How do you know when it’s time to let go?
So here’s the thing: I said I would write journal entries whenever I felt like it. Not on a schedule. Not because I promised anyone. Just when the moment called for it. Which, obviously, is why I’m here now—answering the call of a prompt I already did last month. But you see, this one was whispering. Taunting, even.
How do you know when it’s time to let go?
Apparently, I don’t. But I’d really like to. I’d like to be one of those women who tosses their hair and says, “If it doesn’t serve me, it’s gone.” But no—my hair is in a bun held together by anxiety and a bobby pin from 2014, and I am holding on to things so hard they are leaving indentations in my palms.
This is the lesson I am learning and learning and learning and learning. It’s like the universe is standing there with a whiteboard and a dry-erase marker saying, “Let’s try this again, Britt,” and I’m in the corner, clutching a broken thing and crying, “But it used to be beautiful.”
Letting go feels violent, even when it's not. It feels like tearing something from bone. But lately, I’ve started to wonder: is the pain of holding on actually sharper than the pain of releasing it? Is there a version of this story where I stop bleeding before the lesson sinks in?
I hope so.
God, I hope the next time I learn this lesson, I learn it before it bleeds. Before I’m standing in the wreckage again, asking myself how I didn’t see it coming. Again.
Letting go shouldn’t have to mean giving up. It shouldn’t have to mean bitterness. But it should mean boundaries. It should mean choosing peace over performance. And sometimes that peace is on the other side of a closed door. Sometimes that peace comes after the final word, the last text, the silence you stop filling.
I don’t know the answer, not really. But I know the feeling. I know the moment when your body starts keeping score. When your joy shrinks and your chest tightens and you realize you’ve been holding your breath for months.
That’s when it’s time. That’s when you let go.
Even if your fingers shake. Even if it doesn’t feel strong yet. Even if you’re not ready, but you want to be.
Let go.
Before it bleeds.
Peace, Love, and Inspiration,
~Britt Wolfe💚
