What Can We Trust When We are Letting Go?

Releasing the story we thought we were living

Lately, I’ve been sitting with a deeper layer of releasing.

Not the invigorating kind, where we finally donate the sweater, clear the closet, or make a clean decision.

The more difficult kind:

Releasing our attachment to a particular outcome.
Releasing the version of a person, relationship, role, or life chapter we thought we understood.
Releasing the belief that if we love hard enough, try wisely enough, explain clearly enough, or do everything “right,” we can make life unfold the way we hoped.

This kind of releasing can bring grief with it. It can also bring anger, resentment, guilt, judgment, and the very human temptation to blame ourselves or others for what did not become what we wished it would be.

And then, if we are willing to stay with it, something else may slowly begin to emerge.

For me, the answer is not always found in the circumstances themselves. Those can shift, disappoint, confuse, or break our hearts. The steadier ground is found in the practices and principles that help us keep meeting life.

In Buddhism, this is reflected in the Three Jewels: the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha — awakening, the teachings, and the community of practice. And I’ve found that many spiritual traditions and fellowships point toward a similar steadiness: connection to something larger than ourselves, guiding principles to live by, and a community that helps us keep practicing. Different traditions. Similar wisdom.

We need something larger than our own fearful minds to lean into.

Because we are learning beings. And learning often asks us to unlearn.

Transformation is not just becoming something new. It is also releasing what no longer serves, or what may no longer exist in the way we imagined. It is choosing compassion as we walk through uncertainty. It is practicing wise action without demanding perfect outcomes. It is allowing painful learning — and even more painful unlearning — to become part of our growth.

This is not easy work. But perhaps this is part of what it means to grow in the flow of our actual lives. Not the lives we planned. Not the lives we compare against someone else’s. But the lives that are here, asking us to see clearly, love honestly, act wisely, and keep becoming.

Here’s to trusting the path of learning and unlearning, one tender release at a time.