Cutting the threads of the past

There’s been a catharsis happening over the past month or so. A deep release of the past. The day before Summer Solstice I suddenly realised that I’d been holding on to 16 years worth of journals. I started journalling in 2007, the year my Mum died and my marriage fell apart. I’ve been journalling ever since. It’s a practice that supports me deeply. I used to journal to figure things out, now my journalling practice is sometimes this (when I’m in resistance), but more about release, simply writing what comes and letting the thoughts spill out onto to paper to let them go. In my new journal this year I wrote the intention “to write without purpose or attainment”.

Over the past 16 years I’ve documented everything, the tantrums, the fears, the unfairness, the joys, the anger, the excruciating feelings associated with grief, loss and heartbreak. My journals have held my deepest, darkest thoughts. All the shame, everything.

I honestly don’t know why I’ve held on to them for so long, all I can say is that I trust the timing. On Monday 19th June, it hit me as if from nowhere. I needed to release my old journals, I needed to release everything that I was holding onto from the past.

So I sat in ceremony and started to burn my journals that very evening. Burning the first journal, the very first one I’d written in, I felt a relief escape through my body, like I’d suddenly let go of the heaviest weight. I could breathe again. I continued to burn my journals over the Summer Solstice, it took a while, but with each one the intention of letting go.

And it’s continuing. Clothes have been going, letters, cards that I’ve held on to. I know there’s more. Yesterday I found myself in the loft going through things and now I want to clear the loft out completely, which I will do over the next few weeks and months.

It’s time.

I hadn’t realised how much I’d been holding on to the past. I knew that what I’d been through didn’t define who I was now, but there was still a thread of holding on. There was still a thread of attachment to the past, as if keeping me there. It’s hard to describe in words. And as with the nature of awareness, I couldn’t see it, until I could see it.

Something in me feels so clear now. Something in me has released.

Everything that I’ve experienced in my life, has led me to this point. This morning I connected back into the intention of my work, to support human beings when life brings them to their knees, when the storms of life take you under, when you feel lost and alone in heartbreak and grief. This is the why I’m here, this is holding I offer. At it’s heart, it’s about life. How we live a life of beauty and reverence in the face of sorrow and grief. And we’re facing such sorrow and grief in the world today.

If I hadn’t gone through everything that I went through, I wouldn’t be here, in this place. Even with the beautiful family I have now. I no longer believe everything happens for a reason, because I think that can take us away from the truth of the pain, but I do believe in the alchemy of life and grief. I am grateful for where I sit today, I am grateful to the experiences that have led me here, I am grateful to the sorrow and the heartbreak that has allowed me to live life in a way I never knew was possible. I am NOT grateful that my Mum died. There’s a difference, and I think that’s important.

I believe that in our grief and our sorrow it can open us to the beauty in life that we may never have touched if it wasn’t for the pain.

For me, it’s now time to cut the threads. To release.

Letting go is never as simple as letting go. Sometimes we may try to let go, because we don’t want to feel how we’re feeling. Sometimes we long to let go because we don’t want to carry what we’re carrying. My experience of letting go is that you can’t rush it or force it. You can set an intention but it has its own course. That’s why I’m sitting here 16 years after first putting pen to paper releasing what was held in words back then.

What is it that you might be holding on to?

What in the past is still lingering?

I always say without judgement and with the deepest of compassion. We can’t beat ourselves into evolving, changing or letting go, we have to engage with the process, and trust that life will show us the way.