Letting Go...

What I didn’t know about letting go was that it was going to
be a daily, hourly, lifelong quest.

Sometimes it is so easy to give advice about letting go and
so hard to follow it. I held on to so many things for fear letting
go would destroy me, that I trapped myself in a panic. A panic
I couldn’t escape from, a panic that frightened me.

All I could think...

I’m going to be free... Free of everything, and I guess I’m scared and nervous.

I made a few promises to myself…

1) No matter what I would move through my fear and
anxiety when support was offered

2) I would finish whatever writing ideas I started without the fear of acceptance (financial, critical, etc.)

3) I would ‘be myself’ enthusiastically and without regret

Recovery to me was so about mastering letting go, well, actually being able to let go, understanding its nuances and its powers and then moving on.

Once you let go, you made a choice. Don’t bemoan or spend energy feeding what comes up; notice that it is tough, feel it, embrace it, but let it pass. Do not let it drag you down.

I would never have thought the ten minutes through the corn fields to get milk and eggs from the local dairy farm growing up would be replaced by a trip down Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills to the Whole Foods Market. I would never have thought so many things were possible if I hadn’t taken a first step and let go of what I had known.

There is no way I could have drawn a map that would have led me to where I am.

Some of the difficulty and my personal angst would come from trying to achieve results in a ball busting straightforward linear fashion. When I let go of that which confined me or defined me I ended up where I wanted to be. Without fail.

I learned to love letting go.

Excerpted from Melanie Lutz's THE BARE MELCESSITIES.