Living in Between: The Dance of Holding on and Letting Go

Life is teaching me to hold on then let go: to catch the moment, and then release it.

After more than a year of living on the road navigating changing landscapes, both internal and external, I finally understand the difference between holding on and holding.

As a parent, raising three children, I held tightly to routines and the need to create a stable and secure environment for them. I clung to the value of belonging and family that I missed out on as a child. I also held onto patterns of abuse that bled into child-raising and intimate relationships. It took inner work, but I managed to change long-established patterns entrenched in my DNA.

In parenting, letting go starts the moment a child takes their first step. If we do not let go, they cannot learn to walk alone. As teens, they challenge us to let go even more as they navigate life by developing their own values. When they leave home, we let go again watching them apply what they learned as children and grow into independent thinkers and doers.

I have always said I am no good at endings. It is true I bawled when each child left home. But holding on when it is time to let go is a road to disastrous and diseased relationships in the future. Today, I look back and admonish myself for not trusting them enough to find their own way. As I said, parenting is great practise for learning to let go!

Endings are hard for me. They’ve always felt like loss, rejection, heartache. Even in my writing, they are tricky to deal with. As a result, I have many unfinished pieces. Some I will hold onto, others I will let go…

Correction, I found endings painful.

Not so much now. Having survived life until my sixties, like every other sexagenarian, I now understand endings, loss and pain are like ingested poisons that transmute our lives from the inside out.

For some, those experiences are immunising, reinforcing resilience or hard heartedness. But for others, it is a constant movement between the peaks of happiness and valleys of unhappiness. Am I immune to life? Not at all. But these days I am willing to feel my feelings then let them go more willingly than ever before. I do not hold onto them, choosing instead to release.

In Strahan, Tasmania, as I strolled the harbourside, endless banks of clouds scudded and tore across the sky. Their reflections in the serene water one day, hard lapping waves the next, gave me a moment of insight: life is movement, ebb and flow, catch and release.  Life is a dance – breathing in every moment, being present to what is and what is not, simply allowing life to be. Without judgement or force, without needing the moment to be anything other than what it is.

The rhythm of holding on and letting go reminds me of dancing.  Catch and release is the dance of intimacy, of vulnerability, of soul baring that shakes my core and rattles my insecurities. The willingness to be totally present in every moment, despite the exquisite beauty or the ugly truths I find within me, is a daily challenge.

Yet this dance strengthens me from within as I learn life is generous if I let go of my perceptions about how it should be, how it will be, how it could be. Acceptance of each moment, of where I am, who I am, is powerful. It is a heady fragrance, like roses in full bloom, and one I inhale only in moments of deep mindfulness.

Recently, I was held in the arms of silence and seen for who I am: I felt naked mentally, emotionally and spiritually. My heart and soul trembled with the effort of exposure, with the willingness to share my deepest self, and with the need to breathe another soul’s perfume.  

I dared the other to judge, to find fault, to see my lack. Instead, I was seen, heard and felt as a woman of inner beauty and vulnerability worth treasuring. A humbling and soul-shaking moment in time. By holding on, I wanted the moment to go on forever. But holding that moment meant tasting the wine of soul sharing, feeling a priceless slice of infinity: rare and beautiful, like breathing, existing only in the brief space between inhalation and exhalation.    

Hold … let go…

I understand now that holding on is born of fear, of doubt, of uncertainty. Through my time on the road, I have learned to embrace fear and uncertainty – mostly around the physical elements of life: safety, security, shelter, sustenance etc. I fretted over where I would sleep, where can I find food, water and fuel, am I safe?

Holding, on the other hand, requires stillness. Allowing the experience life offers, feeling every beat move through heart and soul, pleasant or not. Then moving forward, taking nothing with me but the feeling of that memory, of that moment. Feeling present in life is a journey lived moment to moment.

Living on the road and surrendering to the intimate dance of life has yielded surprising disconnections with those who no longer wish to hold our threads of friendship. Yet the biggest surprises have been the powerful moments of connection with those willing to dance with me, holding the moment.  

Photo Courtesy of geetanjal-khanna-8CwoHpZe3qE-unsplash

Previously Published on K-fi September 2024