On letting go

Yesterday, I had a break through during yoga. Well, two break throughs, really. One was physical (hooray holding toe stand!), and the other was mental.

I took a class with a new teacher, and he was awesome. He made jokes, he was down to earth, and he had a really good energy about him. If I'm being honest, I went into class thinking it was going to be miserable - I had eaten Chipotle about six hours before, and was still feeling sort of like that had been the wrong decision. And still, I had a pretty major break through.

Over the past few months, I've been really struggling with letting go. I don't need to go into details, but I'm certain we've all been there before; someone we love/trust/care about treats us in a way that hurts us/disrespects us/etc. At the core, it's this deep feeling of being let down. And there's this feeling of disbelief mixed with pain, doubt, and uneasiness. It's a feeling that makes you want to throw up when you think about it, and part of you begins to question a million other things, people, feelings that you thought you understood. Over the past few months, I can't count how many times I wished that I could just erase not only the being wronged, but also allowing myself to be vulnerable.

Yesterday, somewhere between standing bow pose and savasana, I realized how silly that is. I can't control how people treat me or what happens to me, but I can control how I react to it, and I can control how it impacts me. I can take being treated poorly, learn from it, and grow into a stronger version of who I am supposed to be.

And why on earth would I want to undo allowing myself to be vulnerable? That's my way of treating each person I meet the same; getting to know them, and not letting things that have happened in the past dictate how I act towards them.

I think so many times we just want the bad emotions to go away. We want our lives to be easy, simple, always happy. But I think we often fail to realize that every emotion and feeling that we experience is beautiful, because they mean that we are alive. They mean that we are capable of feeling something deeply and genuinely.

Letting go doesn't necessarily mean forgetting or pretending like it didn't happen. Letting go means learning what you can from the experience, and using that knowledge to continue to shape yourself into the person you are supposed to be.