Just Let it Go

I have been avoiding today's post like the plaque. 1.) because I feel like I have the plaque and have been at the doctors and curled up in a ball trying to figure out what be wrong and 2.) because when I first read today's challenge topic my mind said "oh heck to the no!".

Letting go?! React to letting go? How am I supposed to react to letting go?

This moment was so bittersweet. I was happy to be marrying Babe but sad about the realization that though I would always be daddy's little girl, I was having to let go of the part of me that was his and give that to Babe because it was now his turn to care for and protect me.  That had always been my dad's job and I wasn't sure about letting that go.

Letting go has never been an easy thing for me. I couldn't even change my last name and let go of my old one, instead I now have four names instead of three. I liked my name. It was a part of who I was and I felt that dropping any part of my name (either my old middle or my old last) was like dropping the person I was before I got married. That girl is still in here.  She had to learn to adapt to married life but she still lets her voice be heard every now and then (aka all the time).

Letting go can take on so many different contexts and more often than not, having to do it is not something we can prepare for.  Letting go plays into relationships, it plays into life, it plays into death and the list goes on. Letting go is the ultimate goodbye because, though sometimes the things you let go of come back to you, when you are actually in the process of letting go you expect it to be for the final time.

Letting go also plays into forgiveness.  As Oprah said "Forgiveness is letting go of the hope that the past could have been any different." Our past is always something we have to eventually let go of and for me one of the hardest things to do. We can remember it and what it taught us, we can forgive the parts that we would rather gloss over, but we must let it go. In letting go of the past I have been able to find forgiveness even when an apology was never offered, or in some cases not needed. I had to forgive God for taking my grandmother before I got married, I had to forgive myself for mistakes I had made and that I finally had to let go of, and I have had to forgive others for hurt caused by being humans living in a world that trips us up all the time. Forgiveness is letting go and knowing that though I probably won't ever forget those things I also won't let them define me. 

I don't know if letting go of things is something that will ever get easier. I think that's ok. Letting go is supposed to be hard. If it isn't then whatever we are letting go off wasn't strong enough to teach us anything and moving on is about learning how to take the things we've had to let go of and learn from them. Letting go is not a giving up, letting go is the acknowledgement that circumstances were given their best shot, that lives were lived and that people were loved.  Sometimes letting go of something is the understanding that we have so much more to give and that what it is that weighs us down keeps us from loving ourselves and those entrusted to us in the fullest way possible. It is in those moments of letting go that we find hope and freedom and empowerment.

Words on a page are so much easier said than done and I know that I can cling to things that I don't want to let go of harder than Charlie hung onto his golden ticket, but today for this moment I vow to let go of the things that hold me and chain me. I will probably have to vow the same tomorrow but I promise myself to let go... just let it go!