It’s choosing what deserves to come with you… and what doesn’t.
There’s something powerful about giving yourself permission to pause, to stop long enough to feel what hurts, acknowledge what’s heavy, and take a clear look at what you’ve been carrying, sometimes for far longer than you should have. We don’t talk enough about that moment… that quiet, internal “parting glass” we raise when we finally decide: I’m keeping the lessons, but I’m putting the weight down.
Because letting go isn’t forgetting. It’s filtering. It’s choosing what deserves space in your life and what no longer earns the right to shape your energy, your joy, or your identity. And if you read my post, Hope… The Weight We Carry, the Light We Keep, you know I’ve wrestled with that tension, how hope can both lift you and weigh you down at the same time. It can keep you going, but it can also keep you holding on longer than is healthy. Hope is powerful like that. It tethers you… sometimes to possibility, and sometimes to pain.
I’ve lived that truth in the deepest place a person can feel it… the love I have for my daughters, and the reality of not having them in my life the way I fought so hard to. That love doesn’t fade. It doesn’t weaken. If anything, it grows stronger in the absence. But the weight of holding on, to what could have been, what should have been, what I wish still could be, that’s a different story. That’s the part that can quietly take a toll if you don’t learn how to carry it differently.
And that’s where another truth I’ve written about comes into play… Go Where the Love Is. Not as a rejection, not as giving up, but as a decision. A decision to recognize where love is reciprocated, where it flows, where it’s present in your life right now… and to allow yourself to live there, to breathe there, to grow there. Because staying emotionally anchored only to where love isn’t, even when it matters most, can keep you stuck in a loop that drains more than it gives. That doesn’t mean you stop loving… it means you stop abandoning yourself.
I’ve learned that you can hold two truths at the same time. You can love deeply and still let go of the weight that comes with holding on too tightly. You can carry hope and still release the expectation that it has to resolve the way you once imagined. As I wrote before, “hope can be both crushing and life-giving”… and part of growing is learning which part of that you choose to carry forward.
Because growth doesn’t always come from adding more… more effort, more persistence, more emotional strain. Sometimes growth comes from subtraction… from choosing what stays and having the courage to release what doesn’t. And when you do that, when you let go of just enough weight, something shifts. Clarity comes back, breath returns, and energy follows. You begin to see that letting go is not an ending… it’s an opening.
For me, the love for my daughters will always remain… that is not negotiable. But so is the understanding that I have to keep living my life in the presence of love that is here… not only the love I wish still was. But I’d be lying if I didn’t acknowledge that there is real, present love in my life today… in friends and family who show up, share moments, and remind me that connection is still very much alive. And that matters more than I can ever fully explain. That’s not giving up… that’s choosing to live.
The wisdom isn’t in what we hold onto… it’s in how we decide to carry it.
So here’s to the parting glass. To honoring what mattered. To releasing what weighs us down. And to moving forward with clarity, courage, and the strength to live in what’s real.
Going where the love is isn’t giving up… it’s choosing to live. #TheDadWhoWillAlwaysLove 💙