Letting go is sad but often it is the price of growing

I am thinking a lot about this issue of letting go today after reading a post from someone whose marriage ended painfully through betrayal. It reminded me again of the pain I felt when my ex husband told me he was finally leaving me to go back to the UK and be with his family who never fully accepted me. It was heartbreaking and from then on I started to suffer panic attacks and I had an accident on the first anniversary where I split my head open very badly. I still don’t know if we would have survived if I had chosen not to come back for family who were suffering. (My older sister who was incapacitated died in 2014 so I had 3 more years with her after finally moving back to my home town in 2011). My husband wasn’t happy that I started to do therapy in 1999 to try and deal with the pain of my past. I wish I could have left all of my pain behind without it but that was not to be the way things turned out.

I often blame myself for the ending while knowing on some level we were only fated to travel so far down the road together. When things end I have learned it hurts less if we can let go and surrender gracefully when the writing is on the wall. I didn’t do that in the next relationship either. I also struggled to let go of the pain of my family members as an empath thinking that if only I sacrificed I could heal something. I know on an astrological level its down to the strong watery Neptunian energy in me.

But lately I am feeling I want to let go. Why hold onto something that hurts you? Why keep trying with those who appear not to want to have you in their life? Why not just surrender gracefully? Because it makes you sad and you have to feel the sadness in order to release it. If you are hedging the sadness and trying to push it away you are not paying the coin to the ferry man who needs to take you to the other side of that dark river.

Anyway, often we learn more through hindsight. I am actually also (as I shared in an earlier post) feeling like letting go of therapy. I just want to live in the present now. God knows my past has been full of mistakes and pain but I am so tired of going over it. I really want to move forward and the price of letting go is sadness and grief but that is only part of the process. I also need a growing acceptance that everything worked out as it needed to. I never found it easy to separate emotionally but now it seems that the Universe is demanding that I do. If I really want to be happy.