Are endings tough for you? I know they are for me. Try as I might, I still get really attached. To places, to people, to experiences that I’ve enjoyed and don’t want to end. My patterns are strong and I absolutely hate letting go.

What I’ve learned lately that helps is to give myself permission to fully grieve the endings and let the emotions pass through me so that I can come out on the other side of them. It takes practice, and I’m definitely still in the initial stages of developing this skill. As hard as endings may feel – because we think nothing as good will ever happen again, or we will never have anything like this moment ever again – there is also a beauty and excitement in the constant change of our existence.

What keeps us stuck, what keeps us from moving into the joy of new experiences and new beginnings, is our tendency to hold on like hell to what was. We don’t want to truly grieve what’s gone because we feel that if we do, we are admitting that it’s really over. That if we don’t allow ourselves to process, somehow that means we still have a piece of what we’re missing here with us. But the truth is that if something has completed the time it was meant to be in our lives, there’s nothing that will keep it there. When we deny this reality, we create blockages energetically, emotionally and spiritually.

If we integrate our emotions and process our sadness in its fullest, we create the space for hope and change – for ourselves, for our futures, for the world around us, for what’s yet to come. This is a beautiful space in which to live, but it’s challenging to land there and it’s a practice to stay there.

Life is never, ever black and white. It’s full of intricate complexities and our emotions are just as multilayered. It’s not only possible to feel high and low emotions simultaneously, it’s more likely than not. Rather than beating yourself up or getting wrapped up in confusion about what you’re feeling, get out of your head, into your body, and just let it flow. If you allow your monkey mind to control how you react to emotion, you will block the natural path of the energy that wants to release and melt away. Then you store it inside, where it festers and ferments into something unhealthy, making you stressed, sick and bitter. Don’t do that to yourself. It’s entirely unnecessary, and you can shift in a more positive direction.

You can learn to clear your grief in order to make way for whatever’s next to come. I believe in you and I’m right alongside you on the same journey. Take your time and move from one step to the next. No need to rush. You deserve space to feel what you need to feel. You matter. I love you.