What must I let go

I met a delightful woman last summer when our family went up north for vacation to Lutsen, Minnesota, along the shores of the beautiful Lake Superior. Her name is Marcia Hyatt and she runs Last Chance Art Studio & Gallery.


Her gallery sparkles with artisan-crafted treasures, and being the magpie that  am, I could not leave without a new pair of earrings. They're called intentional earrings, pieces of silver stamped with words, rolled like scroll, and antiqued. In my pair, one earring is inscribed with "peace" and the other bears the words "forgiveness and tolerance."


But there is more to Marcia than her fine ability to find beautiful artwork, wearable and otherwise.


She also runs a firm called Waterline Consulting and Coaching , and she offers personal retreats and peer coaching. As part of her business, she publishes a weekly e-mail newsletter called On the Waterline, which features a provocative question. I've signed up and I'm loving it.


On Sept 27, when EarthDoctor son turned 28, this was the question of the week:

"When I let go of what I am,
I become what I might be"

~ Lao Tzu

What do I need to let go of?

It was a question I've been struggling with for weeks now. Why? Because in the period of 3 weeks, the last of two of my three fledglings had spread wide their wings and shoved off from the nest.


I've heard the cliches for years about empty nests, and it's not like the time wasn't right. For 25 years, one child or another has lived in the home I found for them in 1992, the place where they could each have a room of their own, and we could flourish as a famiy. The time was right.


But when PreciousGrrrlChild came downstairs toting a basket of clothes and announced that she'd be spending the night in her new place, said goodnight, and matter-of-factly closed the door, I gasped at the vacuum that suddenly filled the room and my heartlungs. My insides imploded with grief, emotional atelectasis. It took days to begin to reinflate that desolate place, and tears, lots and lots of tears.


Isn't this the moment we raise them for, to see them move their lives toward self-fulfillment? Shouldn't this be about joy? Celebration? Rites of passages?


Yes, of course!


So why does it have to hurt?


I've avoided peering into their rooms for days now, much like I've avoided the piles and boxes of my mother's belongings that have filled my basement for 4 years since her death. I know that the scents and trappings they left behind will touch off something deep and primal and flatten me again. So I do my best not to look, not to breathe in what nature has us know by heart. And I know I cannot do this forever.


Like the arrival of a child, which utterly turns one's life upside down in ways no one can prepare you for, the departure of children into independence and adulthood has, for me, unsettled my nice cozy midlife place of comfort in ways I did not expect.


But I also know that traveling through such passages, if i listen carefully, watch attentively, feel with willingness, brings unexpected joy and discovery.

I do know what I must let go of.

I do not know what I might be.


But once again I see the imperative to turn this question over to The Great Unknowable.

(Good thing I like surprises.)





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So tell me, what do you need to let go of?

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Image by Chris Bruzell - "Empty Nest" 2007 - Claudia Marr Gallery
Image by Nicola Slattery - "Restful Flight"