”The moment I wake up, before I put on my makeup, I say a little prayer for you.”

I start every day with a prayer then a meditation before coming into the day. This gives attention toward how I begin my days. You may also have a morning routine, but how do we tend to our ending?

It's important to think about endings to complete a process to maximize your sense of completeness. Sometimes that's us starting to pay attention to our loved ones who are getting older and who may die.

A place to start tending to endings is by looking at the endings in front of you right now. That's the practice that helps us be with the bigger endings of life.

My dog teaches me about endings. For example, when I finish video calls she just jumps up and runs to the door. I, on the other hand, I can get caught up sitting at the computer and not leave for a while. While sitting, I get stuck and suddenly it doesn't feel like my call has ended.

This really weighed me down last week, when I taught a class and I had my negative self judgments rolling and rolling around in my head. So I followed my dog’s lead, I jumped up and ran downstairs to talk with my partner.

Then I did something that has been a useful ending practice for me: I light a fire either inside or outside. That time it was a fire outside in the backyard, other times it's inside with a candle.

I invite you also to think about how you are tending to your endings these days. What are the endings in your life that need a little bit more attention? If it’s your workday, do you want a little chime to ring as you mark the end. Or maybe a little journaling at the end of a conversation with a friend.

Tend to those endings because those are excellent moments of practice for us to be able to tend to the larger transitions in our life.