from letting go to letting it be

These past two years living through a pandemic have taught me so much about the act of surrendering. Maybe you also have gotten a healthy lesson in surrender as we all continue to gradually adapt to and accept the steps it has collectively taken to mitigate this pandemic. We are all being asked to surrender and accept that the normal we once knew in 2019 is never coming back, to confront the fact that our lives have so fundamentally shifted, so how could it? In the last few months, the lesson of surrender has graduated to now becoming a lesson in letting go for me. I posit, this is going to be true for many of us right now, especially as we close out 2021 and welcome in a 2022 with no certainty about the future in sight. So how do we truly be okay with letting go and what does it really mean?

To start, if you are unsure if you have been surrendering or not, reflect on the shifts you have made in your life, whether working remotely, accepting business closures, the end of large in person gatherings, red tape on international travel, regular nasal swab tests, masks, and most likely some real personal sacrifices you have confronted recently amidst this pandemic. Rather than resisting or resenting these changes, you can invite surrender as a powerful tool to give you more peace and resilience through such unwelcome change. A way to do this is inviting in an age-old golden piece of wisdom, the Serenity Prayer:

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference. … Father, give us courage to change what must be altered, serenity to accept what cannot be helped, and the insight to know the one from the other.

Surrendering has been one of the biggest life lessons I have learned to find peace and acceptance despite the circumstances. The past two years frosted with a pandemic have been deeply transformative to me in the ultimate lessons of surrender. Between three generations, with me in the middle, I have faced head on life’s two most certain changes: Giving birth to my daughter in July of 2020, and losing my mother in September of 2021. Living with and caring for both an unwell mother and bringing a daughter into the world during a pandemic, I have not only learned, but mastered the art of surrendering in my own terms. And what I have come to realize is that being a master of surrendering is only half of the equation. The second half to master, is the art of letting go.

So here today, I explore with you my journey of letting go.

I was caring for a sick one year old who was sent home from daycare with a fever, countless negative COVID tests and doctor’s appointments later, I found myself cancelling all my work engagements to become a bed of comfort for my daughter to lie on and sleep off her fever for the week. As I sat there in stillness, I surrendered to the experience and found myself cherishing this unwelcome moment, to simply be with my daughter and comfort her in a time of need. By Saturday, she had bounced back to her spunky, playful little self and we went out for coffee and bagels to celebrate our new-found freedom. No sooner than taking my first sip of a warm coffee, my dad calls. My mom has taken a turn for the worst. I need to be on a red eye flight tonight to see her and say my goodbyes. I hang up, dig deep, and as best I can accept the news I received. Now I had to table my life for another week to be there for my mom. I held a great uncertainty of the future not knowing how much time I would have and what my life could possibly look like on the other side of this.

That night I boarded a red eye flight to be with her for her final days. Those days I will cherish for the rest of my life. They were the most beautiful, terrifying, happy, and saddest moments I have experienced. And then, on a beautiful sunny Friday morning, I kissed her good morning and she passed. What I was left with was a master lesson in surrendering to bear witness to what is, to hold space with acceptance, and to trust the journey. And suddenly, it no longer made sense. It felt like a piece of my understanding in my ability to surrender was missing. And it was. My greatest teacher, mentor, and friend was teaching me how to let go in her most courageous act of dying.

I am a beginner at learning how to let go. I am still just starting my journey within this life lesson, but already the freedom, the grace, the transience, and the power letting go has presented me, has been profound. Often in the world of self-help, spirituality, personal growth, many guides, and thinkers will tell us to surrender, but rarely do many of us face head on and embody the art of letting go, and it is potent in terms of the meaning and understanding of life.

And what I have discovered, is letting go is not a loss.

Often letting go can be perceived as an emptiness, a permanent void of what we cannot have, what many times we cannot get back or go back to. This is a choice of how we choose to look at things. As my choice, I present a re-framed version of letting go, letting it be.

Time is an artificial construct. When I was with my mom, she looked me in the eyes knowing her time was nearing the end and said, it all goes by too fast. I had this sinking pit in my stomach knowing she was right. It does go by too fast. Looking at my baby daughter in the blink of my eyes turn into a rambunctious little girl, goes by too fast. But being there holding a mindful loving presence as we gazed into each other’s eyes and just shared in these final moments felt timeless. We all deep down know those moments, where we lose ourselves as we are immersed with the most meaningful moments of life. Time freezes. And as I gazed at my mother as we sat on the couch together, she told me she had painted a hummingbird. Intuitively I asked, is that what you will be coming back as? She welled up with tears and said, yes.

This is why I believe there is no such thing as letting go anymore. Upon returning to California since my mom’s passing. Every single day for over two months, I have had a hummingbird greet me at my home office window as I work. It just hovers there and sometimes it feels like it almost is looking inside the window right at me. Other times zipping around or taking nectar from the flowering bushes in the yard. And on a level, I cannot explain by science or research, I know this synchronicity is real. In the midst of grief, we can find profound meaning by letting go. And by letting it be, it is because in my heart, I know my mom never left me, she visits more than she could ever before. I see traits of her in myself and in my daughter who was even named after her, and I realize like any change, this is just an adaptation, and evolution in being.

Change is the only certainty in life, that people will be born, and people will inevitably die. The cycle of life will continue as we know it. As we journey into this future with so much uncertainty as a collective humanity, we are being asked to embrace this different flavor of “normal” as we greet unforeseen changes with an element of surrender. We learn to adapt to each passing day leaning a little deeper into this reality we are living letting it unfold as it be. Because you see, where could we possibly go?

If you are feeling a heaviness around the holidays this year, and anxiety about the future, rather than grasp for any understanding, open yourself up. Stay radically open, and welcome in the signs around you, stay present to what is most meaningful in your life. These reassuring reminders are there because they always have been and always will be.