Letting Go

“You wanna fly, you got to give up the shit that weighs you down.”

Toni Morrison

The past ten years have whizzed by, jam-packed with more lessons than a library of self-help books. I’ve learned so much about human nature and about myself. I’ve also picked up a bunch of skills that have led to an exponential increase in my happiness and, I believe, made me much more pleasant to be around (opinions and mileage may vary). It occurred to me recently that all of the crucial things that I’m mastering (among them forgiveness, tolerance, self-love, compassion) ultimately require learning, and continuing to practice, the most fundamental lesson of all: letting go.

My former preference for sleepwalking through life made learning to let go feel similar to my struggles with advanced math. In fact, as with math, there’s a multi-step process. Becoming self-aware enough to realize what you’re doing. Loosening your grasp on everything and letting go of the need for control in order to avoid change. Then letting go of wishing things were different once the inevitable changes occur. Rinse and repeat. Daily.

Perhaps because I clung so tightly for the first two-thirds of my life, the list of things I’ve had to let go of feels interminable. Some were one-and-done; most require continued effort. Here are some highlights:

The dream of a lifelong partnership

The need to be understood

The house I poured my heart into making a home

The need to be right

Almost all of the possessions I lovingly curated over thirty years

Access to my social network

My sense of victimhood

My conviction that I was broken

My comfort zone

My fair share of marital assets

The idea that I’d be involved in my adult son’s life

The vision of what my life would look like post-divorce

The dreams that I had for my daughter

Perfectionism

The idea that life should be fair

Regret for “time wasted”

Overthinking and worry

The desire to be accepted by my family of origin

The desire for an apology

The stories I’d been told about myself

The stories I was telling about myself

The urge to fix my daughter’s struggles with chronic illness and its fallout

“Shoulding” all over myself

Unrealistic expectations

The idea that my family of origin would always be there

The resentments and hurts I carried

Toxic positivity

The lover who was my number one fan

The wish that my childhood were different

Berating myself for all of my mistakes

The idea that someone is always to blame

Rumination and dwelling

Taking things personally

Gossip

The idea that I could find the one magic thing that would lead my son to let me back into his life

The fear of speaking my truth

The crutch of oblivion

Guilt, both inherited and self-imposed

The fear of aging

The relentless drive for self-improvement

The desire to be liked

Regretting my inability to fix the estrangements in my life

The fear of loneliness

A fixed mindset

While I’ve completely let go of a few of these (like the trappings of my former life), I suspect that I’ll continue to work on many of them for quite a while (grief is not linear, after all, and every change brings some form of loss); that it’ll be the work of a lifetime. Alongside that, I’ll be working on letting go of the inconsequential things that we all face daily; the things that won’t matter five years, or even five days, from now that used to totally consume me. Because I’m finding that the more I let go, the freer I am to embrace all of the good that’s coming my way. I’m ready to try flying.

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Thanks for reading. Anything you’d like to let go of?

GOOD THINGS

The CWP’s brief return. She’s been pet-sitting since early June, and will be through August, and even though I get to see her a little (think ships passing) it was a thrill having her back in the neighborhood for a few days. Highlights included movie night (Lord of the Rings), dinner out (at an Argentinian steakhouse with my nephew/her cousin, another summertime refugee back for a visit), and our decision to establish a virtual non-fiction book club. We’re starting with A People’s History of the United States, by Howard Zinn, and it’s so dense that we’ll read and discuss one chapter each week. Only one chapter in, I’ve learned so much, not least of which is the importance of the lens, traditionally provided by the victors, through which we look at history. Lots of food for thought.