Letting Go of What Was Supposed to Be
Finding Peace in Life's Unexpected Turns
I sit here in my favorite coffee shop, pen in hand, heart open, thinking of you – yes, you – who might be reading these words during your own moment of profound change. The steam rises from my cup like the thoughts swirling in my mind, and I'm reminded of how life has its way of brewing something entirely different from what we ordered.
Twenty years ago, my hands trembled as I signed divorce papers, ending not just a marriage, but what I thought was the carefully written script of my life. I remember standing in our empty house – soon to be just his house – running my fingers along the wall where we'd marked our children's heights, each pencil line a memory I couldn't bear to leave behind. That's the thing about letting go – it's not just about releasing the big things, but also the small, precious moments that made up the tapestry of what we thought forever looked like.
Why Letting Go Feels Like Losing Ourselves
My beautiful friend, I need to tell you why this journey of letting go can feel so impossibly hard. It's not just about releasing a relationship, a dream, or a plan – it's about unwinding our very identity from the story we've told ourselves about who we are and who we're meant to be.
You see, we spend years weaving our hopes and dreams into the fabric of our future. Each thread represents a promise we made to ourselves: the holiday traditions we'd carry forward, the way our children would grow up in a "complete" family, the retirement plans we sketched out on lazy Sunday afternoons. When that future unravels, it feels like we're losing pieces of ourselves with each dropped stitch.
I understand now why I clung so desperately to my "supposed to be" life. It wasn't just about the marriage – it was about protecting the girl who grew up watching her parents' 60-year love story, believing that's how love was supposed to look. It was about preserving the woman who'd built her entire adult identity around being someone's wife, someone's partner, part of a matched set. Letting go meant facing the terrifying question: Who am I without this story?
And here's the truth I wish someone had whispered to me back then: It's okay to be afraid. It's okay to grieve not just what was, but what could have been. The photos never taken. The anniversaries never celebrated. The future holidays you pictured that will never come to pass. These ghost memories have weight and substance, and their loss deserves to be honored.
The Hidden Anchors That Hold Us Back
As I've walked this path – both in my own journey and alongside others – I've come to understand the subtle anchors that make letting go feel impossible:
Fear of Disappointing Others: I remember the look in my mother's eyes when I told her about the divorce, the unspoken weight of broken family legacy. We often hold onto situations because we're carrying others' dreams alongside our own.
The Comfort of the Known: Even when our current situation causes pain, it's familiar pain. We know its contours, its rhythms. The unknown ahead feels like stepping off a cliff into darkness.
Sunk Cost of Dreams: All the years invested, the plans made, the life built – letting go can feel like admitting those years were wasted. (Spoiler alert: They weren't. Every moment shaped who you're becoming.)
The Identity We've Built: Sometimes we hold on because we've forgotten how to exist outside of a certain role or relationship. I remember panicking at the grocery store, realizing I didn't know what foods I liked when I wasn't shopping for two.
Finding Your Way Through the Letting Go
My own path through this wilderness taught me some truths I now hold close to my heart:
Sacred Surrender: Instead of thinking of letting go as losing something, I began to see it as creating space. Each time I released a "should have been," I made room for what could be. It was like clearing out an overgrown garden – yes, it hurt to pull up those familiar plants, but only then could new seeds take root.
Permission to Be Present: I learned to greet each day as it came, without forcing it to fit an old narrative. Some days that meant crying in the shower, other days it meant dancing in the kitchen just because I could. Both were perfectly okay.
Rewriting Your Story: Slowly, I began to ask myself different questions. Instead of "Why did this happen to me?" I started asking, "What am I learning about myself through this?" Instead of "How do I get back to who I was?" I wondered, "Who am I becoming?"
Healing in Community: On days when I couldn't hold hope for myself, I borrowed it from others. I found comfort in circles of women who had walked similar paths, who showed me that transformation was possible. Their stories became lanterns lighting my way forward.
The Miracle of Healing and Expanding
Now, sitting in this coffee shop years later, I can tell you this with absolute certainty: the life that blooms after letting go is more beautiful than anything you could have planned. Not because it's perfect – it isn't – but because it's authentically, uniquely yours.
My career took turns I never expected, leading me to work that fills my soul. My relationship with my children deepened in ways that wouldn't have been possible in my old life. I discovered parts of myself that had been quietly waiting for the space to emerge – my creativity, my sensuality, my strength.
And love? It came back in a thousand unexpected ways. Through deeper friendships, through stronger family bonds, through a relationship with myself that I had to build from scratch. When romantic love eventually returned, it was richer and truer because I was meeting it as my whole self, not as someone trying to fit into an old story.
To You, Who's Letting Go
My love, if you're in the midst of your own letting go, know this: Your heart knows the way forward, even when your mind is still arguing with reality. You don't have to have it all figured out. You don't have to be ready to let go of everything at once.
Start small. Maybe today it's just letting go of how you thought this week would look. Maybe it's giving yourself permission to imagine a different kind of happiness than the one you planned.
Release your grip one finger at a time, and trust that as the old dreams slip away, your hands will be free to gather new possibilities, new joy, new ways of being that you can't even imagine right now.
Your story isn't ending – it's just taking an unexpected turn into territory that's waiting to be explored. And somewhere, in a coffee shop much like this one, someone else is writing their own story of letting go, their heart beating in rhythm with yours, their courage echoing your own.
You are not alone in this unfolding. You are not behind schedule. You are exactly where you need to be.
And I promise you, with every fiber of my being, that on the other side of letting go, life is waiting with gifts you never knew to ask for.
Resources for the Journey Forward
Letting go isn’t easy, but there are resources and tools to help you along the way. Here are a few that might resonate:
Books:
"Rising Strong" by Brené Brown
"Letting Go: The Pathway of Surrender" by David R. Hawkins
Therapy & Coaching:
Consider seeking guidance from a licensed therapist or life coach.
The Grief Recovery Method (www.griefrecoverymethod.com) - Tools for processing loss
Meditation & Mindfulness Apps:
Try apps like Insight Timer, Calm or Headspace to help you center yourself in the present.
Remember: Sometimes the most beautiful chapters of our lives are the ones we never planned to write. Your story isn't over – it's simply unfolding in ways you couldn't have imagined. Stay open to the possibilities that lie ahead, and trust that this unexpected path might lead you somewhere even more extraordinary than where you thought you were supposed to be.
If you’re standing at the edge of the unknown as you step into the new year, wondering how to move forward, know this: the future has so much beauty and possibility waiting for you. It might not look the way you imagined, but that’s what makes it extraordinary.
