So clearly 2010 has been a huge year of letting go for me. The biggest one being letting go of a marriage and a relationship that has spanned my entire adult life. A separation or divorce involving a child blurs the lines of letting go. You are letting go of a relationship in a certain form but there will never really be a letting go of that person in your life because your child still binds you together. I've really struggled with this because the early parts of separation are HARD. All that emotion and anger and bad places that can lead you to separation in the first place are still so in your face and all you want to do is cut the ties completely. So it takes a while to work through that and let those things go. Even when you make the decision amicably it doesn't mean you by-pass the hurt, the fear, the heartache, the confusion, the sadness and everything else that goes along with it (I think initially I had it in my head that because I chose this, I somehow wasn't entitled to feel these emotions. Crazy in hindsight......). Its been a tough 6 months up until now and the letting go process is still only in its early stages. But I am definitely feeling like I am stepping into a new place and moving into a phase where I can more clearly see how I can be the kind of person I want to be through this - both for myself and my son. Today marked one of the first steps in this process. Lachlan and I took Bailey to a birthday party together. We wanted to do this for Bailey so that he could have both of us take him to something that was for him and so we could both be a part of this and join the other Mum's and Dad's. I'm really grateful that we could do that for him and hope that it will lead to a lifetime of Bailey being able to have his Mum and Dad supporting him at all the special events in his life.
On the topic of letting go, the ever amazing Danielle Laporte has some very wise words which really resonated with me after today:
1. There's always more to let go of. It's endless and it's beautiful because it's endless. Just surrender to the endlessness of it.
2. Typically, letting go is painful – in varying degrees, from wince to damn near crippling, it's gonna hurt. Fact.
3. Hard leads to soft. Imagine ripping off a bandage; dropping an heirloom off at the thrift store and resolving to not go back to get it; kissing him or her that way for the last time and tearing yourself away because you need to grow in the other direction; boarding the plane with a heavy heart… When you steel the nerve to be tough enough to let go, you crossover over a sacred line. And on the other side, Tenderness is waiting for you, and She's very proud and she's very encouraging.
4. Baby steps are okay, but you can't avoid the pain that surfaces when you commit to the letting go. (See, you just can't get around the pain part.)
5. From the mundane to the monumental, letting go hurts. Always has, always will. (Yes, a repeat of #2. It bears repeating.)
6. Acceptance is medicine. When you just accept that the pain of letting go is part of the deal, your let-go wound will heal faster.
7. Out of, say, 123 people I've talked to about letting go of all sorts of stuff - material and emotional - 88% of them wished they'd done it sooner, and 97% of them have no regrets whatsoever. Only 3% are still confused. When you let go, the odds are in your favour.
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