You've been told to let go,
Probably more than once,
Right?
By people who are really meaning well,
And by books you have read,
By the part of your own mind that knows it is time to let go,
And you have tried and somehow the thing is still there.
I want to tell you why.
And I want to start by saying it is not because you're weak or less capable than someone or another person who seem to move on more easily regarding the same thing that you're going with.
It is because you've been trying to do something that is not actually possible.
And then you call it let go.
You know,
Most people think letting go means not caring anymore.
That if you've truly released something,
It will not hurt to think about it.
They will be able to talk about it with neutrality,
With distance,
Without any charge in your chest.
And they use the absence of feeling as the measure of success.
And every time they still feel something,
They decide that they have failed.
How do I know?
Because I spent years doing exactly this.
After six years of fertility treatments,
The last door closed.
And I told myself,
You need to let go of wanting this.
Stop feeling it.
Move past it.
Every time grief surfaced,
I treated it as evidence I hadn't let go yet.
Every time I still cared,
I decided I had failed.
I was trying to make something real stop being real.
And I could not understand why it wasn't working.
Now,
Here's the problem.
You cannot make yourself stop caring about something that was real to you.
The relationship happened.
The loss is real.
The dream mattered.
The grief is there because the thing was worth grieving.
Trying to feel nothing about it is not letting go.
It is fighting your own completely valid reason and your completely valid response to a real loss.
And you will not win that fight.
Every time you try and feel,
You add a layer of shame onto the grief you were already carrying.
Letting go is not about feeling nothing.
It's about stopping the argument with reality.
The thing happened.
Yes.
The person left.
The job ended.
The dream did not work out.
The version of your life you planned in detail did not come to be.
Letting go is the moment you stop spending your energy arguing with those facts.
Stop running the if-only.
Stop asking why.
Stop replaying what you could have done differently.
Not because those questions are wrong,
But because they have taken you as far as they can take you.
And really,
The answer is not coming,
Right?
The situation is not changing.
And the argument is keeping you from building anything from where you actually are right now.
And that is a different target than feeling nothing.
The other thing keeping most people stuck is simpler and harder to admit.
They have not grieved yet.
Not really,
At least.
They have processed the situation intellectually.
They understand what happened.
And they can explain it clearly,
But they have not let themselves feel the full weight of the loss.
And that part feels sad.
Just gone.
Just the absence of something that was there and now isn't.
Understanding is not the same as grieving.
Grief waits.
It does not care how well you understand what happened.
It just sits in the drawer you closed and it opens at 2am,
Or it comes out when there is a song on the radio playing,
Or something small triggers it.
You cannot let go of something you have not grieved.
The feeling has to be felt before it can be released.
This is not a metaphor.
This is just how it works.
So here is where I want you to start.
Before today is over,
Take 5 minutes.
Sit somewhere,
Quiet place,
And think about the thing that you are carrying.
And actually,
Instead of thinking about it,
Feel it.
So don't think about the story,
Not about what happened,
Not who did what.
Feel the feeling of the loss itself.
The absence.
The weight.
Let it be as sad as it actually is,
Without immediately reaching for the lesson,
Or the silver lining,
Or the productivity,
The coping mechanism.
Doing this is not going to help you go backwards.
This is actually the first real step forward.
If you want to understand this more deeply,
The full process,
The practical tools,
What this looks like step by step,
You can click on my profile and you can find my full course,
How to Let Go,
A practical guide to releasing what holds you back.
And that is where we do the rest of the work.
So I hope to see you there.
