Saying goodbye used to be unbearable for me. As a child, I had a deep fear of being left, something that lived in my body like a trembling question. My parents once told me I’d sit in the window of the kindergarten all day, waiting for my mother to return. Eventually, the staff became so concerned that they suggested my parents take me out. And so I stayed home, looked after by my mom, a neighbor, or whoever was available. But the fear of being left lingered.
One of my earliest memories is sitting in a sandbox around age three, staring up at the sky, and feeling the terrifying thought that my mom might never come back. That fear was real to me. And maybe not entirely unfounded. On my second birthday, my parents, probably celebrating my birthday a bit too hard, forgot me in that same sandbox until 2 a.m., a little playground just outside our ground-floor apartment. It’s a hard story to believe, but it’s the one they told me. And the one my body remembered long before the words arrived.
Hospitals came next. Because I was very small when I was born, I was placed in an incubator for about four weeks. That early separation must have left its imprint, too, though I couldn’t have known it at the time. Several hospital stays followed before I was six. Back then, parents weren’t allowed to stay. I remember seeing them walk away from the hospital bed. My mom's eyes said, "I'm sorry, but I have no power to stay". I still feel that image, even now.
For many, many years, saying goodbye and letting go reopened those wounds. It always felt like a small abandonment, a wound being pressed again. Slowly, over the decades, it began to shift. I didn’t wake up one day suddenly able to let go, it’s been a long process, still ongoing. Now in my sixties, I can say I’m getting better at it. It’s still a practice, but one I’ve come to approach with more compassion, more trust.
Now, letting go feels more like a sacred freedom. A soft closing of one chapter, not a final breath. There’s meaning in it. Especially when it’s a choice, when I’m letting go to move forward, not because something is being taken from me.
As I prepare for this next chapter, packing up my apartment, downsizing my life, getting ready to move to a new place, I’m sorting what to keep and what to let go. And there’s a strange kind of grace in that.
The hardest part will be letting go of my books. I’ve had some of them for over 30 years. They’ve followed me through many moves, many cities and careers. Letting go of them feels like letting go of versions of myself I no longer need to carry.
I’m also letting go of most of my camera gear. I don’t film professionally anymore. And while a part of me feels nostalgic, another part feels ready.
There’s also something more sobering behind the letting go. Over the last 15 years, I’ve helped clear out the homes of three close family members after they passed: my brother in 2008, my dad in 2019, and my mom in 2022. My mom especially loved her dresses. Letting go of them was deeply emotional, not just because they reminded me of her, but because she never got the chance to say goodbye to them herself. That was hard. That experience changed something in me. I don’t want others to have to make those decisions for me. More importantly, I want to say goodbye to my things myself, consciously, while I’m still here.
That’s one kind of letting go. Then there’s the letting go of people, something I’ve never been good at. I rarely fully disconnect from anyone. Even if years go by without talking, I still feel the thread. I can count on one hand the people I’ve let go of completely. Most goodbyes for me are really just “see you again.” I trust that when the connection is still alive, life will circle us back.
Of course, some moments of letting go are forever, and we don’t always know that when they happen. Death has its own way of closing doors, sometimes without warning. That’s why I love cemeteries. They give us a place to let go, even if we missed the chance the first time. A place to speak to those who aren’t here anymore. A place to remember love.
This season for me is about clearing space, both physically and emotionally, for what’s next. Letting go of what no longer fits. Making room for what wants to emerge. It’s about honoring the part of me that’s ready to live in deeper alignment.
Letting go still feels scary sometimes. There are moments when the old fears still rise, the same ones that once lived in the sandbox, in the hospital bed, in the long waits for someone to return. But something has changed. I don’t run from the fear anymore. I let them rise. I let them speak. Because being true to myself matters more now than staying safe.
And maybe that’s what growth really is.
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