How to Lose, Gently
There are places I remember
All my life, though some have changed
Some forever, not for better
Some have gone and some remain
All these places had their moments
With lovers and friends, I still can recall
Some are dead and some are living
In my life, I've loved them all
— “In my Life” by The Beatles
So many people I know are walking through an endless valley of loss right now — jobs, partners, homes, relationships, lives.
Big loss involves profound disorientation and a grief so relentless it can feel like it’s going to swallow you whole. Unfortunately, I’ve had to learn over and over (I can be a little slow on the uptake, y’all) that there is no shortcut through world-shifting loss.
You can try to squeeze all the melancholy and terror and rage into a teeny-tiny little box and drop it into the deepest part of the ocean a la that old lady from Titanic. But grief is like a boomerang — throw it as far away from you as you can and that shit will always come back around.
So how do you lose gently?
How do you let go so you’re not dragged?
How do you open your hands and acquiesce to the thing leaving so that you’re not stuck clenched and gripping, grasping at nothing but air?
Soften.
Get as soft as you possibly can and then get even softer.
Stop bracing. Stop scrambling. Stop looking for solid ground. Stop thrashing and spasming with panicky prayers that this is just a nightmare that you’re going to wake up from eventually.
With tender and tearful resignation, let it in. Let it ALL in.
Not in some bullshit, spiritual-bypassing, contrived-equanimity way. Not in an “I transcend this pain by surrendering to it” way.
Really let it in.
All the sadness and second-guessing, the desperation and the ache, the loneliness and the mess. Stop trying to make it clean and organized and linear and palatable for yourself and for everyone else.
Let it hurt.
There is no easy way, honey bunny. It’s gonna be awful all the way through.
Until it’s not.
Until one day you get a few breaths in a row that actually feel okay. That feel like… something other than pain or longing or regret.
A day or ten or a hundred later, it’s more than just a few breaths, it’s an hour or maybe longer.
And then suddenly, without even really noticing how or when it happened, you’re living in a space that feels more like acceptance and open-handedness more than grief and despair and stubborn clinging.
Someday maybe you eventually even get to a place where you can think about what you lost and hold it softly in the temple of your heart without feeling a deep and foundational tearing inside yourself.
You remember the joy of sunny Saturday mornings making waffles in the home that doesn’t belong to you anymore…
Your ex-partner’s goofy nickname for the beloved dog you adopted together when you still loved each other...
The incredible places you traveled thanks to the job that eventually laid you off...
Your late sister’s ear-piercing scream of elation when you got her Taylor Swift tickets for her 14th birthday...
Maybe you even feel quiet rush of gratitude and tenderness as these memories rise to the surface.