Quiet is not the same as dead

What a hermit crab taught me about the messy middle of transition

When I was in my first year as an elementary school principal, I volunteered to host the kindergarten hermit crab over spring break.

It kept mostly to itself. At first, the kids watched it climb around its enclosure. Then their interest waned. By day three, checking on it was my job alone.

By the second week, I noticed it wasn’t moving much.

I began to worry.

Was it dead?

I didn’t dare pick it up to check. What if I was right? I imagined explaining to the kindergarteners how their beloved hermit crab had died in the principal’s living room. I convinced myself it was better not to know.

Luckily, my mother came to visit.

An environmental educator with years of experience nursing sick and injured wildlife, she didn’t hesitate.

She took the cage to the trash, picked up the shell, and gave it a shake.

A dried-out piece of hermit crab fell out.

Yep. Dead.

She shook it again. More pieces fell out.

I mentally rehearsed the email I was going to have to send.

But as she set the shell down, she paused.

“It’s funny,” she said. “It feels like there’s still something inside.”

She turned it over and held it up to the light.

“It’s heavier than I would expect.”

Curiosity overcame dread.

I peered in.

Deep inside was a faint pink shape.

Moving.

What we had shaken out wasn’t the crab at all. It was its old exoskeleton, left behind as it outgrew its protective layer.

The real hermit crab was still inside. Soft. Delicate. Alive.

It took days for it to recover. At first, it barely moved. Then slowly, tentatively, it stretched forward, testing the world again.

By the time we returned it to the classroom, it had fully emerged.

It took me longer.

Years later, I still think about that hermit crab whenever I’m in transition.

William Bridges writes about endings, new beginnings, and what he calls the “neutral zone”—the disorienting in-between, the messy middle. We recognize the endings and beginnings easily enough: the graduation, the new job, the birth, the death. But we don’t have enough language for what happens in the middle.

The waiting. The not-knowing. The closed door before the window opens.

I think about how much effort it must have taken for that crab to shed its entire shell. It already had to have a new one forming underneath. And after the shedding, all its energy went into hardening, strengthening, before it could emerge again.

In the neutral zone, the most important thing we can do often looks like nothing.

And nothing can be scary—not just for us, but for the people watching.

It can be unsettling when a mother in leadership, someone people are used to depending on, turns inward for a while. Goes quiet. Stops producing. Stops responding. Curls up to shed and rebuild.

From the outside, it might look like something is wrong. It might even look like we’re gone.

But we’re not.

Quiet is not the same as dead.

🕊️

SAM

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