How to "Just Let Go"

If you're going through some stuff right now, chances are someone has told you, or you have read in books, to just "let it go" (and maybe you have wanted to cause them bodily harm for saying so). Maybe you've gone to yoga class, or to therapy, or to church, and been told to "release and move on". But how? How does one cope with having someone/something one day and wake up without it the next? How do you "just let go and move on"? How does that work? I was told these things, I have told myself these things, I have read these things, I have heard these things - and I had questions, so many questions. I've done some research of my own - as in, I just did everything and anything that I could/read/was told - and I can say with great certainty that one thing helped me recover and let go of my loss faster than anything.

MOVEMENT.

In short, my divorce was one of those "one day they're there, the next day they're gone" type of things. In the blink of an eye, my marriage was over and an entire family was taken from me. I can't say why my ex-husband's family rejected me after it happened, because I was not the one to end it, but they never spoke to me again except to tell me that they never really liked me anyway. No, things weren't always perfect, and we had our disagreements like any family does over the years, but we also had our fun, our happy memories, our love for one another - I thought. Parents, cousins, aunts, uncles, friends - all gone without so much as a goodbye or an "I'm sorry this is happening". Radio silence. I didn't know how to actually cope with that - with the loss of multiple people, whom regardless of what they apparently thought of me, I truly loved. I can say that I mourned the actual family longer than I mourned my ex husband, strictly because I wasn't really sure how to process the lack of closure and the sudden silence on their end. I wanted answers. Why didn't they like me suddenly? Why did they not reach out to me when they knew I was in such pain? Why did years of being a part of their family hold no merit? Why? The questions added to my despair, my hopelessness, and my feelings of unwant. I never got that closure - I never got the reasoning behind their silence, I never was given those answers and so I had to find it on my on. I had to release and let go and that was done through movement.

Our muscles, our bones, our bodies hold memory. When we workout and we're trying to build muscle, we're told the "muscle memory" will kick in. Muscle memory snaps into affect when someone has been in an accident and is learning to walk again. It is what allows us to not think about simple tasks that we do everyday. Muscle memory is real so it makes total sense that emotions, memories, live in our bodies - and the only way to release them is to burn them. Obviously, I don't mean to actually injure yourself with fire - I mean to incinerate the emotions that live in our bodies the same way we torch calories when we want to lose weight: movement. The only way I was able to release, to let go, and to move on was to move. Looking at myself now - 3 years later - a little heavier than I want to be and a little more sedentary than I've been in years, it is easy to see that I no longer "need" the movement to burn off the sadness. I have reached a place of contentment, peace, and happiness again and my body shows it a bit - but that's a different story to be shared another day.

I found that every time I took my dog, Ryley, for a walk and every time I walked out of yoga class, and every time I ran, that I felt lighter. There were times I would be in yoga class and could actually visualize the memories going up in flames. Often, I would walk into class with a memory that wouldn't leave me alone, and I would vow to watch it burn as I moved through each yoga pose, sweat dripping off my body, muscles creating heat with every movement, memory playing behind my closed eyes, going up in flames. Sometimes it took me a month of movement just to torch one single memory or emotion from my life, but I never stopped and it worked. Our memories live inside our muscles, they hibernate inside our tendons, and they dance along our heart strings. It may sound a little hippie-ish and it may make you roll your eyes a bit - but it works. And in the depths of my despair, if someone told me that petting a cow everyday would have made the pain go away, then I would've found a farm and visited daily without fail. So why not try? I'm not asking that you talk to livestock. I am asking you to move.

If you are in a desperate place, whether you were just placed there yesterday, or you've been struggling in this place for years without release, then I encourage you, I dare you, I urge you to move. The more, the better - within reason. I know you may feel weak emotionally - but also physically, and I know you feel like moving is the last thing you want to do right now - but do it. Try it. When feelings arise, move. You don't need to plan it, you don't need to go anywhere, you don't need to look a certain way or even feel strong enough. Take a quick walk around the block. Bang out 10 pushups. Look up a workout video on Youtube and follow along in your pajamas. It doesn't have to be pretty. It doesn't have to look right. It just has to be done. And whatever comes up, let it come. And whatever goes, let it go. Don't grasp at the emotions, don't hold them, don't mull over them - burn them. If you need to scream, then scream. If you need to cry, then cry. If you need to laugh, then laugh. It's all a release. It's all a letting go. It is all going to be ok in time, if you commit to moving these emotions out of the body through movement. If you can commit to burning these memories through movement, then I promise that these are the ashes from which you will rise.

Water color print by Terri Meredith