The Process Of Letting Go
Grief, Relieve, Believe
Dear Soul Friends,
Summer is perceptibly coming to an end and I hope you were able to enjoy the season to the fullest! When the foggy mornings are heralding colder times, I feel my body and mind getting ready to turn inwards. While I am harvesting the last fruits of the summer, I am already pruning the parts in my life that don’t serve me anymore, that are not aligned with my soul or that I have simply outgrown. These things seem to effortlessly fall away.
However, they do not fall away without grief. As silently as leaves sometimes sail to the muddy ground, grief can slip under my coat, unnoticeable, only to emerge into a lashing teary shower. I find myself with a heavily loaded basket of beautiful summer memories, sunny beaches and precious keepsakes, yet grief plants itself in the vessel I am carrying these things home with - my body.
The Body Remembers
“The body keeps the score” Bessel van der Kolk states in his book of the same title. I look back to 2023, the summer when I started to pack my boxes to get ready for the biggest change in my life - the move to Ireland. I always wondered how this body storage technique is working. Something to put on my list of explorations. I really need to read this book. At times, it feels as if the body remembers before it shows up in my awareness. Like a subliminal affirmation, the feeling starts to emerge out of the deepest crevices of my soul, shaking my core and surprising me with a flood of emotions. Dot by dot, I make the connections and draw a picture that slowly starts to make sense. This picture slowly emerges, like a shape of an animal in the fog that we only recognise when it comes closer. There is this threshold in fog, where the invisible becomes visible. The same threshold happens within me during this process of grief.
Unnoticed
I only realised that I was grieving after I went to a local women’s circle. These gatherings are such a gift and while I hesitated about attending this one, something made me sign up at the last minute. As we started the circle, the topic of grief was embracing us all, like a big unifying blanket. Covered in this mystic fog, we carved through the different reasons of grief, somehow woven together by what deeply surprised me, as I always connected grief with the loss of a person or an animal. Collectively, our grief was connected to the transition of jobs.
When I decided to move to Ireland, I was so excited about this new adventure that grief had no room to breathe. By the time the moving date came closer, I found myself overwhelmed by the intensity of grief that others were experiencing because I was about to go. As I made the decision to feel all the feelings, I opened my heart wide and I felt so much Love in all their grief, something I had never expected. However, I never would have thought that grief could come up when we consciously make the decision to change.
Grief showed up wherever I looked. My Instagram feed brought more and more posts filled with questions, shares and stories of grief. Most of them were stories of lost loved ones. I have been very lucky so far. All the people I love are still living their human lives on this earth, except for my grandparents. Yet, I have said goodbye to lots of apartments, opportunities, dreams and relationships. As I am writing these lines, sitting outside and bathing in the last rays of the summer sun, a red robin appears right next to me. Thinking about it now, I haven’t seen one in quite a while. Usually it showed up everywhere I went.
“Robins appear when loved ones are near …”
For me, it is my dear grandmother showing me that I am taken care of. As I am sitting here, reflecting and at the same time letting you be a part of this healing process, I feel some questions arising out of the fog.
Living The Questions
Why do I grieve for a job I have happily moved on from? What is this weird feeling of grief, and how come it is so sneaky?
A dear friend of mine told me to ask grief, what she wants to tell me. So, as always, I am deciding now to get curious, or as my friend Jamie would say “cuoreous”. In my research I find this article. “Grief is the broken bond of belonging.” Boom. Immediately my eyes are welling up with tears. In my heart I can feel a recognition and a painful realisation. I am not grieving an outer circumstance like a job, an old apartment or even my colleagues (who were the best colleagues one could ever have, by the way). I am grieving parts of my old self. The self that belonged to this group. The self that defined herself as a teacher. The self that had one label, one job, one place. Now, I am a tapestry of jobs, labels and places. In this chaotic, yet abundant, messy and beautiful swirl of everything, I am finding myself belonging to nothing. This is indeed a scary place to be.
“No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.”
C.S. Lewis
Fearing Grief
The ego tries to keep us safe through fear. Does grief only feel like fear or is grief actually fear? Maybe grief is the fear of never seeing the person again, of never belonging to a place again, of never finding that same feeling that we had in a relationship, a place, a moment.
The article, mentioned above, says: “Have you ever noticed how beautiful a person is after they’ve wept? It’s as if they are made new again by the baptism of tears. Indeed, when something stuck can be released through grief, we are freeing up a greater capacity to love.”
Is my change of jobs and the grief that comes with it helping me to love myself more deeply? To belong to myself even more?
Donna Ashworth writes:
“You lose a version of yourself when a loved one leaves. But you will eventually greet a new version of yourself too, when the daze dissipates. The you who loves with that person inside, not out.”
Donna Ashworth
In both cases, it is a part of us, a version of us that leaves. In both cases, we will be changed, transformed, never to be the same. I often hear people say that when some big shifts like a loss of any kind happens: “Life will never be the same.” This reminds me that during Covid lockdown so many people were eager to “go back to normal” and were looking forward to the “old life”. Some may have been able to do that. I have witnessed a lot of people change after Covid. Yet, our ego has a strong pull towards the familiar. On top of that, we have learned to not feel uncomfortable feelings. Grief is certainly one of them. I witness so many people that are grieving the loss of a person or an animal, trying to “move on” as quickly as possible. Your workplace may grant you a certain time to grieve, but then you have to be up and running again as soon as possible. It takes time. We can not rush the process of letting go. Just like we don’t pull and push the trees to let their leaves fall quicker, there is no need to brush off our feelings.
Feeling The Feelings
“Those who avoid their own feelings, will likely avoid yours, too.” I have just read on Instagram. Looking back, I think this is the biggest reason why I started people-pleasing in the first place. There was no room for big emotions. It was just too uncomfortable for the people around me. Is this why we often stay in familiar situations, although they are not serving us or that we have outgrown? Do we fear big emotions coming up in the process of letting go? Are we used to squeezing ourselves into the old sweater that is far too small for us, because we fear being naked for a while?
“Change is inevitable, growth is optional.”
John C. Maxwell
We can’t escape the fact that things are changing. Nothing in life is permanent, just look at nature. Even if we stay in a familiar situation when it feels more comfortable to do so, we can’t control what is happening around us. One day someone might step outside the box, one day our body stops working or one day a big life event catapults us out of the rut. Often, these events work like a fertilizer for ultimate growth. If we can manage to drop the resistance, life takes us to unexpected places. When we surrender to the winds of change, we actually might be able to fly. On the wings of the universe we soar home into the arms of Love.
Seasons Of The Soul
You can’t bring back the spring
that let your heart blossom
just because it seems to hard
to deal with the darkness of winter
You can’t bring back the buds
of new beginnings
when the process is on its way
to unfolding
A tree cannot grow new leaves
if it doesn’t let go of the old ones
So darling, please breathe deeply
and surrender to the pain
of letting go
The next spring is just around the corner
and the roses will bloom even more fully
The beauty of spring always shows up
No matter how hard and cold the winter has been
Every tiny change needs to be seen.
Every leaf that falls to the ground
becomes part of the nourishing soil
and blends into the mud
that covers the root with softness and care
Every season has its purpose
and so does every part of your soul
Only by accepting the cycle of the seasons
You can find your inner being whole
Sadhbh Adamea
Reflections
I will leave you with a few questions to ponder:
In which areas of your life are you holding on?
Can you let go just a little?
If you trusted that what falls away will melt into the earth and grow anew, could you release the grip a bit?
Exciting News
I am so excited to announce that I am one step away from publishing my debut poetry book! The idea for the book was planted in January. Nine months later (yes, I can feel the analogy of giving birth to something), this wonderful project has grown, ripened and is now ready for blooming. I proudly present to you:
Limitless
Sharing The Wor(l)d Through Love’s Eyes
20 empowering poems for free use in retreats, classrooms, webinars, seminars, book clubs, online courses and other creative projects.
Whether you are a retreat leader, a teacher, an artist or simply a lover of poetry, this is your book! Let Sadhbh take you on a journey that will change your lens. These 20 inspiring poems will show you how to see the world through Love’s eyes.
As poetry embraces you from the inside out, you will be reminded of your core. This poetry will help you reflect and get to know yourself better. Poetry will bathe you in energy and help you raise your vibration. When you are feeling good, manifestations materialize easier and your wellbeing improves. As these poems are free to use after you’ve purchased this book, you can get creative! Let yourself be inspired by their innate vibration of Love.
As you remember that you have enough, you do enough, and you are enough, you can easily step into your full power to live your purpose, share your magic and serve your very own expression of Love with the world!
Enter into these poems and give yourself an energy boost to feel the flame of Love inside your heart, so that your creativity can flow, and you show up to the world being Love. You are a gift! You glow! Thank you for shining your light!
I have dreamt about writing a book since my teenage years! I am so grateful to live in a time now, where self-publishing enables me to release my poetry into the world. Thank you for being a part of it, for you, the reader of my words, are the biggest encouragement to keep going!
I wish you a wonderful autumn!
Lots of Love,
Sadhbh (Nicole)
P.S. Yes, the poem that I shared here will also be in the book!
If you want to explore how to use poetry to prepare for the season of change, join me in the next Love Café Session on Sunday. I will be joined by the wonderful Bernie Woods, who just published three poetry books to help children being mindful. Together we will have a conversation about the power of poetry and we will give you some prompts to poetically explore your relationship with change and letting go. As always, I will also guide you through a poetry meditation!
Sign up and find out more here:
Follow me on Instagram to stay updated about the book release day and other exciting announcements!
A lovely insightful posting about grief. Grief and letting-go seem like natural companions and recently I've found that regrets (or rather trying not to have regrets about the past) is a close companion too. But when I sit and think of loving myself unconditionally, (believing I am loved unconditionally by some greater universal force/Being - so who am I to argue), then regrets seem to fizzle out - and yet grief stays. Perhaps they are on different levels, are different types of experience. By all accounts Jesus was "a man of sorrows acquainted with grief" which maybe points to grief being a deep part of our soul-journey.
Ireland really is beautiful, from what I've seen.
In the meantime, you absolutely belong here, in Subland, and you belong to yourself and the Universe. You are not losing where you belong, you are expanding it to new frontiers, never before explored. So glad we crossed paths! XO