Letting Go - Meb

          I have never been a quitter. I suppose you could say that I have never been good at letting go either. When I was growing up, there was no room for just flopping on the floor in a bundle of tears and saying, "I give up; I can't do this anymore." It wasn't that we said we Cahills weren't quitters. It was more subtle; you never admitted to weakness of any sort. The way to survive was to think bigger, better, smarter, faster and stubbornly stick your chin out and bear it. A kind of Martyr meets Superhero approach to life.
  
          Sometimes you just can't give up or give in. As with the case of making sure Liz, my daughter who is blind, was able to receive an education just like her sighted friends and her sighted brothers. I never gave up on making sure she had access to the best education she could get. Until the bitter end, I refused to give up on my marriage, even though it had been in Marriage Hospice for years and I don't regret sticking to my vows until they didn't exist anymore. 

          Wise therapists have said that dealing with really painful and traumatic events in our past by walling them off so you can get by, creates a situation where you cannot feel the pain, but you cannot really feel joy either. I have been able to stay afloat in my little life raft of existence in large part by focusing on the future; working to make things better, hoping that later will be better than now. While this sounds super great in a sort of change the world way, it also means that I am not living in the now. And so I've missed a great deal of today while working toward tomorrow.

          This last month has brought some wonderful changes for my family. My oldest son is getting married. My youngest son was asked to take a full-time dot.com job that allows him to go to school and live on his own. My daughter has turned in most of her dissertation and hopes to graduate in June. I was sought out for and accepted a great new job where I can have more time for myself and still make a difference.

          These changes have prompted me to look under the rug and I am starting to appreciate that underneath this "hang in there until you hang yourself" mentality I seem to have is probably something a little more insidious. I've started to ask myself the question of whether or not I have the RIGHT to let go and move on. Do I deserve something more than survival and getting through it? Is it really part of life to sometimes call it quits? Moving on means I have to let go of the past. For happiness sake I need to move towards my future and bring my whole self with me. Which means I have to face those walled off feelings, forgive and let the joy back in.

          Leaving anything is messy. There are always things left unsaid and things left undone. As my children take their giant steps into their future, there are all the moments of their childhood that I didn't get right or that I wanted to do more of; the things that I thought I'd get to tomorrow. And while I have more to contribute to the friends and colleagues I've made in my current position, leaving means I can bring my gifts to another possibility. Sometimes whether it's in relationships or jobs, holding on isn't what makes you strong; sometimes letting go can make you stronger.

          At last, I have begun to realize that Joy is not the opposite of sadness. Joy is what you feel when you are living the life you were always meant to live. Your whole being knows it and sings. I take a deep breath and sing the song of my life, a song of gratitude and amazing possibility.

          After all, don't we deserve happiness?  We would love to hear your thoughts.(Meb)