Letting go?

I’m reflecting on times when I let go and it’s honestly hard to decipher between gripping tightly and a part of me saying “eff it” or “I give up, sure I’ll try it” from “I’m genuinely letting go.”  I guess when I’ve let go there’s often other parts of me not on board with the letting go process.  I’ve let go when I’m scared to leave a job that’s killing my soul.  I’ve let go of a relationship when it wasn’t healthy or loving for either of us (and whew did they want me to let go by that point or what!).  I’ve even let go of things like alcohol as my firefighter protector parts found more helpful ways to help me extinguish fires within (which was NOT an okay tool from my Muslim side of the family).  It’s harder for me to think of an easy breezy, hands in the wind, big skirt flowing in the wind, you know, facing the sun type of letting go.  It’s hard for me to recall a time when I willingly and without some suffering said, “yeah I can let myself see where this goes.”  

I was a “I have to work hard at this or else there’s failure in giving up” type of person.  I’m still a “do everything I can” type of gal.  But I also deeply admire friends and loved ones who genuinely and logically let go.  For example, I have a couple of people in my life who handled the peak of COVID so well.  They really were as careful as they could be given their lives and people around them and then they let the rest be as it was.  It blew my mind!  I literally felt like doing a pilot study in my mind on their “letting go” vibes.  What?!  I’m not sure that suffering and letting go always have to be attached.  I feel like there are people out there who genuinely and logically look at the picture as a picture, without attaching too much crap to it.  Given my super thinky, feely composition you can see why I adore these logical loved ones.  These logical friends of mine feel like learning a new language to me.  New and fun and wow so different from this English stuff that often doesn’t make sense.  

Then it dawned on me, I do let go, but in my own kind of language.  I let go a thousand tiny times.  It’s not that I have to punish or “other” myself for not speaking the same language as my letting go loved ones.  It’s just that I let go piece by piece as things are revealed to me and as I grow a stronger sense of awareness to what I’m feeling and need.  For example, I drank a lot during a particular time in my adolescence.  On the outside I went from dorky to party Hannah.  On the inside, I was a fire waiting to combust.  And it felt like I did.  I ozzed my insides out like when Men In Black shoots alien guts everywhere.  Then I stopped drinking and spent some years trying to figure out who I was and how I wanted to let the pieces of things come into a beautiful mosaic.  

Then, once I thought my life was all together and I was in graduate school and everyone else was doing it, I tried drinking again.  It was weird and not as obvious because it wasn’t alien guts everywhere this time, but my despair was all out and about like it hadn’t been since I was a teen.  This time I felt more like when Edgar in Men In Black puts on a man suit.  I felt like I was inauthentic and putting on a suit of a person over my wounded heart, over something I knew didn’t really work for me.  It didn’t feel right and I let go of alcohol and leaned into a different life again.  There’s been a thousand letting goes since and I love everyone of them. And sure it’s easier to love letting go in retrospect, but I really do honor each time I’ve let go tiny bit by tiny bit.  Each little letting go since adolescence has led me to more and more authenticity with a skin of my own.  

I wish that for my teen self.  I give myself and especially my teen self a skin of my own now, within, everyday.  There are ways I feel a little Edgary when I people please or eat for feelings, but in general I live a life more and more in my own skin suit.  There are some days when I have moments of inauthenticity, but noticing it helps a lot.  I recently got to share a bit about this with a client in a way that made sense clinically.  I’m not a blank slate, but I’m not a take up your therapy time and space therapist either.  It felt good to be like “here’s my skin.”  Or more so, “here’s a part of my story, relevant to what you’re asking for, and yeah here’s me.” 

I’m curious about you and wonder when was a time you let go? When was a time you let go like all the way like my cool, logical friends or in little tiny chunks for several years like me?  Also, if you’d like to work together please let me know!  Seriously, I want to know!  So reach out here!