Letting go of the stories that keep you stuck in the past

Aug 17, 2021

The reason it’s so difficult to change, let go of our stories (oh, how we resist it) is that we humans are like a piece of fabric, made of hundreds of threads of stories we have been telling ourselves for our entire lives.

The reason we are so afraid to let go of our stories is that as we start letting go of one story, then another, the fabric that once made us is now being torn apart. We feel we are falling into nothingness, we are simply becoming empty.

Maybe the reason why it has been so difficult for me to let go of some of my stories is simply that I have lived into them for so long, they have been (seemed to be) parts of me for an entire life. As I try so hard to let those stories go, I feel resistance building up in my body.

It’s so painful as if I am cutting away something valuable and significant from myself, from my identity; something, which, at some point, has come to define me, my place in the Universe and the meaning of my life.

I am not whole or complete anymore, because the stories that used to make me complete are now gone and I feel empty, I feel lost, I feel confused.

When I consciously choose to let go of my past and the stories that no longer serve me, I don’t mean to say that I reject my past or the stories I have lived with for so many years. Suppressing our life experiences or camouflaging them is not healthy.

Instead, I choose to view those stories as shoes or clothes I used to wear at certain period of my life. I am grateful to them as those stories, like clothes, protected me from heat and cold or, like shoes, they took me from A to B.

Yet, it’s important to acknowledge that as I have grown up and my body has changed, I have changed.

The clothes and shoes that once served me an important purpose, are not suitable for me any longer, they simply do not fit.

Again, I do not reject the idea that once I used to wear certain shoes or clothes, I embrace that fact and I am in peace with that.

As I am letting go of my past stories, for the first time ever, it’s so scary and takes so much courage. I feel I am ready to be a zero for a while, sit with emptiness and the chaos of not knowing who I am and I am OK with not having any clear answer to the question “What is my story”, I am OK with feeling nothingness and having no identity, as long as it takes…

… until the time comes to start weaving a new fabric of my identity with the threads of new empowering stories.

But what’s different this time is that when time comes and my yet-to-be-woven identity will have served its purpose, I promise not to resist, instead I will embrace it and let it go.

And I will be ready to change when time to change will come.