08 How Can I Let Go of People I Love?

This letter was written for episode 08

Dear Surrender,

I’ll admit something to you. I’ve never been good at letting go. The potential of it petrifies me, as much as the idea that something might be ripped out from inside me. And so, at a very young age, so young I can't even really remember, I decided I would never let anything be so important to me, that I couldn’t just…leave first. I decided never to need to let go.

When I made this decision, I was much too young to navigate things like love, loneliness and disappointment all by myself, to make big decisions like this…but so many of us find ourselves in positions where we have to, don’t we? Especially when we are just trying to survive as best we can with the tools we have. We create stories like “if I don’t care, they can’t hurt me” or “I can’t be disappointed if I never expect anything.” And these stories help us make sense of this big world and its complexities, especially when we are so small we can’t see the whole picture, even if we stand on our tippy toes. 

And this protected me for the many years I needed it. Shielding me from hurts I didn’t have names for until eventually it became second nature to move through the world, believing I never truly needed anyone. Or more that I never learned how to need. 

For so much of my life, I was alone.  I often disappeared for months or years at a time without communication. I just didn’t know what I would talk to someone about daily, I didn’t understand the concept of it. But in contrast, I would also happily give and support others in an instant if they reached out, in fact it was something I loved to do. Though when it came to myself, I never dared to call out for help, maybe because I was afraid no one would show up. And I was quite happy, safe behind my thick fortress, all by myself.

Until, one day, I got curious and peeked over those walls. Maybe I was starting to get bored by myself, maybe I was feeling lonely, or maybe I was beginning to outgrow the safe space I’d created. When I did, I saw “connection” all around me. All kinds of love and deep friendships that equally intrigued me and confused me.

I wondered, “Why on earth would my friend call me after her laptop crashed, and ask me to go with her to the repair shop if all I would be doing is sitting there? What’s the point?” or “Why are these friends asking me questions they could just research and find answers to?”

I began to notice things like ladies in their sixties, at a restaurant table beside me, having been friends for so long that even their laughs sounded the same, like lionesses hissing. A part of me was envious and I wondered, what does it take to have friendships like that?

And as I ventured bit by bit out into the world, friends began offering help with things like watering my plants while I traveled. It was something that baffled me as I felt perfectly fine with my complicated self-rigged watering system I learned from youtube tutorials involving buckets, tubes and negative pressure and a 50% survival rate. 

I began to dream of building places outside this fortress, a home, where I could feed others, where we could gather around a table and I could care for them, knowing that it would also require me to be vulnerable enough to be cared for too. So I challenged myself to ask for help and receive help, the kind that says, “I don’t need you to be here, but it’s so much nicer because you are.”

As I did, bit by bit, my friends, who knew me so well, who had been trying to love me through that wall, watered my plants. (which means, they practically stole a set of my house keys in order for me to finally surrender) and I was so grateful they did, and that they showed up and showed me that often, people do show up. 

Bit by bit, I learned what it meant to receive as much love and support I wanted to give. Bit by bit, I learned to live in community, being a part of people’s daily lives, and allowing them to be woven into mine.

Just as I was starting to feel like I was getting the handle of this connection thing, motherhood happened. As you probably already know, Surrender, that this challenged, like nothing else, my fear of being vulnerable in love.

It’s true what they say, that having a child is like having your heart get up and walk outside your body and into the world, and you can’t do anything to protect it. Only they didn’t say that your heart would be a toddler wanting to jump off tall things head first, or be sixteen going to sketchy house parties. They didn’t say that your whole body cringes every time your baby is about to hit their head on the corner of a table, for the rest of your life. 

They definitely didn’t say, or maybe they did and I didn’t listen, that it’s the kind of love where you say, “yes, it’s nicer because you’re here, but I also need you to be here, because there’s a chance I might lose faith in life itself if one day, for some reason, you weren’t.”

I had never known what it meant to love something so much that I, without a conscious thought, reversed the childhood decision I made that had ruled my life until that point. That I actually let something be so important to me, that I couldn’t imagine not showing up no matter how scary it was or how vulnerable I felt.

Now, Surrender, you must be wondering why I’m telling you this extremely abbreviated story of a woman learning, very awkwardly, how to truly love. I wanted to tell you this story because I want to say, first and foremost, congratulations. It seems to me that you have already fought half the battle that I struggled with, that you do know love very well, the true value of it and the bravery to do so openly. That you love people so deeply that you fear losing them. I think that’s an accomplishment to be applauded, as strange as it sounds.

But I also want to say that the surrender of it all is indeed the other half of the battle. One does not come without the other, unfortunately. And there is no trick I’ve discovered, no wise piece of advice I can give you to learn how to let go in a way that is less painful. Because it is the way of life that the more we love, the harder it will be to let go, and we must do both. They are the two sides of a coin, one doesn’t exist without the other. Because if you love without letting go, then it is just an act of loving yourself more than the other. People we love are not ours to have. And if you let go without truly loving, then you only experience a shadow of love, as I once did.

The true challenge is to love deeply knowing that one day, you will be asked to let go wholly. To dive into those deep waters knowing that you will need to come up for air. It is just a law of nature, of relationships. And it’s inevitable that one day someone will mourn us too.

Letting go is hard, loss is hard, harder than words can explain, and yet we must do it because we love. Loving, as beautiful as it is, it is hard too, and if I am an example, there really is no other way. So know that you are battling what I believe to be the greatest human battle. There is nothing harder, no cause more worthy, no person braver than one who conquers the ability to love deeply and yet loves like water, giving life where it flows and yet never grasping upstream.