Letting Go

“Letting go helps us to live in a more peaceful state of mind and helps restore our balance. It allows others to be responsible for themselves and for us to take our hands off situations that do not belong to us. This frees us from unnecessary stress.” ~ Melody Beattie

“Before we can forgive one another, we have to understand one another.” ~ Emma Goldman

“What narrative are you playing out in your mind at this moment? The end of society? Or the liberation of it? The story you are telling yourself is more important than you realize.” @MasteringLawofAttraction

Sometimes I drift through life. I’m lazy. I think I’m finished with my personal work. Then something unexpected comes along to shake me out of my stupor. The Covid-19 virus has done that for me and I’m grateful for it.

I’ve been home, except for two short excursions, since March 10. That’s nothing new. I’m home most of the time anyway. But what the shift in energy created by this virus has done is make me pay more attention to areas of my life that I didn’t even realize needed cleaning up. For example, resentments I’ve been holding on to; the people I need to forgive.

I was listening to Amanda Ellis one day and she said that during this time, we need to pay attention to people we need to forgive, especially our leaders. Of course, I knew immediately that I needed to forgive Trump. Once I opened my heart to the possibility that I’d been holding a grudge against him, I had a vision of him as a baby in a crib by himself, crying.

During the 1980s or early ‘90s, when there was armed conflict happening in Eastern Europe, I think it was in what used to Yugoslavia, there were orphanages where hundreds of children got very little care because they had so few staff. The babies rarely got touched, or their diapers changed. They barely got fed enough formula or food. The lack of human contact affected their brains in a negative way. In my vision, that was Trump as a baby. He came from a wealthy family, but in my vision I could hear his father say to the nurse, “Let him cry. It will toughen him up.” Who knows if what I saw is correct, but it would explain why he has very little empathy. Seeing him in that light made it so much easier to let go of my resentment. He’s doing the best he can with what he was taught.

After that profound experience, it’s been easier to look underneath behaviors to why people write nasty things on social media, or try to hoard money, or toilet paper. They’re afraid, or they feel unloved, or maybe they’re sick, or they don’t have hope that things will get better. I wish I could help them see things differently. I wish I could help them understand that they can change their thinking. It just takes discipline to do so. But we all have free will. I can post positive things as encouragement, but some people will never understand what I’m trying to convey. I have to let go of my desire to change everyone’s mind toward positive thoughts.

Every once in a while, though, someone’s positivity does get through. Lesson 68 in Pam Grout’s book, The Course in Miracles Experiment was a profound one for me today. In it she tells a story about Patton Oswalt, an actor, who about a year or so ago Tweeted a “cheeky” poem about Trump’s wall. As Pam writes it, a conservative war vet from Alabama sent some nasty Tweets back. Now, Patton could have gotten into a Tweet fight with the guy, but he didn’t. Instead he did some investigation and found out that the guy had some serious health problems. He had a GoFundMe page to try to get enough money for some much needed medical procedures. So, what does Patton Oswalt do? He sends this Tweet, “Aw, man. This dude just attacked me on Twitter, but … he’s in a LOT of trouble health-wise. I’d be pissed off too. He’s been dealt some shitty cards – let’s deal him some good ones. Click and donate – just like I’m about to do.” Patton donated $2,000, and in the end the vet’s campaign raised $15,000 in a couple of hours, three times its original goal. The vet’s mind was changed. There were people out there who cared about him, and it was all because Patton Oswalt let go of the insults. His second Tweet to the vet was this: “This is why compassion and forgiveness are always best.”

So, today, I’m doing some self-examination. Who else do I need to forgive? My father’s mother is one. She lived with us when I was thirteen years old and unfortunately she tried to spread discord in our family. She treated my mother horribly and tried to drive a wedge between my parents. That didn’t work, of course, and my father moved her out to a town a few hours away. When I got older I came to the conclusion, because of things she said repeatedly, that she must have been sexually abused. I felt sorry for her. She’d never been able to heal and recover from what I assume happened to her.

This past week, I realized, I had never formally forgiven her for her nasty behavior. In fact, it never even occurred to me that I needed to do so. But resentment was still stuck in my heart. I visualized her standing in front of me. I told her I forgave her, and I felt those hard feelings leave my heart. My poor grandmother needed love, compassion, and understanding. But none of us knew why she was the way she was and we resented her. I hope she’s had a chance to heal and is having a grand time with her family and friends in the afterlife.

As this weird time continues, I’m not sure we’ll be finished with it for quite some time, I’m hoping we let go of all the institutions, laws, and business practices that have needed to be overhauled for a very long time. And I hope we’re also taking time to overhaul ourselves as well. What is most important to us? What kind of world do we want to live in? We can play the “What if” game and start to picture the world we’ve always wanted to live in. Each person answering those questions for themselves accumulates and that’s how we change the world.

Thanks for reading. I hope you leave a comment. I want to know what you’re learning during this time.

Lucinda Sage-Midgorden © 2020

Lucinda is the author of The Space Between Time, an award finalist in the “Fiction: Fantasy” category of the 2017 Best Book Awards.

Have you ever experienced life shattering events? Yeah, most of us have. In The Space Between Time, Jenna Holden gets slammed by her fiancé walking out, her mother’s untimely death, and losing her job all in one week. But she receives unexpected help when she finds her three-times great-grandmother’s journals and begins the adventure of a lifetime.

The Space Between Time is available in all ebook formats at Smashwords and for Kindle at Amazon, or you can find the ebook at iBooks or Barnes and Noble. If you prefer a physical copy, you can find a print-on-demand version at Amazon. Stay tuned for news when the audiobook version is published.