Photograph by Kieran Bammann from her 2015 series *INTIMACY shot on 120mm film.*

“I don’t believe I can,” she said softly, but as the words fell off her tongue they were already taken by the wind and carried off to such a distance. Within her words didn’t reflect her truth, and only she and nature knew that.

On the other side of the inability to let go there is courage, there is a bravery that tops the highest peaks of mountains and carries you through the wickedest of storms. Grief and love are one of similar emotions because they play on the multiplicity of attachment.

The dance between love and loss is change. Change is our greatest lesson in love. It challenges us to self sacrifiece the deepest parts of ourselves and let our Ego’s lose. It asks us to give over our souls to deep surrender, in trust that everything will always work out if you chosee to be guided and let the cycles end.

Denial. Anger. Bargaining. Depression. Acceptance… and as David Kessler said, finding meaning or purpose.

I won’t…

I’ll never…

If only they…

I’m tired of…

I believe…

I surrender.

This is our language and if language is the most potent output source of our belief, what we tell ourselves is the pillar to our ability to conquer life. So why don’t we trust ourselves enough to know what’s meant to go and what’s meant to stay?

Some could argue it’s the denial. But really its our memories, which is the past, which anything from the past becomes our delusion. What I mean by this is that we attach ourselves to someone because of the good things we want to see in them without understanding that sometimes goods have an expiration date, that we can’t control or foresee. This has been noticed as seeing and believing in the potential of someone or something more than what is actually shown to you.

However, what we can see is that each of us is a light of power and love, to experience the hardest lessons based on our karmas or samskaras (samskaras are mental impressions, recollections, or psychological imprints). and come out brighter in greatest service to ourselves and sometimes others. Yet, we give that power away like water to the ones that hurt us the most if we ourselves are not healed.

We have a tendency to love people more than their capacity to love us back. In any imbalance, there is sacrifice, if you’re not self-aware.

So we feel stuck in the loss that we experience over and over and over again, waiting and hopeful that something will change, that that person will fill the missing need that we’ve silently been longing for, or in some cases, inable to feel able to communicate with someone who has left us in this realm. Torn between wanting to move forward, but holding so deeply onto a version of ourselves that is longing to shed.

The reality of inability to let go, is unwillingness to believe that: if I let this go, something better is waiting for me. Which then says: I am not worthy of anything better because this is the best that I’ve ever had and I’m scared to take the leap of faith and try to find out.

I am here to tell you that, with every bone, ligament, blood vessel, organ system and my heart, I feel and have felt that same way for long periods of time.

And that it’s okay to feel sorry for yourself, but how many times are you going to ride shotgun in your life before it’s time to take the wheel?

Grieving can take anywhere from 6 months to a lifetime, if you allow it to.

Mel Robbins said so beautifully, “All the tears you cry over someone who's [passed or gone] is just the love you didn’t get to express while they were here.”

Sometimes in the holding, all the things, people, memories, items, places we hold because deep down there’s a part of us that believes that there’s something left. And we’ll hold onto those people, places and things until our wits end, very last, last straw. The common line that it always leads to is that we're resisting the natural flow of change, and resisting acceptance of love into our lives.

I once said to myself when I was dealing with the emotions of leaving or staying with a job that I dearly loved that was no longer serving my highest self, “not to say quit while you’re ahead, rather realize when it’s time to let go before the moving on happens for you. The universe has a plan for all of us whether we listen and align ourselves to the Divine plan through our intuition or not.” - 8.30.2022

Magic has it’s way of happening, and future you will look back and decipher what was once unknown.

For now, if you haven’t heard this today or hear this enough, I am deeply proud of you for how far you’ve come.

Xx,

Ray of Light

“How much do we need to let go of? A friend asked one day. “Maybe everything.”

— The Language of Letting Go by Melody Beattie

See FEMME Article: Trust for tapping into your deeper intuition.