Why Letting Go is Important

The prom dress you wore in 1987 with the shoulder pads and big bow on the bottom, the love notes your high school sweetheart – who is not your husband – wrote to you back in the day, and grudges: What do these things have in common? They’re just a few of the things that we women hold on to, whether we need them or not (not, being the operative word here). Ladies, we’ve got to learn to let go. I know your sister-in-law upset you when she said liked your husband’s ex much better than you way back in 2001, but it’s time to let it go and move forward.

What Good is Hanging On

I don’t know about you, but the New Year makes me realize that some things are so last year. For example, my 20s are so last year. Those I don’t mind letting go because I’m convinced my 30s are going to be the best years of my life, and the fact that my 20s were beyond fabulous has me even more excited about changing my own personal decade. I could hang onto my 20s and turn into a middle-age woman in a too-short Trina Turk shift and six-inch Jimmy Choos telling everyone I’m beautiful and I know it, but I’d rather not. However, that’s exactly the reason why letting go is good and hanging on is not.

Why Letting Go is Good

I attended my high school reunion last summer, and I was hit – literally – over the head with the exact definition of why letting go is good. If I hadn’t let go of that life and held onto it as tightly as it seems some of my former classmates have, I might still be wearing “pleather” shoes and a rayon/spandex combination I picked up at a store named after junior’s sizes (ladies, women wear even numbers and adolescents wear odd numbers) while sporting five inch roots and trying to play them off as ombre. Instead of walking into the room and thinking that I’d spend the night listening to everyone one up everyone else over who has the best job/biggest income/most luxurious car/most expensive shoes/best education, I spent the evening listening as people talked about how drunk they got at “da club” last night while their kids were at home with their parents (whom I think most of them still live with). I expected a handful of that and a myriad of successful, well-rounded, well-versed, traveled, sophisticated adults – not the other way around.

And that, my friends, is exactly why letting go is so important. No one likes who they were yesterday, let alone 10 years ago, so why are we all holding on to so much of the stuff from our former lives?