Good Death

Death. Learning to let go. It’s easier said than done. You didn’t fight hard enough for this relationship.

These are words and phrases that haunt us when we shift towards a new phase of our lives, whether it’s professionally, romantically or both.

When we find ourselves at the end of a relationship, we often feel that we need to fight so we can preserve the relationship. We feel that we need to give that extra push to preserve the love that once was. But what if...the best way to fight for the relationship is to let it go? What if...the best way to honour each other is to honour yourselves first?

When we find ourselves at these crossroads, where do we go? What do we need to do to move on and grow?

Discover:

- How we mistake letting go with giving up
- How letting go of people, behaviours, and patterns that are not in alignment is a superpower
- Relationships as a potent invitation to your expansion and growth
- Honouring our worth
- Love as our greatest teacher

Transcript

Hello and welcome to the Mark Groves Podcast.

So I was sitting down to have a coffee,

A decaf,

Just so we're clear,

And I wanted to sit down and have a coffee with you,

Talk to you about the things that have been sort of flowing through my experience,

Through my mind,

Through my heart,

Through my soul,

The things I've been sort of chewing on and exploring.

And I think that we all tend to be sort of collectively chewing on the same things at the same time,

You know,

Processing similar things that are going on,

Not only culturally,

But also due to the seasonality of our earth and,

You know,

Fall where I am.

Currently it's fall and,

You know,

You have the decay,

The death,

Leaves falling off the tree.

But right before they do that,

They just provide this incredible light show,

You know,

This beautiful array of art just across the landscape.

Recently I've just run into the term larch hike.

I didn't know.

This is a new hipster term for sure,

Because I was like,

You mean like a hike in the fall where you look at the trees?

And it's like,

Yeah,

And look at the larches.

Like,

I've never heard of this.

This must be a hashtag.

Of course it is.

And I did.

I've gone on quite a few now and just enjoyed the array of light,

The array of color.

And as,

You know,

The news and the world can feel heavy,

It is so important that we immerse ourselves in nature and be reminded that life is actually quite light,

That the earth is goes through these transitions and these periods.

And as a collective,

We are definitely terrified of death.

We're terrified of the ending.

And sometimes I find myself in these existential loops of like,

Wait,

But I'm on this planet and I'm this being and I'm here for this amount of time and wait,

This ends.

But where do we go?

And,

You know,

I don't know if you get into those mind fuck loops where all of a sudden you're like,

Am I high?

I'm not high.

Like,

But I feel this is weird.

Then you watch the matrix and then you watch the matrix two and three and you're like,

Holy shit,

There's a fourth one coming.

I've been thinking a lot about endings,

About relational endings.

And I want to center this episode on the subject of relational endings and letting go.

And you might not be in the stage of ending a romantic relationship.

And that's why this is in the context,

It can be in the context of ending any relationship,

Family,

Friends,

Work,

It doesn't matter.

So I wanted to share with you some of the things I wrote about in the last week and then and then just jam on them.

So I was thinking about that,

That sometimes fighting for love actually isn't fighting anymore.

Like it looks the opposite of what you think it is,

Because we think fighting is always like this overt trying and then all of a sudden,

If you stop trying,

Then you must,

You've given up.

And so I wrote,

Sometimes fighting for love looks different than we imagined.

It's letting go,

It's moving on,

It's saying goodbye,

It's choosing ourselves.

Sometimes fighting for love means no longer actually fighting,

But rather accepting.

I think this is a challenge collectively,

Right?

Because there's also this message that's sent to us that our worth is equated to the amount of work we put into things.

We know this from a workplace perspective.

And I wrote further on it,

Just saying,

We mistake letting go with giving up.

It's a weird thought to consider that fighting for greater love can actually mean letting go of not just someone who's not aligned with that path,

But also behaviors and patterns of our own that aren't in alignment either.

Learning to let go of things,

Behaviors,

And people who are not in our highest alignment is a superpower.

It's a commitment to the life and love that is trying to be born through us.

I've often thought to myself when I have a new awareness about a behavior or choice that no longer serves me,

Where did I learn to tolerate the mundane?

Where did I learn to live in a way that miracles aren't constantly around me?

It's in the moments of awareness of what is weighing us down that we discover it is us who said yes to carrying those things.

This level of responsibility is rare.

And as I see all the time in the comments threads on my social media,

This is easier said than done.

Of course it is.

Of course it's easier said than done.

And that's why magic only comes to those who believe in it.

The beautiful thing is that magic and miracles do never give up on us.

They're available in every waking moment.

They are all around us constantly trying to gather our attention to remind us that we are not just a miracle ourselves,

But we are part of one.

And in order to do that,

We have to be present,

Right?

We have to be able to sit in and learn to accept reality and where we currently are and who we're currently being.

And if we can't do that,

Accept the truths of what's currently going on in our lives,

The strains of our relationships,

And that could be our relationship to food,

That could be our relationship to our work,

It could be a relationship to our parent,

Our child,

Our family.

It doesn't matter what it is,

But can you acknowledge the strain?

Can you acknowledge the tension?

Because it's the tension that's informing you.

And on a similar note,

You know,

For me personally,

Just sort of recognizing what work brings me joy,

What discussions bring me joy,

What do I want to talk about?

What do I want to learn about?

What kind of conversations do I want to have?

And of course,

In response to that,

You'll hear things like,

Well,

You can't do it that way because this or this is how this is done.

And this is how you're supposed to do a post on Instagram or a podcast or whatever the fuck it is.

And it's like,

It doesn't matter.

Those are all rules that everyone agrees upon.

And then we all go about doing the same shit.

And it's like we have to disrupt ourselves.

We have to disrupt the way things are done.

We have to.

We have to make we have to become aware of where we are learning to settle for the mundane.

But this is just what marriage is supposed to be like.

This is just what relationships are supposed to be like.

This is just how I'm supposed to be.

This is I'm supposed to feel anxious from social media.

Yeah,

You are going to feel it if you're not in charge of the relationship that you have with social media,

If you're going down rabbit holes and creating awful inner dialogue because you're going down and checking out butts and abs and then feeling shitty about yourself and then consuming more time on that and not spending time in your heart and in your soul.

And so you are likely being called to a space of silence.

We all are at all times.

And I was listening to Abraham Hicks the other day.

If you don't know who Abraham Hicks,

It's a woman named Esther Hicks who channels a guy named Abraham to explain it is like people go,

What the fuck are you talking?

I totally get it.

Just YouTube Abraham Hicks and look up anything you're wondering and you'll see mind blowing advice.

Incredible.

And I was listening to one the other day and she was talking about things that we needed to do every day.

The first one was meditate for 15 minutes.

Second one was write down,

Take a journal and start writing about three to five areas of your life and write down the positive experiences of them and what you hope for in those and just stay in that zone and then go outside no matter the weather and look around you.

And she talked about how she goes into the yard and she looks,

You're my favorite rock,

You're my favorite tree,

You're my favorite frog,

You're my favorite flower in bloom,

You're my favorite flower not in bloom.

And as I sat listening to this,

It was so simple,

Right?

To continue to come back to curating your mind,

To curating how you see the world,

To curating who you want to be,

How you want to show up,

What do you fucking value,

What matters to you,

What is integrity with yourself first.

That's why a lot of conversation about personal growth gets the backlash of it's selfish.

You're being selfish.

And it's like what someone codes as selfishness is often just kind of paying attention to themselves,

Like kind of caring about how you feel,

Kind of caring about the decisions you make and the people you choose to have in your life.

That feels selfish when that's only because we've gone from a total space of people pleasing and self-abandonment that to even self-reclaim in one small iota is in some way this total selfish act.

And there is an important clarity here,

Which is,

You know,

We can become overtly individuated and we might see that as an avoidant attachment style and we can become overtly collectively minded.

And that would be seen as more anxious.

One place is self over connection and the other place is connection over self.

And so like anything,

It's about balance.

It's about finding the space in the middle where you actually dwell,

Where the wholeness of who you are is because there's a whole you and then you take that whole you and that whole version of you with boundaries that are around what you value and what you care about in your life and they protect and preserve what matters to you.

And then you enter a relationship and then you are you in a relationship with another you and you're not lost,

Right?

Like you don't have to compromise your values in order to enter that relationship.

And if you have to,

If it's not safe to be you,

All of you,

Then that relationship in itself is costing you.

It's costing you energy.

It's costing you time.

It's costing you your values.

It's costing you your integrity.

And that's why relationships are the greatest and most potent invitation to your expansion and your growth.

They are constantly saying,

How do you can you be better?

How can you show up more?

Where are you throwing yourself away?

Where are you selling yourself out?

And often we don't know how to hold the capacity of the grief and the anger that comes with looking at the mirror of those things and even how we're showing up.

Now,

We're not honoring our word that we're not being unconditionally loving and we can't hold the capacity for that.

So we just go back into materialism and buying shit and and overindulging and all the things that give you the dopamine hits that make you not have to feel as opposed to recognizing that the feeling you're feeling is informing you to change your life.

The feeling you're feeling is informing you to put up a boundary,

To soften a little,

To learn about yourself,

To be curious about the world and other.

And so this aspect of relational ending or expansion,

Let's call it,

It really had me then start to think about how we often equate letting go of a person with letting go of love,

Right?

Like if I let go of that person,

Then that means I need then where will the love go?

And that's why often when someone passes or a relationship ends,

We don't want to forget the memories because we think if we forget the memories,

We're going to lose the feeling.

When we're learning to let go of someone and how to still keep the feeling of love,

What we're actually learning to let go of is the object of love.

That I only feel love if this object is in my life or in my experience,

Even in a bad way,

Even in a way that doesn't nourish me,

At least they're there.

And this is likely why we have a hard time of ending things fully,

Of not letting them watch our stories or us watch theirs on Instagram.

And,

You know,

Like we have a hard time of putting this hard stop on the connection,

Even it's breadcrumbs,

Even if it's not attention,

We actually that's actually healthy for us.

And so when we do that,

We are not honoring that love is actually there regardless.

So this compassion or this love means tolerating things that are actually not OK,

That are not.

They don't preserve the essence of our being,

They don't preserve how we actually want love to feel,

Which is free.

But it's not free if it's in relation to certain agreements that have to be in place or certain ways we self-abandon in order to maintain connection.

It's not free.

It comes at the cost.

And what I was writing about last week in another post was that when we long for a past lover,

When we long for them,

We are actually blocking ourselves from receiving the essence of the love that we long for.

So when I make it the object of this person,

And this can,

Again,

Be any relationship,

Because I'm placing it in this person,

I actually miss where it's trying to meet me.

I will miss the love that is coming towards me.

When I'm chasing it,

I can't receive it.

And I'll just read you what I wrote.

Our love was never meant to be trapped in the confines of one person.

Love is meant to teach us.

It is meant to prepare us for connection that is in our highest alignment.

Imagine if the person you long for was actually meant to teach you not to place your longing in them,

To teach you that love is not meant to hold yourself and another person in a prisoner of a story that refuses to be written.

Hear that again.

Love was not meant to hold yourself and another in a prison of a story that refuses to be written.

We must learn to write the story trying to flow through us,

Not force a story that will only ever end in heartbreak.

You are the writer.

You are the author.

And your future lover,

Which could even be your current partner,

Needs you to pick up the pen and start writing the story,

The one where you are liberated.

Now here's the shift.

Because of course we're going to long for past lovers,

Right?

We're going to long for the past experiences till we recognize that it is an object of the longing.

And then we say,

I no longer want that object.

I want to long for love.

And so what we do is we channel our longing into creating.

We move from the feeling of missing something to being excited for its arrival.

Do you see that shift?

We go from the feeling of missing something to being excited for its arrival.

We take all the love we miss and we gather it up and we carry it forward excited to share with another or with others.

The love doesn't go anywhere.

What we do with it changes.

And we get so trapped in the past and how it has to look,

Right?

Our lives,

Our relationships,

With who,

That we miss all the beautiful ways in which love is showing up in every moment and trying to be born through our hearts,

In the trees,

The leaves,

The water,

The butterflies,

The soil,

The food,

Your smile,

Your heartbeat,

All of it.

And so we are surrounded by love always.

And the real question becomes,

Where will we direct it?

What will we give our attention to?

What is it inviting of us?

Vienna Farrin from MindfulMFT,

I love how she says that our exes are really our helpers.

Right?

Every relationship that I've had experience in has created the archetype of what I want and what I don't want,

As well as who I want to be and who I don't want to be.

And so in doing that,

The only way I could recognize Kylie is because of the combination of amazing humans that have helped me to be able to see the archetype,

The human expression of what I ultimately desire in relationship and who I need to be to call that in,

Because that's the other thing.

This isn't just about letting go of the person or ending the relationship.

It's about who you're becoming in the letting go that you're demonstrating that what you ultimately know you can create,

You are committed to.

And it is the commitment to that path that is you becoming who brings that into their lives.

You know,

Like when you start to build self-worth and you start to say,

Fuck,

Yeah,

These are the rituals and practices and who I want to be.

And as I live those things,

Then all of a sudden,

If I I won't even swipe right to the energetic of what doesn't live that thing,

Because no longer am I looking to be affirmed by someone else or be met in my lower patterns of choices.

Of low self-worth that needs to be validated on the outside,

I am now a center and source of self-worth,

And the rest of it just gets to show up and align.

And if it doesn't,

I don't care.

I might care that I went on a couple of dates with this person and it didn't turn out,

But ultimately I know it's always serving me to move me closer to what is I'm moving from this scarce mindset that comes from low self-worth,

Which we could have so many reasons that we have low self-worth and they are all valid.

But we go,

What are we going to do with it?

So let's all take a deep breath.

Because this is where it's at,

Right?

This is about our expansion.

This is about who we want to become.

This is about what do these relationships mean for us?

How do I become the best version of me?

How do I show up,

Learn how to listen,

Learn how to heal my defensiveness,

Learn how to not allow my anger to push people away,

Learn how to access my anger to protect myself,

Learn how to access my tenderness to surrender and allow.

I want to close this episode talking about the socialization that has occurred for us in terms of relational endings.

We have been socialized to think that relationships ending means we are a failure.

And yet a relationship that ends can often be evidence of empowerment,

Right?

It can be evidence that we've met the moment where we finally said enough and chosen ourselves,

Perhaps for the first time.

The reason relationship endings are such potent vehicles for expansion is that the death of a relationship is often also the death of the people pleaser.

It's the death of conformity.

It's the death of tolerating mediocrity.

Whenever a relationship ends,

Liberation can begin if we accept the invitation.

Let's hear that again.

Liberation can begin because when our society says you are a failure because your relationship ends and you make that become the truth that you are a failure because your relationship ends,

You are actually not liberated.

You are enrolled in a narrative.

You're enrolled in a narrative that says your worth is attached to your relationship status.

If you accept what we say,

Then you are enrolled and you're part of this and you will go out and seek and destroy anyone else whose relationship might end as opposed to knowing that you are liberated in that moment because you did something that is not allowed to end a relationship.

And I love the thought that if the relationship is not for them,

It's not for you.

If it's not for you,

It's not for them.

Like a necessity of a relationship is that it is for both of us.

And I'll read you what I wrote about this.

My work began from the space of feeling exiled because I ended a relationship.

I wondered to myself,

Why in my greatest hour of need,

When I've done perhaps the most courageous thing I've ever done in ending that relationship,

Do I face criticism and abandonment and not celebration from those I love?

It was the injustice I needed,

The experience of being exiled for choosing myself.

To begin studying romantic relationships,

And that's now 16 years ago,

Which is crazy.

It's what made me desperately want to understand why do we stay in relationships that are dysfunctional and challenging?

Why do we run from love that nourishes us?

Why do we exile those whose relationships end?

Marriage was originally born to create more in-laws,

As the work of Stephanie Koons talks about,

And I had her on the podcast.

She's incredible.

I recommend checking it out,

That episode.

Marriage was originally born to create more in-laws,

To have larger territories that were safe to roam,

To share resources.

It was political and strategic and seldom had anything to do with love.

So a marriage ending was devastating,

Shamed,

And not allowed.

This belief and framework for relationships,

That both relationships and marriage are a prison,

Is archaic and expired.

And yet,

As with most things,

It is embedded in our cultures and our religions.

This is what happens,

Right?

That we,

Something occurs hundreds of years ago,

Thousands of years ago,

And it's political,

Right?

Like someone makes a decision to say,

This is now wrong.

And it could be the church,

It could be a person,

It's someone with an agenda.

And all of a sudden,

Now we just call that truth without realizing that,

Wait,

But my soul is abandoned in holding on to this old archaic contract.

And notice how religions exile people for relational endings.

You couldn't get a divorce unless it was approved by the government,

Even if it was abusive historically.

I mean,

That's not that long ago.

Like that's not that long ago.

And so when we're in a relationship and we're inviting our partner to grow and they don't want to,

And then we are like,

Well,

What do I do?

There's the momentum of humanity.

And so I continue to say,

To leave a dysfunctional relationship where two people are not all in on repairing it is not only an act of rebellion,

But also an act of liberation.

It is a fuck you to the momentum of human conditioning that says you must stay or you will no longer belong to this human system.

It's the birthing of a new way.

I had to learn to trade the belonging to a group so I could belong to my own heart so that my soul and I could sit down together without a tsunami of inauthenticity sitting between me and myself.

And this makes me inquire to you to ask this question.

Where are you sitting down with a tsunami of inauthenticity of any of your relationships,

Your relationship to exercise,

Your relationship to the earth,

Your relationship to work,

Your relationship to your partner,

Your relationship to your parent,

Your child,

Your friend?

Where do you have to put on the mask?

Where do you have to pretend?

Where do you is it not just you and them sitting down,

But yet the heaviness of the armor that you have to wear or the play that you have to play and just continue to liberate yourself from those things,

From those relationships?

You know,

Sometimes I'll get messages from people whose partners have left them and they happen to have been reading some of my stuff at the time.

And you know what's fascinating is like if you're in the search to leave,

You will find the messages that help support you leaving.

Like it doesn't matter if it's me.

I could write the same thing the same way.

And two different people can interpret it in two different ways because we forget that it is someone's own experience of the words through the lens of their lifetime,

Through the momentum of their own conditioning and all their experiences that informs how they read that.

And sometimes it's just that stuff is put into words in the right order that clicks for us,

That we go,

That's what I was trying to sort.

That's the way I was trying to organize the feeling.

And then the person is mad that their partner left them and blames me.

As opposed to the relationship to not showing up,

To not hearing their partner,

Because here's what I'm a proponent of.

I think any two people can get through anything if they want to,

If they desire to,

If it's safe for them to do so,

If they're not being gaslit and manipulated,

And if two people genuinely want to be together.

And that doesn't mean we're void of challenges and conflict or anything like that.

Relationships are not easy.

But they also,

Because for the people listening who are like,

Oh shit,

I gotta keep trying then.

One person can never do the work of two.

It is imperative that a relationship have two people moving towards the same thing,

To the same solution,

To the same desire.

And you know,

Actually that's a better way to sort of end this,

Is to say,

I'm going to read you the last post I wrote,

Which just fits perfectly with this.

For a couple to go to the next level and break through the upper limits of their relational patterns,

They must both be all in.

The sacred connection that exists between two people requires both people.

One person can never do the work of two,

Nor should they.

And the next level of love requires that we go individually to the next level too.

Relationships stay in the patterns that we stay in.

We are two people,

Or more if you're into more,

Which that's complex,

More patterns,

But relationships are two people engaging in a constant cycle of similar behavior till we recognize that what is the old ceiling,

The part where we can't get past,

The conversations that are about the same shit,

It's not until we crack new behaviors,

Till we implement new behaviors,

That we end up in conversations we've never been in.

Right?

Like the next level of relationship doesn't always mean that the container,

The two people have to dissolve their partnership,

But the old patterns do have to die.

Right?

And I've been talking about this theme of liberation,

Right?

This theme of like decay,

That old self has to die and it's painful.

And when I was talking to my partner about this,

Kylie,

My fiance,

She said,

Let it be a good death,

Right?

Like let it be a good death.

Let it be an honorable death.

And if you're not willing to let go of a pattern and enter that brave space of uncertainty and expansion,

That is okay.

That is absolutely okay.

And if you don't want to do it with this person,

You don't have to.

That again is the choice we have to make.

Staying and not doing shit about staying is bullshit anyways.

It's part of the same,

I didn't actually say what I really wanted to say,

Which is I want to leave.

So I'm going to stay and not do anything,

Which is basically me leaving,

But staying.

And expansions relationally require us to go to our growth edges as individuals.

And so for one partner,

That's normally the fixer or the chaser,

It requires learning how to stop choosing the relationship over yourself.

It requires sitting in the discomfort of recognizing you are already whole.

It's actually in the sitting and not chasing that your wholeness is realized because you're not going anywhere to complete yourself.

Do you see that?

Now for the other partner who usually runs from love,

Depth,

Connection,

Your growth edge is actually is to learn to stay,

To not choose yourself over the connection always at all costs,

To stop sabotaging love because you don't trust it.

This isn't the denial that love has hurt you,

But rather to learn to trust yourself in love,

To learn that your wholeness doesn't have to dissolve into another.

Do you see the difference?

One person's wholeness is determined by the other.

The other one is afraid that their wholeness will dissolve into another.

Relationally,

When we go to the next level,

What we have to learn how to do is orient ourselves to the truth first,

Then the relationship.

So our relationship to the truth is over everything.

And that way,

We just continue to deepen intimacy and call forward what's really going on.

And what we're learning to do is build a self and a relationship to honor our own needs,

Our own boundaries,

Our own values.

And we are also learning to honor their needs,

Their own values and their boundaries.

And then from that space,

Your relationship becomes a container that celebrates both of you as individuals.

And also the container expands as both of you do.

And that's actually what it means to be free and be in love.

That the relationship itself is interested in your dreams and your passions and what you want to do with your life.

And individually as a partner,

I am interested in my partner shining,

In my partner being bright,

Being their fullest expression and hearing that when they give me feedback,

I'm being invited to my fullest expression too.

And so we spoke of endings today.

They are not fucking failures.

Take your worth back,

See where you place it,

See where you are not liberated in relationships,

Redirect what you long for.

And if in any way you need support navigating a relational ending,

I have my five week breakup recovery course.

It's badass.

Thousands of people have been through it now.

And you get daily messages from me,

Daily videos where I talk you through the process and it goes through the stages of grief,

But also bridges them with growth and allows you to take your life back and to actually give birth to what you want to create.

And if you're in a relationship,

Right,

It is about let it be a good death,

Right?

For all aspects of old patterns,

Behaviors and everything.

So regardless of your relationship status,

Honor what needs to die and give birth to what needs to become who you need to be.

Much love to all of you.

I hope you have a beautiful day.

Thank you for sitting down and having coffee with me and much love.

Reviews

Very helpful reflection thank you 🙏

Interesting and thought provoking. Will see how I can implement in my present situation. Many thanks for this. 🙏☀️

That was a lightning bolt of consciousness! Wowwwww. So impressed. Thank you so much for the insightful and actionable explanation of our inner minds and hearts. Very helpful to me on this particular day. Beautiful and awakening.

Powerful. Thanks - I really needed this help.