Letting Go

Part 30 in a series by Karen A. Stevenson, President, Studio K Salon

How many times are we confronted with the necessity in life to ‘let go’?  Letting go is an art that takes skill, grace, creativity, and discipline.  Letting go is something we find ourselves needing to do when a loved one passes away, or when a child leaves home for college, military or marriage.  Letting go is something a single parent needs to do when the child in a divorced situation has visitation with the other parent. 

Letting go is something we do when we find ourselves angry with our parents because we discover they too were not perfect.  Letting go is something that comes with much practice, and often times, much sadness.  Letting go happens when we finally discover that we are not in charge of all things, nor are we capable of controlling everything in life.  Letting go is a stress reducer; yet, it is a very difficult and advanced step in life.  

Sometimes people find themselves needing to let go of a past love they had, because the reality is that love didn’t want us.  Letting go is what we must do when a grown sibling chooses to reject us for some reason or another.  Letting go is something that has to happen when we find out a brother, sister, or spouse is choosing to not help themselves, and is starting to cause us harm.  Letting go can also be painful.  

Letting go is realizing that in life, we all must make choices.  Good, bad, harsh, sad, right, wrong, healthy, or unhealthy, choices are as light as a flip of a switch, as easy as a mindset.  Choices cause life, or death. Choices cause harm or heal.  Letting go is when you realize the only choices you can make are your own. 

Letting go is when you send your child off to kindergarten for the first time.  Letting go is allowing a lover or spouse to do what they have to do to fulfill their life, even if it means a few hours less of togetherness.  Letting go understands that we have no right to coerce or manipulate someone’s life or path in order to fulfill our own agenda.  Letting go is not commenting when someone hurts your feelings and you forgive them anyway. 

One of the hardest things to do in life is practice the art of letting go.  Realizing as a parent that our child is born to leave.  Realizing as a partner, that their whole life doesn’t and shouldn’t revolve around just you.  Realizing that our time here on earth is limited, and to make the very best of our moments. 

Letting go is a discipline that allows other’s the freedom to be who they are meant to be, not who you want and wish them to be.  Letting go is opening your hand, and allowing the person to fly free without our chains or bondage.  Praising the times when the person fly’s back onto your open palm freely, and visiting as they can, are able, and desire to.  Letting go is a gift from above.

How sad it is to see some people that cannot seem to grasp the art of letting go. Their inability to let go comes out in bitterness, anger, and frustration, even isolation.  Their inability comes out in guilt, or depression, or tremendous desire to control, which inevitably causes total loss of whomever they would have still had, if they had practiced the graceful art of letting go.  Letting go is sacrifice.

So how does one advance into the fine art of letting go?  Good question!  Letting go is persevering in difficult times.  Not swaying from side to side with the wind.  Letting go is something that comes by realizing that you are not God.  Realizing everyone has dreams, ambitions, thoughts, and belief systems.  We all have paths that are our own.  No two paths are identical.  Our paths are upward and filled with beauty.  We are all responsible for vertical and forward movement in our life, and that cannot be matched, compared, or equated to someone else’s path, because we are all called to our individuality.  In order to sit on that front porch in our rocking chairs when we are the ripe age of 90’s with the ability to look back on our life and nod in approval,  we must be prepared to face life head on.  We must realize that the tests given us were either passed or failed.  Hopefully they were passed.  Hopefully with each chapter that happened in our life, we were able to turn the page with grace, with dignity, and with love.  Letting go of what was yesterday, walking forward into what is today, vision on what is tomorrow.