Member-only story
We don’t learn the skill of letting go by letting go.
We learn it by shatteringly painful experiences of having something ripped from our hands and heart. We lose it, whatever “it” is, even though we cling to it, clench it, grab it, hold it, with our tightest grip. And we are devastated when it’s gone.
Next…
Next comes the pain and the emptiness of hand and heart holding nothing.
Next…
We go on. We go forward. We live, still, when we thought we would die.
Next…
We make something new, something else of our lives, our time, our resources.
Next…
We discover, slowly, that what we have now is precious in its own way, a new way, that we never could have imagined before.
With some surprise, we realize that we didn’t just survive the loss. We thrived.
Then…
It happens again.
“No… no! Not again!”
We cling tightly to this new thing, and once again, in spite of all we try, we lose it, too.
And recover, and live again, and thrive again.
This is how we learn to let go.
