The Power of Letting Go

Considering Nature's reminder to drop what no longer serves us

“Some of us think holding on makes us strong; but sometimes it’s letting go.” ~Hermann Hesse

It’s autumn in my part of the world. The leaves are turning colour, then falling from the trees. This time of year has always been my favourite season but I’ve never really thought much about it beyond enjoying the cool weather and the promise of cocooning. This year, after almost two years of personal upheaval and stress compounded by the precarious state of the world, I’m gaining a new perspective on this season. In fact, I have been using it as an analogy for personal healing and growth.

I’ve been writing professionally for close to 50 years, mostly in the service of helping create a better world. But, as I described here and here, a few years ago I found myself looking for a new way to practice storytelling. And so I began teaching myself to weave. Weaving is a different practice from writing and arguably more creative than most of the writing I have done, but it’s still storytelling. I find it healing for my battered nervous system. You might say it makes my soul happy! And, since I believe that we can truly heal the world only after we heal ourselves, I still feel like I’m making a contribution.

I have learned that, at least for me, healing involves learning to let go of things that are too heavy to carry. And so it is that I just finished this new piece of tapestry weaving that developed from the analogy about trees releasing their leaves. I’m calling it “Letting Go.”

In this piece, the tree canopy is quite different than the way I’d normally design it. Rather than building layers of subtle fall colours (or, horrors, individual leaves), I chose to weave blocks of colour, each one representing something I want to let go of. Some of these I’ve been carrying for a lifetime or decades, others are more recent. As I wove, I envisioned each thing – bad habit, painful memory, attitude I’d like to change, regrets, and so on (see below) – that I was relinquishing. And I discovered that some are still too green to be given up just now. The canopy is large because it holds many experiences. Some of the falling leaves, like those things I wish to let go of, are bigger than others.

The piled up leaves on the ground help me remember that what I’ve let go will eventually compost. As a gardener, I understand the value of humus and trust that what I have let go is creating fertile soil from which new thoughts, experiences, wisdom, and creativity will emerge. In the same way that I like to hibernate over the winter, the process of disintegration of the leaves is a slow, insular process that can sprout new wonders next spring.

The tree trunk in this piece is old and gnarled. I planned to weave a full trunk but it quickly became just a portion of one as I realized that some aspects of my past still lurk in the shadows of my psyche.

While the weaving is finished, the letting go process is ongoing and this tapestry will hang in my home as a reminder to continue to discard those aspects of myself that are no longer useful and that have been weighing me down. In no particular order, here are some of the things I’ve let go, or would like to add to the compost pile when the time is ripe:

• trying to control things I cannot control

• being stressed by the small irritants and annoyances of daily life

• feeling responsibility for other people’s pain instead of holding space and compassion

• the pain caused by someone’s unkind treatment that keeps me trapped in their negative energy

• trying to make sense of other people’s behaviour rather than accepting them for who they are

• caring what others think of me

• feelings of ambiguous loss, whether as a result of trauma, death, or estrangement

• regrets for past missteps or misspeakings

• the pressure I have put on myself since childhood to be perfect, to perform, to excel

• the (recent) idea that I am helpless to change the world and that there is no hope

• anxiety, constant vigilance, overthinking, and catastrophizing

• expectations

• impatience

• sadness over losing my younger self and despair about aging

On the other hand, I have worked hard over the last decade or so to accept impermanence. My biggest teacher is Nature, including the way trees let go of their leaves once a year and, at this time of year, provide us with daily reminders to accept the blessings of change.

In my weaving, I’m increasingly seeing the possibilities of using yarn disentangled from unwanted clothing and strips cut from discarded household textiles. I like to imagine that I'm giving those old fabrics another chance. In the same way, as I drop the wrinkled leaves of my past, I am not just letting them go, but giving myself a second chance to reuse, reshape, create a new attitude, perspective, thought pattern, or experience from the remains of that which no longer serves me.

There is always another chance and anything is possible.