LETTING THINGS GO is one of those catch phrases heard routinely in the self help circuit. We are supposed to let go of our old selves, shed pounds, downsize, live in a smaller footprint, and conserve everything from our personal energy to our planet. Most significantly, we are supposed to let go of our losses and move on.

Whether integrating a death, a diagnosis, job disruption, misfortune or mistreatment, it seems like loss underpins just about everything these days. It’s not that there isn’t joy, but there are no longer periods where joy is untouched by complexity, uncertainty, or injustice. I wonder what would happen if we shifted our language from letting things go to letting things grow?

Rebalancing loss and life force in a compassionate way could help us shed attachments gently and come to a detente with this Gordian knot of post-pandemic emotion. When we are ready to seek opportunities to learn, reflect, and engage, we widen the shores of our being enough to absorb the current of loss. Grief accretion happens because we have experienced degrees of poignancy unimaginable to our earlier selves. When we give ourselves new opportunities to metabolize our feelings, we can make peace with the magnitude of our lives. Our capacity for loss increases and so does the capacity for everything else.

Mastering grief is another form of intelligence–adversity intelligence. AI bestows tremendous freedom. It allows us to be able to count on ourselves even when faced with catastrophe. So in this tender time where we are transitioning from wintering in a pandemic to a new and unknown spring, choose something that promotes growth and see if that eases some of the challenges. For some of us, that might be a movement practice (and here I give a shout out to everyone willing to try my unusual yoga classes). For LB (my cat) it’s killing big bugs, and for me there is a white board just waiting to be filled.