Letting Go ...

Soon, this website you are looking at right now will no longer be. It's getting a makeover, revamped, transformed, whatever you want to call it. It will look and feel different. Some of the content will stay the same, but here's what creating a new website has shown me:

1. Creating something new feels truly vulnerable.

2. Expressing myself in a more authentic way is opening some old wounds that I thought I had healed.

3. I can't just take the old stuff, mix it with the new stuff and have it feel in total alignment with who I am now.

4. Letting go of the old stuff, saying goodbye, and hitting delete to move out of my comfort zone feels both exhilarating and nerve wracking!

And why does all this make me sad/nervous/uncomfortable? I mean, it's "just" a website. Moreover, I WANT the new version. I CREATED the new version for goodness sakes! And yet...something about having to say goodbye, even to things I no longer need, things that no longer serve me, heck even things I actively dislike feels...it feels kind of...scary.

And I wonder, why is this? Why is it such a struggle to let go of things? Perhaps it's ego--as if these things make up who "I am" as a person, and therefore I'm losing a part of myself? Or perhaps I'm caught in the "always/never" trap, feeling like once I let go of something, it's gone forever (is there such a thing? Subject for a whole other post).

I don't pretend to have all the answers, but I do think that, for me at least, some of the resistance comes from my fear of what comes after the letting go, because inevitably, after we let go, we have space for something new. And boy is that a vulnerable space to be! What will fill the space? What if regret my choices? What if I have no idea what I'm doing? THERE IS SO MUCH UNKNOWN.

Ah, well, there it is.

So what now? Do I just never let anything go for fear of change? Ummmm, no.

I sit with the fear. I hold that tender space with compassion. I take a deep breath and...