From The Wildflowers

Choose & Release: You Don’t Have to Carry It Forever

I’ve been thinking a lot about letting go lately, and I think sometimes we make it sound much easier than it actually is.

We say things like “just let it go”, “move on” or “leave the past in the past”, as though there’s a little switch somewhere in our brain that we can flick and suddenly the things that hurt us don’t hurt anymore.

But that’s not how it works, is it?

Sometimes we carry things for years. Hurt. Anger. Resentment. Guilt. Things we wish we had said. Things we wish somebody else had said. Decisions we would make differently if we had the chance. Conversations we replay in our heads knowing full well we can’t go back and change a single word of them.

And sometimes we become so used to carrying all of that that we don’t even realise how heavy it has become.

Last night, during a forgiveness meditation, I realised there was something I was still carrying with me.

I chose to forgive.

Even that felt quite big.

I’m keeping the details of that moment for myself because I don’t think every part of healing needs to be shared. Some things can just be ours. But what it made me realise is how complicated forgiveness actually is.

Forgiveness doesn’t mean pretending something never hurt you.

It doesn’t mean saying that everything somebody did was okay. It doesn’t erase your experiences, and it doesn’t require you to rewrite the past into something prettier than it actually was.

Sometimes forgiveness is simply deciding that you don’t want to carry the pain anymore.

And I think that’s what release really means.

We can spend so much of our lives waiting for something before we allow ourselves to let go. We wait for an apology. An explanation. Closure. For somebody to finally understand what they did to us. We convince ourselves that once we get that missing piece, then we’ll be able to move forward.

But what happens if it never comes?

Do we carry it forever?

I don’t want to anymore.

There are things in my life that happened exactly as they happened. I can’t change them. I can’t go backwards and make different choices with the knowledge I have now. I can’t make other people behave differently. And I certainly can’t control the version of me that exists inside somebody else’s head.

What I can choose is what I carry forward with me.

That’s the important part for me: choice.

Release isn’t something being taken away from us. It’s something we choose to put down.

I can keep the lesson without keeping the resentment. I can remember something without carrying every complicated feeling attached to it. I can acknowledge that something hurt while refusing to build my future around that hurt.

I can also forgive myself.

I think that’s one we forget about.

We look back at previous versions of ourselves through the eyes of the person we are today and wonder why we stayed, why we tolerated something, why we didn’t speak up, why we made that decision or why we didn’t see something sooner.

But that version of us didn’t know what we know now.

She was doing the best she could with the tools, knowledge and strength she had at that particular point in her life. Punishing her forever doesn’t change what happened. It just keeps us tied to it.

So today, I’m choosing release.

Not because none of it mattered.

Because I matter now too.

I want the energy I’ve been giving to old wounds back. I want the space occupied by resentment available for something better. I want to be able to remember my past without feeling as though I still live there.

There will probably always be things I have to put down more than once. Healing isn’t one dramatic moment where everything suddenly disappears. Sometimes we release something and discover a little piece of it still sitting there months later.

That’s okay.

We put that piece down too.

Again and again, if that’s what it takes.

So maybe today isn’t about forcing yourself to forgive somebody you’re not ready to forgive. Maybe it isn’t about pretending you’ve completely healed from something that still hurts.

Maybe it’s simply asking yourself one question:

What am I carrying that I don’t want to carry anymore?

You don’t have to know exactly how to let it go yet.

Just recognising that you’re ready to put it down can be the beginning.

Today, I choose what comes with me.

And I choose to release what doesn’t.

I release. I breathe. I rise.

Todays Affirmation

Nova Rising Soul x