September 1^st.   God, I hate this time of year.   A sad admission – particularly coming from a fan of Eckhart [‘The Power of Now’] Tolle – but it’s a fact.

I vividly recall learning Keats’ lovely poem ‘To Autumn’ when I was at school, and although I share his love of the beautiful foliage and general ‘mists and mellow fruitfulness’, I have to confess that I really struggle with bidding farewell to the summer.

I think it’s partly a throw-back to the ending of that blissfully long school holiday;  I well remember seemingly endless days of indolent teen idleness, hanging out with my mates in various parks, fetes and funfairs, and can still feel the rebel within me rise to the surface as I recall having to strip all the pinks and purples out of my hair, and don the regulation pleated skirt and sensible shoes for the return to school and that awful descent into the grey abyss that’s known as the Autumn Term.

 And it got even harder when I had to surrender the incomparable joy of spending gorgeously relaxed summer days with my own children;  how I resented having to return them all pressed and dressed, back into the rigours of school timetables, lunch boxes, playground squabbles and the mum’s mafia.  I know there are parents out there who count down the days until their offspring are safely ensconced back in the bosom of the education system, but I was never one of them, and I absolutely dreaded relinquishing my babies at the beginning of September.

I’m finding that it doesn’t get much easier as they get older.  School is now thankfully a dim and distant memory, but the uni system of ridiculously long holidays means that no sooner do we become accustomed to our own company and freedom, than back they come, crashing into our hearts, minds and spaces with all their ‘stuff’….. a whole spare room-full in my daughter’s case.  And students, it seems, can’t function without the incessant buzz of some sort of noise in the background, and this drives me nuts.  As does the general disarray, sleep patterns that would put a vampire to shame, and an expectation that there will always be a full fridge and a cooked meal on the table.

And then, just as we begin to settle into it all and start to enjoy the company once more,  then wooosh, back they go, and we’re left to make the empty nest readjustment all over again. 

Letting go is never easy, and yet it probably ranks alongside the need to ‘remain present’ as joint number one in the annals of spiritual commandments.  Why?  Because, sooner or later, we all have to do it.  Life offers us a series of practice runs – small, medium and large – until we finally have to let go of life itself. 

Ah, that one.  Hmmmm….let’s go and make a cup of tea.

Amazing, isn’t it, all the distractions we find to avoid our stuff?  And I can be just as bad as anybody else!  ‘Resistant’ is what it’s called in the trade.  Bloody stubborn is another word that’s been used about me many times.  Oh yes, I’m a therapist’s worst nightmare, but from a clients’ perspective, maybe this isn’t all bad;   I’ve figured that if something works for somebody as difficult at me, then the chances are that it will work for most people…though, for me, it’s got to be heart-centred and honouring;  I’m not remotely interested in being broken apart and put back together again like a piece of lego, and only expand my boundaries at my pace, not as part of someone else’s egoic agenda.

It’s these powerful and empowering tools and techniques that I’ve adopted into my own healing repertoire, and I’ve been deeply honoured to witness the most amazing transformations in my clients over the years….though taking myself on that same journey has often been a different matter entirely!

And really, I should have become a seasoned pro at a relatively early age.  In anybody’s language, losing both parents by the age of 27 was a monumental baptism of fire, and as well as life’s other array of inevitable disappointments and let-downs, a painful divorce after a very long marriage was, I guess, another heaven-sent opportunity.

Relationship break-ups – whether they’ve lasted a day, a month, a year or a lifetime – have the power to hook us into our stuff like almost nothing else, and those feelings of anger, abandonment, loneliness and insecurity can be utterly debilitating and totally excruciating.  And knowing that it’s all part of life’s rich pattern just doesn’t cut the mustard.

And it was discarding an ex’s favourite mustard from my kitchen cupboard which finally allowed my own emotional dam to burst asunder earlier this year….it’s true we’d only been together for a matter of months, but it had been intense, and the ending was hard. 

The hauntingly beautiful song ‘The Little Things’ by the now defunct group ‘Bliss’ says it all :

You turn my bed down;  you make my coffee right.

You listen to my thoughts;   you hold my hand tight.

I meet you half-way home, I pretend you know my soul.

I met myself in you, and then I blame you.

You rip my heart out, you sever all my dreams.

You teach me how to die, then you abandon me.

How do we let go of all of the little things?

All of the made up stuff, sounds make it seem so real.

Must have been true sometime, sometime so long ago.

Now I don’t believe…. I can’t receive your soul.

You make my heart feel.

“You make my heart feel.”  Ah yes, that’s the one.  How we love it when people make our hearts sing, and how we hate it when they do anything that causes them to break.  Hurt hurts.

But it could be said that life is essentially about getting us to truly open our hearts and really, truly, deeply FEEL, and it is often the little things that do this so effectively.  I probably shed more tears over my beloved cat’s passing last year than I did my father’s all those years ago!  Coffee, cats, mustard and seasonal transits aren’t the issue in themselves, but they are the catalyst for the bigger stuff, and that’s absolutely fine….just so long as the release follows and isn’t suppressed. 

And just to put that song into perspective, it was actually written after the sudden death of the 80-year-old aunt of Andrew Blisset (he who gave Bliss their name).  Now, that’s real letting go.  Just how her partner subsequently coped with that loss after a lifetime together we shall never know, but it does put things into perspective.  There are different shades and depths of letting go, and perspective is very useful  –  and is something for me to consider as I contemplate the stillness of my empty nest, which is nothing in comparison to the gut-wrenching desolation of some of life’s brickbats.

The question is whether our coping mechanisms improve or deteriorate with time, and we’ve probably all witnessed the adaptability of children, as well as the taciturn resolution of some older people who steadfastly refuse to change.  But it’s this resistance that, over time, causes us to calcify, or perhaps to blow a gasket in the form of breakdowns, or – I suspect – develop symptoms like dementia.  We just get too worn down, or too overloaded, and basically conk out.

And so, all the little letting go’s along the way are actually really good for us, and thankfully, there are innumerable people out there who can help us, even though we often kid ourselves that we can cope without them.  But traversing the dark night of the soul alone can be a terrifying experience, and it astonishes me how scared we are of asking for help – though, as ever, I’ve often been my own worst enemy;  it took me almost five years to begin to process the loss of my parents – but once I got into therapy, I rolled up my sleeves and really got down to work. 

And that ending eventually became my new beginning, for it was to form the seedbed for my development as a Healer, and this is a path that has been trodden by many others, as in learning how to come to terms with our own losses – large and small – we understand how to help others travel the same road.  Even luminaries like Brandon Bays [The Journey] and Oriah Mountain Dreamer [author of ‘The Invitation’] have been very open about their own trials and tribulations, and the foundations of their monumental business empires were very publicly watered by the tears of their own suffering along the way. 

Which makes a complete mockery of the popular misconception that, somehow, healers, visionaries and warriors have got it all sussed and sorted….that they live in ivory towers, and never get sick, or sad, or lonely or scared.  Serene gurus in white robes delivering hugs or pearls of wisdom are wholly inspirational for some, but for me, I want down-to-earth real, and  my own choice of teachers and therapists has always been people who’ve been there…. who know pain, have traversed the path of their own sorrow, and emerged all the stronger for it. 

One such person is Tegwyn Hyndman, presenter of next month’s Juice workshop, ‘Hearts of Fire’, whose work was borne as a result of her journey with her six-year-old daughter Elkanna, who died ten years ago. 

Tegs is one of the most inspirational, bright, shining, passionate and fiercely protective warrior-women I’ve ever met;  she’s not scared to feel, and she can take others on the most amazingly healing and transformative shamanic journeys.  And the warmth of her laughter is highly infectious!  Unlike so many ‘old-age-new-age’ therapists, whose energies can be so heavy and serious, she embodies joy, fun and freedom, and brings those qualities to her work.  I’ve learned  from her that letting go doesn’t have to be hard.  It’s never the end….just the beginning of something new, and it can be enormously refreshing, rejuvenating and liberating!   

And indeed, it just so happens that everything we’re doing at Juice in September follows this theme;  we have Tegwyn’s seasonally-inspired workshop, or there are sessions in Thought Field Therapy, and my ‘Quantum Light Breath’ meditation….all of which will really help the transmutation of old, stuck energy into something unbelievably, amazingly, joyously wonderful!

And I know that my quiet, empty nest in the early autumn sunlight is imperfectly perfect.  My own little ray of sunshine may have gone, but she is walking a path of her choosing, and I’m so proud of her.  I relinquish her to her own life with open arms and enormous gratitude.

How do we let go?   By surrendering to the flow of life, and allowing every moment to die so that the next moment can live. 

And the brilliant leaves of autumn will show us the way.

Juice is on 26th September.  Please see the Events page for more information, or visit the website www.juice-kent.co.uk to book

 

Further details of Lynn’s therapy practice are on the ‘About’ page of this blog.