It’s not about “letting it go.” It’s about letting it in. It’s about letting it deep. It’s about letting it through. It’s about being true to your fe… - Jeff Brown

Sometimes people walk away from love because it is so beautiful that it terrifies them. Sometimes they leave because the connection shines a bright light on their dark places and they are not ready to work them through. Sometimes they run away because they are not developmentally prepared to merge with another — they have more individuation work to do first. Sometimes they take off because love is not a priority in their lives — they have another path and purpose to walk first. Sometimes they end it because they prefer a relationship that is more practical than conscious, one that does not threaten the ways that they organize reality.
Because so many of us carry shame, we have a tendency to personalize love's leavings, triggered by the rejection and feelings of abandonment. But this is not always true. Sometimes it has nothing to do with us. Sometimes the one who leaves is just not ready to hold it safe. Sometimes they know something we don't — they know their limits at that moment in time. Real love is no easy path. Readiness is everything. May we grieve loss without personalizing it. May we learn to love ourselves in the absence of the lover.

I am firmly of the view that this societal fixation on forgiving others is just another way that we bypass our own rightful anger, confusion, sense of loss. It is also a way that victims end up feeling blamed for their experience.

I do agree that we can’t forgive another until we self-honor, and that forgiveness is welcome if it's organic, but I also believe that forgiveness may have no place in certain dynamics. And that’s entirely okay. Forgiveness is not a measure of our emotional health and well-being. Resolution is. That is, how we come to a relatively resolved understanding of what we went through, how we come to terms with what it was, in a way that brings us to a deeper understanding and peace…Resolution of process, is where it’s at. And there is no reason to feel guilty if forgiveness does not arise within it. It’s enough to find peace in the aftermath.

I long to find a way for all of us, to walk in each other’s shoes for a few moments. To get right inside each other’s experiences, perspectives, ancestral imprints. To empathically experience each other’s circumstances, memories, unmet needs, delights. To break through the isolated nature of each person’s framework of perception and to know it as our own. Imagine that world. Imagine what would happen next. We would stop seeing each other as threats and foreigners. We would recognize that we are all struggling to make sense of this life. We would recognize our shared humanity. We would begin to build bridges where before there were battlegrounds. I long to find a way for all of us, to walk in each other’s shoes for a few moments. It would change everything.