We’ve all heard it. Read it in books. Seen it plastered on tee shirts, even, like a three word mantra that’s relatable to just about everyone, and therefore is quite marketable.

Let it go.

What those three words don’t tell you is that it’s not as straightforward as it sounds. It is. But it isn’t.

Like most things, this tiny slice of over-served advice can work to better the world, or to derange it.

And like most things, it comes down to whether you have the backbone to Do The Work.

‘Let it go’ doesn’t mean that you should stop caring. It doesn’t mean stop trying. It doesn’t mean stop looking. And it certainly doesn’t mean stop feeling.

I wonder at times if perhaps our collective excitement over the western discovery of detachment had the unexpected consequence of breeding a sort of apathy, or even a group think cognitive dissonance.

After all, there are literally millions of people in our country right now whose life jackets have been ripped out from under them when they were already struggling to breathe – all while others are drinking cocktails on million dollar yachts and selling you tee shirts that say ‘let it go’.

As if we could forget, ignore, or become numb to things to make them better. Or just pretend they aren’t there and somehow still preserve our own personal joy.

But that’s not what it means. And it’s why those people require million dollar yachts just to feel alive.

You can’t let something go if you’ve never held it.

If you haven’t cradled it in your arms and cried for it, if you haven’t looked it in the face or felt rage rising up inside of you as you think on it – if you haven’t held it – then you are not ready to drop it.

And what happens to the things that we try to drop without ever truly picking them up? They get hidden. They get buried. They fester. And if we continue to look away? They turn to rot.

Rot is what happens when you ignore the pain rather than walk through it.

Healing is what happens when you hold it in your heart and you soothe it, you listen to it, comfort and forgive it until it starts to hush. Then you lay it back down to rest.

This is how you let it go.

Not by silencing it. Not by pushing it away. Not by pretending that it’s an enemy to be fought or an inconvenience to be discarded.

Not by raging against the life jackets. Or the people who need them. Not by sugar-coating the cocktails and yachts.

Letting it go means facing reality head on without getting pulled into whatever negative undertones it’s projecting. It’s those undertones you are transforming. But you can’t transform what you’re afraid to touch.

In life, you have to collect ALL the ingredients before you can make any kind of magic. You can’t just walk past the pain and collect a few samples of pleasure and peace and then concoct a world where everything is better.

You have to taste it all.

THEN you let it go. Then you rinse and repeat. Then you grow stronger. Wiser. More compassionate. More capable of making a real difference.

You have to pick it up first.

Then you can let it go.

©️ 2025 Cristen Writes