I have often pondered the concept of “letting go.” The words “you just need to let it go and move on” somehow fall on me as both shallow and hollow. A judgement statement made from someone who’s definition of “letting go” is completely different than mine and stated in a manor with assumed and presumed knowledge of me and where I am at in my journey of “letting go.”
My definition of “letting go” is vastly different than most. For me, it is not a flippant statement that is made to give me the illusion that I have, indeed, “let go.” And it is not a statement that is uttered out of my mouth to make me feel comfortable because I am uncomfortable with someone else’s struggle in “letting go.”
“Letting go” is a journey in my opinion. It is a process that involves grief. Without grief there is no freedom inside my soul of harm that has been done to me, resulting in harm I incurred myself. My journey of “letting go” has taken me into the deepest recesses of my soul where those wounds exist. A place where a surrogate or substitutes have stood as doorkeepers of that most precious, and wounded place inside my soul until I was ready to journey further into my wounds and healing process. They no longer aided me in my journey of essence. Of wholeness. Of understanding who I am. Each step in relinquishing these substitutes that I had placed in my life was a part in the process of “letting go.” It did not happen overnight, rather, it was a long, slow journey met with what seemed like endless days and nights of grief and sadness and a temptation to go back to my illusion of safety I had found in the counterfeit of the substitute. However, to choose to stop the journey and the emotions, to put the band-aid back on to ease the pain that is met in true “letting go,” would have left me in the same place that I had always been. Hallow. Empty. A place where my abusers still had the power therefore subconsciously and consciously dictating my life, and my decisions, and my idea of who I was. The deeper the wounds the longer the process of “letting go.” As hard as that maybe to hear, that is the truth of the matter.
I can care no longer what people think of me or where I am in my journey of “letting go.” I have come to realize that when people tell me that flippant statement of needing to “let go” and “move on” it is more about them, than me. I make them uncomfortable. Somehow my honesty of not being done in my journey of “letting go” touches something undone in them. The truth of myself exposes an untruth in them. I’ll tell you a little secret, I will always be in the process of “letting go” of something because I want to live an authentic life and from the place of my truest essence. A place where I am truly free. The band-aid free kind of life. I also realize that if I want to live that kind of life I have to be open to the entire spectrum of feeling. The hard ones too. That kind of life does not happen without introspection and a deep commitment to growth and honesty about myself. To be done “letting go” is to stop growing I think.
