Love enough to LET GO!

Dear Reader,

Do you remember the top of the charts Bee Gees song, “How Deep Is Your Love?” The easy melody and tender lyrics reveal a gentle vulnerable soul requesting reassurance from his love. Most of us, at some point in our lives, can relate to the lyric, “And the moment that you wander far from me, I wanna feel you in my arms again.” I have felt this tugging sensation of wanting to keep my loved ones close with both my husband and my children, no matter what their ages or stages. If we have been blessed to know love, we also know the pain of separation. Whether it's romantic love that simply has to be temporarily paused for both people to return to work or those parenting milestone moments of having to let go of our babies for either preschool or college, that old familiar tingling, almost acidic feeling of having to let go a little bit or a lot to allow the other person to expand can kick in. The feeling of holding your loved ones close is one of life’s most precious human experiences.

Loving another requires holding on for so many reasons (comfort, safety, dancing!) but it also requires letting go so that each soul can fully develop and evolve into the fullness of who they are intended to be! Letting go of our hold is essential for babies to learn how to sit up, crawl and eventually walk on their own. Letting go of our desire to control the adults we love is also essential to allow others to discover who they really are. It is rewarding when our spouses and children enjoy the same things as we enjoy. Couples and families who share the same spiritual beliefs, political ideologies, food preferences and vacation destinations have a wider platform of connectedness opportunities than those families who do not share common ground on such topics but true unconditional love allows for differences in every category of life.

Letting go does come with some big emotional risks. When we let go, we are not guaranteed our loved ones will return with the same depth of dependence as they left us with. This is most assuredly true when we release our children to go away for college. This can be a very healthy development. We want our children to be healthy, independent, gentle warriors in the world! Witnessing our children as adults and especially teenagers making choices that are different than the choices we would chose for them, can be unsettling. Learning to share our wisdom and then let go so our children can discover the lessons of their lives on their own timetable is the challenge all parents will be called to make. It can take time to develop a new dynamic in the parent/child relationship where both parties learn to accept their differences and know that love still prevails.

In peer relationships whether it be with friends or a partner, the sense of closeness can vary even when nothing in particular has caused a shift. If even one person is tired or distracted, he or she will not be in the same space of wanting or needing the love the other is offering. One of the best tools I’ve discovered for maintaining my own inner equilibrium as the tides of closeness varies with my hubby, children and friends is my meditation practice. Over the past several decades, I experimented with many meditation techniques, but Transcendental Meditation has been by far the most powerful and consistent tool of bringing me inner peace and bliss. It also allows me to feel steady even as the currents of life cause the surface patterns of relationships to vary.

The Southern Rock group, 38 Special’s song, “Hold On Loosely” reminds us to “just hold on loosely, but don't let go….your baby needs someone to believe in and a whole lot of space to breathe in.” It’s helpful to START by believing in ourselves, allowing for our own deep breathes and trusting that love is an eternal gift that can be renewed the moment we let go!

Let go and exhale, all is well! With love, Diana

Diana Stone, M.A., is a Wellness Consultant and inspirational writer and speaker. Connect with her at dianalynnstone@me.com