The Slow Goodbye: What I'm Learning About Loss That Nobody Talks About

About the video:
In this video, Josh opens up about a difficult realization after years of denial and gradual loss, he’s finally admitting that he’s done skiing for good. What began as a few health issues and hopeful excuses turned into a deeper exploration of identity, aging, and acceptance. Josh reflects on how losing something central to who you are whether it’s a sport, a business, or a lifelong passion , forces you to confront who you are without it. This video isn’t just about skiing; it’s about navigating slow-motion losses, rebuilding identity, and finding resilience not in “bouncing back,” but in sitting with uncertainty and learning to let go.

Transcription:
Yesterday I had to admit something I’ve been avoiding for three years. I’m done skiing, not taking a break, not skiing differently, done, and here’s what’s messing with me. It wasn’t one moment of loss, it was a slow, stubborn, painful process of watching something I love slipped away while I kept insisting I could get it back. 

Three years ago, foot ulcers made skiing dangerous. I told myself it was temporary last year. I blamed weak legs, bought new equipment. Surely that would fix it. Recently , I finally got it. My feet can’t make the micro adjustments anymore, and no amount of stubbornness changes that. Now I’m wondering, is this how loss actually works as we age?

 Not the dramatic sudden kind, but the slow motion goodbye where you keep showing up to something that’s already gone. Looking back, I can see what I was doing. I was running the experiments designed to fail small so I wouldn’t have to face the big truth. I do half day ski trips instead of full days, one concert instead of a festival just hitting tennis balls instead of playing a real match. 

I thought I was being smart. Testing the waters, but really I was protecting myself from the full weight of the loss. Each small failure was easy to explain away. The conditions weren’t right. I wasn’t feeling great. I needed better equipment. But here’s the thing that’s really getting to me. This isn’t just about losing the activities I enjoyed for my entire conscious life.

I’ve been a skier, not someone who skis occasionally a skier. It shaped how I understood myself, how I spent my winters why living in Vermont. Made sense. Now, what? I’m a guy who used to ski a former skier. I’m going through the same thing with my business identity.For 40 years, I was the business owner, the guy people came to for advice.

The decision maker. That identity has been slipping away too. The phone rings less. People stop asking my opinion, and I’m left asking, who am I? If I’m not the business owner anymore? Here’s what I’m learning. You can’t just swap out one identity for another, like changing clothes. These identities weren’t just labels.

They were built over decades. They shaped my days, my relationships, and my sense of who I am in the world. When you lose something that central. You don’t just need a new hobby, you need to reconstruct your entire sense of self, and nobody tells you how to do that. So I’m , sitting here in the messy middle.

I’ve accepted skiing is done. I haven’t figured out who I am without it, and maybe that’s what resilience actually looks like. Not bouncing back quickly, not having it figured out. Just sitting with the discomfort and not knowing. Have you navigated these slow motion losses where something gradually becomes impossible and you spend years trying to finally get it back before finally letting go?

I’d love to hear your story, drop it into comments, because right now I’m figuring this out as I go, so let’s figure it out together. Oh, and thanks a lot for stopping by. I hope to see you back here really soon.