Letting Go
Let the winds take from you what they will.
Slough it off. Slough it all off; all that which no longer serves you.
Slough it off to the barest of bones and hunker down until ready to bloom again.
Be you in all of your bareness and let the next set of adornments come your way when ready.
Grief is a long and arduous journey that requires the act of letting go of “what was” in order to arrive at a place where “what was” can be honored for what it was and continues to be.
“I know Teresa’s not coming back, that what was will not be again.”
The act of letting go releases that which is being held on to and, ultimately, is an act of honoring that person and/or experience for who/what they were and are now.
Letting go releases those memories and experiences from being anchors to the past, anchors that are never raised and hold the ship from going forward. By raising the anchor, letting go, the anchor/memory remains and travels along with the ship as it continues on it’s journey. Letting go isn’t cutting the line to the memory but embracing it in a new way.
An anchor that is never raised loses it’s purpose – it ceases to have meaning. Likewise, if it were to be cut from the line that links it to the ship.
There is an inherent element of trust in letting go. The trust is that there is a reason, a purpose to letting go.
At times letting go is an act of hearing when the time is right to change and release a part of self in order for that change to be fully realized.
Sometimes letting go is allowing something else to be more fully present, more actualized without our attachment to it being something that we wish it to be.
Each season the trees let go of their leaves, leaves that have served them and have helped them grow. Leaves that are a part of the tree as much as the leaves before them were a part of the tree.
The tree lets them go all the same.
In the act of the tree letting go of it’s leaves the leaf get to reveal itself in all it’s glorious color, the color that the tree’s attachment to it covered for the time they were together. The reds, the oranges; the yellow and browns - this is the beauty revealed from letting go. At that moment, the moment of letting go, the tree and leaf are most wholly themselves. The tree knowing it can’t hold that part of itself anymore is releasing it and the leaf, having been released gets to be it’s most authentic self.
Letting go.
Trust.
“I know Teresa isn’t coming back. She will not be my wife, my partner, my friend, in the physical form that she was in this life.”
I didn’t know that I needed to say this out loud that Teresa wasn’t coming back; not until I did – just a few days ago. For the first time. My saying that was an act of letting go to what was. To speak it out loud made it real, more real than it has been and, perhaps, more real than I was ready for.
I cried a lot after saying it, but it needed to be said. I needed to trust that it was okay to let go of the possibility that Teresa was coming back.
With each exhalation of breath, we are letting go of the breath that had, just moments before, been nourishing and life sustaining but is no longer. We exhale it from our lungs and, in doing so, we are trusting that by letting go of what once was, we will be given a new fresh breath; a breath that will sustain and nourish us in it’s own unique way.
Letting go.
Trust.
I spent the second half of 2022 letting go of parts of my self. I needed to shed parts of me that I could no longer hold. Parts that I appreciated. Parts that served me for so long and were so interwoven with who I was – how I was seen. I spent those six months wondering what I was doing and why I wasn’t feeling the way I had expected to feel. Why I wasn’t able to do the things that I had expected to do when I made these choices. I questioned the letting go.
These changes, the process of letting go, needs, and deserves, a period of grief, of mourning. These changes need and deserve a period of honoring as well.
After Teresa passed away there was a time where I felt strongly about finding someone new, someone who could make our family “whole”. It was a way to “fix” things. I also knew that there was absolutely not enough space for someone new in my life then as it was necessary to give the grief all the room it required.
When I made the choice to stop drinking in July and to change my role at work I did so for a number of reasons but there was a hope that I would find the space to write again. To write more. To embrace and commit to writing. Instead I found an unwillingness to write, an unwillingness to exercise. A lack of motivation to be in nature. The things that I had thought I was freeing up space for by shedding these parts of my self were further removed from me.
I was in the space between the exhale and the inhale, the space where trust is most necessary in the process of letting go; the space that holds the ever occurring cycle of death and rebirth.
There wasn’t enough space for the inherent grief in losing parts of my self to exist alongside that which I was hoping would replace them. I didn’t understand this at the time. It felt like I had made some big life choices and changed the way I lived for…what? To feel bad about it? To continue to question my decision making? To wonder if I was unconsciously trying to make life more difficult; less stable?
I see it now and give honor to the parts of my self that I let go of. To the relationship with alcohol and work that I let go of and changed. I appreciate what they gave me and offered me but it wasn’t what I wanted any longer.
I still miss them at times but they aren’t aspects of life that I continue to hold on to, not now. It’s easier to say those parts of my life will not be the same again.
It isn’t easy to say that about Teresa. I don’t want to say that she isn’t coming back. I don’t want to say that she will never be here with me in the same physical form as she was. I don’t want to, but I have and I can’t unsay it now. I’m trusting that by letting go of what once was with Teresa I am allowing my memories of her to be free, more authentic and will allow them and her to continue to join me as I move forward and not be used by me to anchor in at a point that no longer exists.
“I know Teresa’s not coming back, that what was will not be again.”
The grief allows us the opportunity to let go and trust that, by doing so, not only are we allowing that which we grieve to be honored for all that it is now, but we are also allowing ourselves to set sail into the unknown knowing that our memories and loved ones are joining us inside of our hearts.