The Daily Act of Letting Go

      I had most of this post written already, but laying in bed all day with a cold yesterday got me thinking if it was right or not. I was focusing on a theme of letting go because that’s been a focus of mine for all of October. I wanted to write about how I’ve overcome a lot of disappointment and pain, and about how I’ve finally let go. Now I am beginning to wonder if the act of letting go is a constant everyday thing and not something that is a one and done action.

       I’m not talking about the smaller situations of a stranger being rude, or a bad day at work, or the weather turning sour. Those are simple things where letting go can then be an action you perform and then forget about. I’m talking about deep-rooted disappointments, the unforeseen forks in the road, the goals not reached, the devastating heartbreaks. Do those things just take longer to in fact let go of or are they big enough that they require daily exorcising?

I’m finding that the latter is true for myself. I’m not sure if this is because of my personality or perhaps my depression has a tendency to hold on to things longer. I find that every day I have to consciously decide to let go of the things that are hurting me. Some days I rip through my yoga routine, grab my coffee and bounce into work smiling and full of energy, ready to slay the day like the queen I know I am. Other days I run through as many tasks as I can because if I stop for even a moment I lose my bearings on what is important. Then there are days I’m fine, everything is well but as soon as I step into the shower, I just ugly cry as all my disappointments puddle around my feet. 

Maybe it’s just the process of growing up. I’m learning to live with myself, my failures and my successes. Forgiveness is super key to all of this as well. Forgiving others yes, but the big one is forgiving myself. Forgiving myself for not following through, for not reaching high enough, for not pushing as hard as I could, for letting myself be fooled again. 

I wanted to write a super empowering blog post for all of you and was hoping to tell you that I’ve let go of all my past year's disappointments, but I can’t. I can only be real and tell you it’s an everyday struggle, and maybe in the future, there will be a post that says, yep it’s done and in the past, but I’m not so sure that’s how it works. 

I will leave you with three simple things that have made me smile today: the light green and short-lived color the water turned as I poured it over my tea bag, the feel of peppermint sugar scrub against my lips, looking out and seeing the happy red leaves of the Japanese maple out front dancing in the wind.