When Life Forces You To Let Go Before You’re Ready

We’re not always going to be ready for the changes life presents us with. To help us cope, Developmental Psychologist and best-selling author of This is Me Letting You Go, Heidi Priebe, lets us in on how to move on even if we aren’t ready to.

There will be times when we get to stay exactly where we’re happy—curled up in the lap of everything we want, everything we have, and everything we’re comfortable with.

There will be times when we struggle, grasping to figure things out and get to wherever we’re going next.

And perhaps the most challenging time of all will be the chasm that exists between those moments—when something unexpectedly rips what we love from us and forces us to leave it behind. When we have to walk away before we’re ready. When we have to leave what we want and what we love in the past.

There’s nothing more difficult than walking away from what we love before we’re ready to. Even when every fiber of our being understands that we must go, we want to stay. We want to linger. We want to find a loophole or shortcut that allows us to have it all.

We forget that there’s a future. Some part of us forgets that there are good things ahead—better things ahead, even. And perhaps that’s what we most need to remember in those moments of transition: that all our best moments aren’t behind us.

We have to believe that there are so many beautiful things coming—things better than what we’ve left behind. We have to have faith in the future, in the unknown, in the tomorrows and somedays that will line up in ways we can’t yet imagine.

We have to have faith in ourselves, too. Faith that we’ll get ourselves to where we want to go, even if we’re not entirely sure where that is yet. Faith that our future selves will figure it out. Faith that we will fight for ourselves as passionately as we deserve to be fought for.

We have to remember every dreary day that preceded the best days of our lives and realize that that’s where we are right now—in the middle of one of those rainy days when everything feels wrong. We weren’t at the end of the story back then, and we’re not at the end of the story now.

Just because the view in the rearview mirror looks prettier than the road ahead doesn’t mean we’ll never reach another beautiful destination. It just means we’re not there yet.

When you’re leaving behind a place, a person, or a time when you were happy, take yourself back to the start. Remember how unexpectedly you found so many of the things that changed your life—how randomly the cards were stacked before they unfolded the way they did.

Remember that the Universe is more chaotic and magical than we give it credit for. There are people you’re going to meet who you couldn’t dream up if you tried. There are situations you’ll experience that you never imagined for yourself. There will be days bursting with more joy and light than you can possibly fathom from where you’re standing now.

Think of all the times life has surprised you for the better—and know that it can, and will, do it again. But only if you stay open to change. Only if you don’t let the endings close you off from the beginnings waiting ahead.

It’s rare and wonderful to find a place, person, or moment that makes you want to linger. We are creatures of past and future—mourning what’s behind, racing toward what’s ahead. When happiness hits, we want to cling to it forever. But the truth is: we have to let it go for it to mean anything.

We have to keep moving onward, facing forward, steering into the fearful and unknown. Because all the best moments of our lives are still waiting for us on the other side.

When we have to leave the things we love behind, we’re allowed to mourn them. To miss them. To look back with sadness.

But we must never forget: the best days of our lives are not all behind us. There are more beautiful things waiting ahead than we can imagine. Many of our happiest days haven’t even arrived yet.

And to reach them, we have to keep moving—no matter how tempting that rearview mirror looks. The future we want won’t arrive without our participation.

And to get there, we have to trust—blindly, blissfully—that it will be somewhere indescribably worth going.