On Letting Go
“When I let go of what I am. I become what I might be.”
Picture this. Life has just kicked you straight in the chest. It’s taken all the wind out of you and you’re struggling to catch your breath. Enter your well-meaning friend or even worse, an acquaintance, with the answer you’ve been waiting for, let it go!
Even if mostly well-meaning (let’s face it some not), the statement is a punch in the face and another rip in your already bruised heart. Is it just me, or do these types of answers usually come from someone who’s life is far from perfect or even envy-worthy? And yet here they are, “just let it go already”. Really? As if it were so easy to just let it go. As if they even know what letting it go means.
nobody tells you how to let go
To say this “letting go” concept isn’t a total mind-fuck is the understatement of the century. Everyone tells you to let go but no one tells you how to let go. I mean, plenty of people will spew all types of formulas for how to let go and they all seem to have it figured out, but really and truly, no one knows. It’s such a personal experience and always unique
I wonder if people even understand what they’re saying when they come in with the answers. I’ve had more people tell me to let go throughout my life than I’d care to remember. So much so that I decided to investigate what it actually meant to let go, in the only place I really knew, my life.
your brain and heart are on overdrive
Let’s take a look at where you are. You’re running through every scenario in your mind. Replaying every single event that let up to this thing you can’t seem to release. You’re exhausted. Your brain is tired. Your heart is tired. And your body is just tired. You need help, but also, you want to be left alone. You feel like you want to sleep until it’s warm in your life again until the sun shines again and until you can breathe easily again. You’re just really fucking tired! I get it.
So why am I talking about this? Well, for starters, I cannot stand when people tell me to let it go. The statement “let it go” implies you love hanging on to heavy and painful shit and choose to hold on. Essentially, when someone tells you to let it go, it’s more about their comfort than yours. They’re not really interested in how you feel, they’re just uncomfortable with your discomfort. Yikes! Sucks to hear, I know. But, it’s true. Also, I’ve finally found some freedom with certain things and I feel like I should share how I got there.
Here’s what happens. You read countless articles, speak with even more “experts”, meditate, do yoga, breathe, pray, you name it, you’re doing it. And what do you find, more holding on. The more you work to let go, the more your brain and heart hold on. The irony about working to let something go is that you’re constantly thinking about it and in actuality, holding on more than you even anticipated by working on letting it go in the first place. Why can’t we just tell ourselves, I’m done with this, and poof, we’ve let go?
The Truth about letting go
You see, the thing about letting go is that it’s more about acceptance than any tangible letting go concept we’ve been conditioned to believe it is. The whole process of letting go begins the moment we accept what we’re holding on to and why. So, in essence, letting go is really just acceptance. When we accept that we’re human and allowed to feel hurt, angry and sad because something didn’t turn out as we hoped or planned, that’s when the true magic of letting go happens. A sort of freedom starts to set in once we allow ourselves to accept ourselves and all of our feelings.