Q for Quitting
On living a devoted life from A to Z
While others celebrated the new year and made big plans for 2026, I sat with my journal, retracing my journey through 2025. I spent hours drawing a timeline of planetary transits, connecting pivotal turning points over the past 46 years.
One theme stood out: life is not just about building – it is also about quitting.
In 2025, I quit many things.
Gluttony. No more refined carbohydrates, sugar, ultra-processed foods. No more using food as an escape route.
Consumerism. I stopped buying things I didn’t need, or passing time with window shopping.
Social media overload. I unsubscribed from accounts and channels that no longer resonated.
And most significantly, workaholism. No more measuring my worth by productivity, income, and status. No more putting work above my health, joy, and relationships.
All these quits became possible only after I walked away from a 20-year career in hospital pharmacy three and a half years ago.
The word quit came from the Latin quietus, meaning free, clear, calm, to rest.
Its earliest usage was to describe someone being discharged from a debt or claim, released from obligation or penalty, becoming free from something binding. Yet somewhere along the way, this original meaning got lost. Societies were geared toward growth and materialism. Perseverance, grit, and speed were celebrated.
Quitting became synonymous with giving up, even failure – when its root was always about liberation.
What if quitting is neither weakness nor failure, but an act of devotion that carries wisdom?
When I decided to leave my pharmacy career, I did not know what to expect.
The transition wasn’t as relaxing and rosy as I’d imagined. Despite having good intentions and resources, I was constantly worried about my future, struggling to settle into my newfound freedom.
A few weeks after my resignation, my father received the diagnosis of metastatic lung cancer.
The news was devastating. But I was also grateful. The timing aligned in a way that allowed me to be fully present supporting my parents. The future I’d been worrying about suddenly mattered less than the present reality I was actually in.
Without the daily busyness, I could finally sit still, breathe, and feel into my feelings.
Quitting gave me space to notice what I’d been running from. I started seeing patterns I’d been unconscious of for decades – how I apologised before speaking, how I said yes to things I didn’t want to do then resented people for asking, how my body tensed every time certain emails arrived.
What had been overlooked or buried could finally surface. Not just my fear, shame, guilt, and anger, but also my dreams, desires, interests, and passions. Quitting helped me remember who I was before putting on masks and performing.
Over the following years, I found myself walking away more readily. A freelance project that kept hitting the same walls. A consultancy job that was a mismatch. Relationships and environments that had run their course. The consumption habits that didn’t nourish the body, mind, and soul.
From the outside, it might have looked like I was giving up too quickly, becoming impatient, or lacking determination. But the truth is: I was learning to trust what my body knew before my mind could understand or justify it.
Quitting taught me I could survive uncertainty. That fear of ‘what if’ had kept me trapped in other areas of life, too. Once I’d walked through the fear of leaving pharmacy, every quit felt less terrifying – and became a redirection to new beginnings and possibilities.
But quitting is not easy.
It asks us to acknowledge that the status quo no longer supports our vitality. To break up from the comfort of familiarity and relief. To face the hidden, tender parts of ourselves that are desperate to be seen. To stand in our truth regardless of others’ reactions and expectations.
The act of cutting ties – whether with something as significant as a career or something as small as sugar – always feels like a little death. There is fear of what waits on the other side and what people may think. Shame for abandoning myself. Guilt for letting others down. Anger toward flawed systems. Grief for lost time, energy, relationships, and identities.
While humans struggle with quitting, everything else in the natural world moves through it with ease.
Hermit crabs instinctively know when to let go of the shell they have been carrying and seek out a new one so they can keep growing.
Flowering plants shed petals after pollination and drop fruits when ripe. Deciduous trees lose their leaves in autumn. Even evergreen trees shed older foliage that turns brown in colder months.
These are natural processes of releasing what is no longer needed or useful – adaptations to shifting environments, preparations for changing seasons.
Nature shows us there is nothing to fear or shame in letting go. Quitting is as normal as breathing and eating. It is an essential step in the cycle of life: birth, growth, withering, composting, and renewal. What dies transmutes into energy that supports new growth. What grows back is not a copy of the old, but something entirely new – different in form, state, and essence.
Holding onto parts that no longer support vitality blocks the flow of life. To build, grow, and sustain anything, we must continuously assess, edit, and quit. Simultaneously. Infinitely.
What if we stop treating quitting as moral failure and start seeing it as seasonal wisdom? What if, like trees, we can learn to sense when it’s time to let go – not from weakness, but from attunement to what we need to live through different seasons?
It’s been three and a half years since I embarked on this journey of quitting – old identities, unconscious survival patterns, deep-rooted addictions.
I’ve learned that building and quitting aren’t enemies but true partners in the dance of life. Every new beginning requires some kind of ending.
Looking back now, I’m relieved I found the courage to quit, and grateful for the support I received each time. Every ‘no’ to the status quo cracked open hard ground, revealing what was unhealthy beneath the surface. It crumbled foundations set up by flawed systems and narratives. It cleared space for rest and re-nourishment, for sowing new seeds – so I could build a life where my body, mind, and soul reunite.
Quitting has become self-care, an act of devotion – honouring what’s true, releasing what’s finished, making space for new learnings and aligned actions.
It has nothing to do with giving up.
It’s about becoming free.
And I’m still learning. Still discerning. Still cultivating the courage and clarity to let things go when the time comes.
Beautiful story. Inspiring. Insightful. Refreshing. Nothing is really easy, but that's not the point, and certainly not the point you're sharing. Living your true self, which has always been there...waiting for you to "quit" and stop pretending a life that doesn't belong. Perhaps it never did? It takes great courage to be oneself in a world that demands you to be your impostor self.
Waking up from conditioning is indeed the hardest of all. Brilliant. For me, it began the moment responsibility became identity. When the internal narrator was crowned author, judge, and project manager of my life. I.E. My mind. From there, everything turned personal: thoughts became commands. Feelings became verdicts. Moods become moral failures. Insecurity became pathology. The impostor took over—and started calling itself me. I quit and attempted the impossible "fire this shadow self" who needed a lot more than a memo, as you so justly point out. It was almost two decades ago for me. What an incredible ride to live the real you. Thank you!
Bonnie, I appreciated the honesty of your article and actually, all your articles. One word keeps coming to mind when I read your pieces. This beautiful human being embodies Courage and is a stellar example of what self-love and self-care means. Cherylmelodybaskin.substack.com