This Is Me Letting You Go

Introduction

I wrote this book when I was heartbroken.

I imagine that's how many books get made.

We lose something we love and it seems natural to try to reconstruct it – mulling over memories, sorting through missteps, bleeding our expired hopes and habits onto paper, hoping some part of what we loved will still be salvageable.

"If only I can make this pain pretty" we tell ourselves, then it mattered. Then there's some reason to carry it forward.

But real pain isn't pretty at all.

And through the process of writing this book, I learned just that.

This book is a compilation of letters that I wrote to my now ex husband, but never sent. It helped me heal and brought my heart some much needed peace during one of the hardest times of my life.

I was in the beginning stages of divorce. I was lost and broken. I wasn't ready to move on and I was completely unprepared to let go. And isn't that how so many of our changes take place?

Life happens before we are ready for it. These pages are a testament to that.

This is a book about moving on when you don't want to. It's a book about receiving a future you're not ready for. It's a book about accepting that the hand we are dealt is not always the one we want to play and yet we have to learn to keep on playing anyway.

This is a book about letting go.

It's about letting go of pain and expectation. Of self-loathing and self-glorification. Of the traumas that we never thought we would heal from, and the love that we never thought we would lose.

This book is raw. It's heavy. And above all, it's completely honest. Because the truth about letting go is that it doesn't take on a single shape or form. It happens in stops and starts. In stretches and setbacks. In moments where the world feels wide-open some days, and other days it feels like all your doors are slamming shut.

Letting go isn't simple or straightforward.

It's a dynamic, lifelong process.

And I hope that some part of this book can meet you at wherever you are in that process. Because nobody else can let go for you, but we could all use some company along the way.