Letting Go Gracefully

It’s late September. The trees are beginning to shed their leaves, my own life is changing, and the world around me continues to change, too.

We must dust off the old to make space for the new. So the breakdown of things either within us or around us, although often hand in hand, is part of navigating change.

When I pause to observe the trees, the leaves seem to glide so gently to the ground. The trees don’t try to grab at them and hold onto them, or place them in a certain spot. There’s a trust that the leaves will fall away when they are ready and land where they are meant to.

My husband and I bought a new house back in July. We walked into this knowing that the house needed a full gut remodel. We are doing much of the work ourselves, which means my business has taken a bit of a back seat. As I empty out this new house and get it down to the bones, so to have I been feeling the same within myself. It has stirred up within me a lot of old ways of being that are wanting to fall away like the leaves of the trees around me. The problem is I have been trying to catch them and stuff them back in, or intentionally placing them where I feel like they should go.

When I was 12 years old, my family moved from upstate New York to Massachusetts. The move was decided quickly, and even more quickly the moving truck was packed and hauled away. I was left back in New York with a family friend to finish out school. I remember watching my family drive away. It was terrifying. I couldn’t name it at the time, but it left me with an empty void, a feeling of abandonment that I was never really able to fill.

Now as my family and I navigate our own move, I felt these old emotions rising to the surface. My son is about the same age as I was when I moved back then, and I was really resisting the change and the move. I was at first adamant that we should just fix up the new house and rent it out so we could stay in our current house and not change the kids’ routine or environment. It would be a real financial struggle but worth it to not distress the kids.

But who was really experiencing the distress?

I soon realized that it was all me. We do many things to avoid feeling painful emotions. When we first purchased the new house, my intuition told me we would be selling our current house this year. But I shut that out. I didn’t want to hear that because it meant emotions would have to be dealt with. Twelve-year-old Cassie was expressing the hurt and the fear she felt, and this new move was making her feel unsafe. I was projecting this onto my kids’ experience rather than taking time to feel through the old emotions.

The leaves are a beautiful expression of the tree, but seasons pass, the tree changes and grows. Although the leaves fall away, they will return in the spring as a fuller expression of the tree itself.

Our emotions are an extension of us, just as the leaves are an extension of the tree. They are there to help us understand and process what is taking place within us. If a tree is unwell or undergoes a change, we will see the signs of this in the leaves and bark. When we have strong or heavy emotions come to the surface, this can be a sign that something is out of balance. As we feel them and express them, we tap into that inner light of our Spirit Within so that we may become a fuller expression of ourselves.

It’s easy to say that we should embrace difficulties, not fear the unknown, and allow the changes in our lives to just gracefully fall into place. But the truth is this takes practice. And with each challenge in our lives that arises, may we navigate it with just a little more grace.

Just as the tree stores energy in its roots which surges up when it’s time to grow new leaves, your Spirit Within knows when the time is right to release the emotions you have been holding onto. When we feel tension during difficult times, it can sometimes be because we are trying to block this release. We are fighting the flow of nature within our body and Spirit.

So if you are going through a challenge or a difficult time, if you are feeling the tension or stress or fear or sadness, take some time to allow for space in your life to feel what is calling to be felt. I often will do this by bringing myself to a quiet space where I feel safe to let out my emotions. I invite the emotions to come to the surface. I do this by literally saying in my mind “I am willing and ready to allow my emotions to express themselves. I am here for you, I love you, and you are safe to be felt, seen, and heard”.

You can change this statement to whatever feels right for you. There really is no wrong way to do it. I invite you to try this for a few days and see what comes of it. Sometimes emotions can be hesitant, especially if love and safety were not a consistent presence in our childhood. So be patient and kind with yourself through this process.

I will be sharing more of my own inner challenges as I move along in this chapter of my life. Inner work often takes time and is best not to be rushed, I find. But for now, know that you are not alone in your challenges, and I walk this path right alongside you.

Small steps lead to great changes in our lives. So keep going, keep healing, and don’t be afraid to go within.

Much love,

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