills" and "The work I'm here to do." Nothing new can happen until you step into that empty space. Like Indiana Jones in "Raiders of the Lost Ark," you have to put one foot forward into the air and put it down firmly trusting that something somehow will prevent you from falling. And something will.

I have been in my "Place Between" for two years. In 2005, I closed my consulting business and threw out the stationery. To make sure the universe understood that I really meant it, I closed my corporate bank account. My consulting life — a life that had sustained me for 10 years — was over. But — and this is a very big but — there was no replacement. There was no new career, no new stationery and, scariest of all, no new income. I was in limbo — not the limbo the pope recently acknowledged was never there in the first place, but the very real limbo that every human being recognizes: The Place Between.

I waited in the darkness. I told Spirit every day in my soul journal that I trusted that I was guided and protected. That I trusted God to lead me to my perfect work. That I trusted that there was a perfect hello waiting for me at the end of my long goodbye. I regularly reminded Spirit that I took that "lilies of the field" quote seriously, and, although I certainly had my wilting moments (translation: hysterical 4 a.m. crying jags), I knew God would clothe me and feed me and keep a roof over my head.

God did all that. And more. I was led effortlessly to UPI's ReligionAndSpirituality.com, where I play in a sea of words, finding my voice and my message. And, unbeknownst to me, a California publisher was led effortlessly to these columns. Reaching across the continent, we've been talking about a book on the soul-rousing power of connecting with and listening to the wise voice within.

Last week they sent a contract. When I opened it, I knew my time in "The Place Between" had come to an end. I have my new work, my new stationery, my new bank account, and my new title. At long last, after being a teacher of the deaf, a special ed administrator, a data processing technician, a second shift supervisor, a television recruiter, a headhunter and a human resources consultant, I have my new career. After years of not knowing, I know. I am a writer.

— — —

Janet Conner, S.E. (Spiritual Explorer), is the author of the Spiritual Geography heart-healing series and is currently working on a new book, "Writing Down the Soul: How to Activate and Listen to the Extraordinary Voice Within," for Conari Press. The Spiritual Geography books are available through Amazon or Spiritual Geography. Tell Janet about your Goodbye Season and your experiences with divine dialogue at {email janetconner@tampabay.rr.com}janetconner@tampabay.rr.com{/email}.© copyright 2007 by Janet Conner