Letting Go

Seeing Grace in Life's Impermanence

When I started meditating, I was introduced to this idea of letting things go. What on earth does that mean to a millennial woman who has been force fed an idea of hustle culture and fighting for what you want? Manifest the life you want and then work yourself into the ground to try and achieve it! That career? That relationship? That beach body? You have to work your arse off for it! And if you don’t achieve it, well you just didn’t want it enough. Bloody hell. I must really not want things enough, eh? - I think as I poke my ever-present lower belly. A few years ago, I would have told you that letting go, is being lazy and accepting a life of mediocrity. Harsh, I know. 

Fast forward to today, and all that has passed in between (My dad died very suddenly and unexpectedly days after my 30th birthday, I left behind an 11-year relationship, I left the home I thought I would raise my children in, I went through burnout at work and left behind a safe and stable career, I went through two bouts of long-covid the effects of which I am still feeling today) The last 5 years have forced me to surrender to to the idea that life, it turns out, isn’t about holding on tightly to dreams and hopes but instead a continuous cycle of releasing the things we once held dear. Not just a pair of old socks or that gym membership card gathering dust, but bigger, more significant things. I let go of an idealised future, the plans I swore I’d follow when I had time, people who were once the centre of my universe, parts of my health when life threw me an unexpected diagnosis.

After my 11-year relationship ended, it was absolutely gut-wrenching to let go of the idea that my children wouldn’t have my ex-partners eyes or that they would never learn to walk in the hallway of our shared flat or attend the school visible from our balcony. It was the end of more than just a relationship—it was the death of an entire imagined future. After my father died, I had to let go of the idea of him teaching my children how to play cricket in the back garden of the house we grew up in. Letting go of these hopes and dreams felt and feels deeply unstable at times.

Letting go is all well and good but what about hope?! I hear you say. Well, dearest and most wonderful reader, you’re reading the words of an eternal and insufferable optimist. It’s in my nature to cling to hope like a life raft. I even argued with my therapist, that hope is what makes my life worth living! Hope is the secret sauce beneath my cheery demeanour. I AM hope. Hope IS me. That was until she very kindly reminded me that hope was actually the last element that remained in Pandora’s jar upon quickly closing it after releasing envy, greed, pain, sorrow, disease and countless other wonderful things into the world. So why was hope in the box in the first place? Well, hope is a double-edged sword of sorts. Hope can be the anchor that gets us through the trials of life, when we feel untethered, lost and can keep us from being swept away entirely. It’s the smallest of lights that can keep us going whilst in the deepest depths of darkness. BUT, we must be careful, for hope can also keep us in a state of perpetual longing, in a dream state, not accepting a situation for what it is. An illusion that  keeps us from letting go and a guiding light that helps us through the darkest times. It’s a fine line to traverse. As I stared at my therapist - aware that she has just blown my tiny, little mind I stopped to consider the following - could what I thought was my biggest superpower actually be standing in the way of me letting things go? Spoiler alert, the very smart lady I had been seeing for 7 years was OBVIOUSLY right. 

Thus began my whole new relationship with letting go. Something that I thought I had mastered and was an experienced practitioner of over the past 5 years, however, I realise that I was only half-committed to it by combining it with blind optimism, essentially cancelling out my work of letting go in the process. Thus began my real journey into letting go. As any diligent student, I went to my two favourite methods of learning, reading and spirituality. I have the incessant urge to intellectualise and learn about something and then I let myself “feel” it through my spiritual/self development practice (meditation, candle rituals and EFT). Learning about letting go led me to two books, Letting Go by David Hawkins and This Is Me Letting You Go by Heidi Priebe. I can do a whole post on the learning’s of both of  these books but my takeaways were as follows:

1. You need to fully feel something to let it go: “Letting go involves being aware of a feeling, letting it come up, staying with it, and letting it run its course without wanting to make it different or do anything about it. It means simply to let the feeling be there and to focus on letting out the energy behind it. The first step is to allow yourself to have the feeling without resisting it, venting it, fearing it, condemning it, or moralizing about it. It means to drop judgment and to see that it is just a feeling. The technique is to be with the feeling and surrender all efforts to modify it in any way. Let go of wanting to resist the feeling. It is resistance that keeps the feeling going. When you give up resisting or trying to modify the feeling, it will shift to the next feeling and be accompanied by a lighter sensation. A feeling that is not resisted will disappear as the energy behind it dissipates.” - (David Hawkins - Letting Go)

2. Letting go does actually require a little bit of hope: “When we have to leave the things we love behind, we are allowed to mourn them. To miss them. To look back on them dejectedly and sadly. But we must never, ever forget that the best days of our lives are not all behind us. That there are more beautiful things awaiting us in the future than we could ever even fathom. That so many of our happiest days are still ahead. And that we have to keep moving to get there—no matter how tempting that view in that rearview mirror is. The future we want will not arrive without our participation. And in order to get there, we have to blindly and blissfully trust that it’s going to be somewhere indescribably worth going.” (Heidi Priebe - This is me letting you go)

Here’s the kicker, there won’t be a time when you’re finally ready to let something go. You having to let go will probably occur before you’re actually ready for it to happen. However, if you start to put the work into not resisting it and accepting the ephemeral nature of everything in life, you start to realise that the death of one thing usually leads to the birth of something else. Letting go means freeing ourselves from the burdens of unfulfilled expectations and dreams. It’s like cleaning out the loft—painful, dusty, but ultimately necessary for a fresh start. And remember, like Heidi Priebe says, “The future we want will not arrive without our participation.” So, grab that mop and duster and start clearing the cobwebs of old hopes and dreams.

So, what am I letting go of in this current cycle of death and rebirth?

• Not honouring my own word: I need to be as impeccable with my word to myself as I am with others. It means turning up to pottery, piano practice, book club, drawing, rollerblading - even something as small as my Duolingo learning - without fail. Every time I turn up for myself I build up my self-esteem and that makes it easier to let people and things go that I used to rely on for my self-esteem fixes.

• Trying to fix/save/heal others: My ex used to call me the patron saint of weirdos. I had a knack for attracting and attempting to fix broken people, not realising I was giving them a lifeline to avoid their own darkness whilst they drained my light. No more. 

• Putting others' needs before my own: It's high time I became my own priority.

I’ll leave you with this final thought from my favourite sci-fi movie. In Ridley Scott’s "Blade Runner," Rutger Hauer’s character, Roy Batty, delivers the iconic "Tears in Rain" monologue reflecting on the ephemeral nature of life. Like Hauer’s character, we realise that our memories and experiences will fade away, lost like tears in the rain. It reminds us of the impermanence of life, and that in all its fleeting beauty we must let the past wash away like tears in the rain. Letting go may feel profoundly sad but what joy in getting to experience time with loved ones, good health, the feeling of being loved, if even for a short while.  

Life is a bittersweet experience, a fleeting journey of moments that constantly change and evolve. It is a dance of growth and decay, of love blossoming and fading. In this eternal cycle, life is always dying and always being reborn, a testament to the transient beauty of our existence.