Take a deep breath. Count to three. Exhale.

Sometimes it’s hard to let people go. However, sometimes we are left with no other choice. The reasons are plenty. From old flames to drifting apart friends – holding onto someone who has already let go of you is self-destructive. It only hurts you, no one else. It prevents you from moving on and being happy again. It stops you from healing.

Letting go of someone who has let go of you doesn’t make you weak. It simply means you’re choosing yourself. It means that you’re choosing your own sanity over someone who stopped caring about you. You choose your happiness over holding onto something that no longer serves you. And it’s okay.

Letting go is hard, no matter how things have ended. But it has to be done. And you do it by moving on. By carrying on your life with all the beauty that’s in it, with all the imperfections that make it your own. You learn to open up to people again because you remember that not everyone will let go of you. You develop a new hobby – not as a distraction but as a way to grow. You work on yourself so that you can become the best version of yourself. Because you’re strong but you want to be even stronger.

You let someone go through immersing yourself in your own life. You don’t focus on how better it would be if they were in it. Instead, you appreciate the people that are still in your life and will never leave. You appreciate your own life and everything that you have accomplished. Since all that doesn’t disappear simply because someone has let you go.

As you move on, you won’t even notice that you’ve let them go. It will take time – it’s a process, but it will happen. You will learn how to live without them, and after a while, you won’t even remember how it felt when they were in your life. You don’t have to forget them, or never miss them – you just have to let them go. And it’s a strength that you know is within you.

Letting someone go means rediscovering yourself all over again. And there’s nothing more powerful in life than that.