why "just let it go" is bullshit

Let it Go….What a bullshit thing to say to someone. It makes the person feel like their emotions or feelings are invalid or not important or misunderstood. Telling someone to just “let it go” is the equivalent to saying, “meh, I don’t really care what you are holding onto right now, it makes me uncomfortable to listen to your story so I am going to shut you down and move on to something else.” There is an entire movie focused around that song, “Let it GO”. Great, now it is stuck in my head again.

“you just need to let that go, and you will be happy”

It is not that easy. It is not like you can say-well folks I am over it now! I can be happy! Wouldn’t that be nice though?  Sure, I would love to just be done with it (insert trauma, grief, depression, anxiety, experience….) but it is not reality. I have found that through my healing process, letting things go is the hardest work I have ever done.

I found myself in a terrible situation a few years ago when my father passed. It was no secret that his parenting could have used some serious improvement, he ended up being a good guy, but I lived through a lot of trauma and heartbreak that led me to disassociate with my past, but problems would always come up, or I would be fearful, or I would fill myself up with food, alcohol or drugs to detach from those feelings. I went through years of trying to get over my childhood. Then, when he passed a few years ago, all my trauma came flooding back to me. It sent me into a spiral of depression, panic, anxiety, and grief. When I would try to talk to people about what was going on with me, they would tell me to, “let it go”. Ok great, well how do I do that? No one had an answer for me. I was genuinely curious about this, and that is what led me to start truly healing myself.

I realized a lot of my patterns, the way I would react to people, the way I could hide and lie to myself, the way I pushed things under the rug, or pushed things down with disassociation and avoidance. I was really good at all of that. Waking all of that up, and having those realizations filled me with anger, anguish and sorrow, deep sorrow. I went into a spiral and one day found myself bawling in a pitch-black closet curled up in the corner crying to spirit, “why was this the life that I chose?” I felt that no one understood me, I felt very alone, and I was suicidal. I had a family, at the time I had my 2 boys, one who was still a baby, and the other was around 10 years old, they needed me. So I wiped the tears from my swollen eyes, and stared at myself in the mirror. Still angry, and sorrowful, but now I was determined to “let it go” for them. The more I tried to push it away, the more those anxiety attacks would happen. This was obviously not working for me anymore.

I decided to work on things, to let the emotions and feelings come up for me. To feel those things deeply, remembering the memory, and sitting with that lonely little girl. I allowed myself to really feel, letting it all come out of me, releasing the suppressed memories, embracing them, and then sending myself unconditional love. I wanted to just understand and be ok with what happened. Then something amazing happened; I started to see my father as a child. I saw him and how he was treated, how his family was living, and I finally was able to see why he was the way he was with me. This led me to forgiveness and unconditional love. I decided to love my father unconditionally, for all his faults and his greatness. For the first time in my life, I felt true peace.

My work wasn’t over. I still had a lot of work ahead of me, but this was a great start. Forgiveness can mean the world to us, it really isn’t about the other person, it is about forgiving what we have felt and held in. Forgiving someone releases it from being your burden to carry. It is not our purpose to be lugging around other people’s baggage, we have our own to carry. What happened to me, wasn’t his fault, I mean in a way it was, he had the choice to treat me how he did, but he didn’t have the knowledge that this was because of his conditioning. It was my choice to hold onto it and create my narrative from it, and it was also my choice to release it.

I shed all of this, or at least another layer of it. I released the man that I had created in my mind and looked at him as though he were a child, or my own son, with unconditional love. This was what started to heal the cracks in my heart. Loving him completely and without judgement. It filled my heart and started to fill my soul with light. I started to improve the relationships with the people in my life, and released some that were not healthy. I recognized my own faults and started to see myself more clear, recognizing when I would lean into my old habits and patterns, and quickly making changes, and improvements in how I dealt with pain or trauma in my life. I wanted to be free of that, it wasn’t me anymore, it wasn’t my story anymore. Some would say that your past made you who you are, sure, it gave me the lessons I needed in order to be in the place that I am, but I have learned those lessons, and now I am ready to write my own story.

I remember the moment when I released everything. I was driving home from somewhere and I was on the interstate. I had my boys in the back, and I pulled onto the exit ramp. I was overcome with a sense of joy, and I said out loud, “huh, I don’t need that anymore.” And as I sat at the light waiting for my turn to go, I just filled with this energy, this loving and pure energy. It filled my whole body and it was exciting. I was now on my way to writing my own story, starting at that moment. I was free. I let that shit go and released it without a thought.

Now maybe some people have the ability to just let things roll off their shoulders without a second look, maybe this is because they have great confidence, or because they trust in their own emotions? I can’t really speak for those types of people, other than, I wish I was more like that, sometimes. I am a deeply feeling person, I am an empath and I feel everything with every cell of my body, so sometimes things get stuck. It’s a gift and a burden, especially as a lightworker and bodyworker. I have found many different techniques to deflect others projections, and others energy: maybe that is another story I could tell. So, it takes time for me to understand what is feeling heavy, maybe it isn’t even mine?!

“Letting go” might not be the best thing to say to someone. Forgiveness, Unconditional Love, and Release. Or, “I hear you, and see you, your feelings are valid, and I am here for you”. These are definitely more supportive ways to acknowledge someone’s pain. It is not as easy as some would make it seem, it takes work, it takes depth and understanding.

Since releasing my past, I have really come to be in agreement with this idea that we do not have to live in our old stories. We don’t have to be weighed down by the choices or actions of others, it is up to us to decide if we are going to absorb it and live in it, or if we are going to say, well that’s not really my problem, it was theirs. Sometimes during sessions people will have an emotion come up, and they will not have the words to express it, so what I have often told them, is to just breathe into it, ride the wave. You don’t have to attach a memory or a thought to it, it really can just be an emotion that we feel and name. We don’t have to let it move in, we can acknowledge that it was something that needed to be released and leave it at that. We can move on to being the person we want to be. Living without emotional pain, or trauma. Just being our loving and light selves, moving through life having the confidence and freedom to express ourselves when it counts, to being able to create a life that is fulfilling and joyful. What do you want your life to look like? What choices will you make to create change and movement in your life? Are you ready to move forward and write your own story? Maybe there is fear around releasing our past because we are afraid that we don’t know a life without it? I know I felt that once or twice, or a thousand times. It is uncharted territory because the story hasn’t been written. So being present, allowing ourselves to fit into our bodies and feel unconditional love for every moment that we are in this existence is profound. We don’t have to have the answers to our future, life happens and paths change, but we are here now. We are here existing and breathing. I for one, would much rather be living my life according to my own rules and my own theme.