Letting Go Of A Year
Under a September full moon, I lit the year on fire so I could rise from the ashes.
I sat outside as the September full moon rose in a clear, starry sky and a hint of autumn whispered in the trees. My dog Bailey was curled up on a warm blanket, sound asleep at my feet. On the table before me were four candles, a small metal bowl, a box of matches, a pen, and slips of scrap paper.
I was preparing to let go.
It had been one year ago that day when a seemingly random event set in motion what I have since referred to as The Great Unraveling, twelve months of ups and downs and a lot of time spent in limbo, leaving me filled with anger, resentment, guilt, regrets, sorrow, defeat, and the desperate need to let it all go.
It was clear that the unraveling had been necessary, as many unravelings are, and that something new was knitting together in the space left behind. But the weight of it all had left me unable to embrace the good that had come from the changes. I needed to find a way to release the past in order to move forward.
That's when I decided to simply burn the whole year.
So while Bailey snored and the moon shone and the candlelight flickered, I sat at the table and wrote on slips of paper things I needed to let go of - failed plans and unsettled emotions and negative thoughts and resentments and other things that had kept me stuck in place. I took my time, trying to be specific with each one. A small pile grew until I felt like I had captured everything.
One by one, I read the words aloud, then twisted each paper and touched it to a candle flame until it caught fire. I held the burning paper over the metal bowl and watched the smoke swirl, making a conscious attempt to release the connection to whatever I'd written.
As the pile of papers shrank and the bowl of ashes grew, I felt relief. The ritual was purely symbolic, but was also cathartic and cleansing in a way I hadn't expected.
And then I got to the last paper: “Sorrow over Bandit.”
This one was a gut punch. The death of my beloved dog was the start of the unraveling and the memory was fraught with anger and resentment and a grief that had been weighing me down physically for a year. I sat with this last paper for close to a half hour, sobbing audibly, realizing that this was the burden I needed to release in order to fully let go of everything else.
Finally, choking on my words, I read the sentence aloud. Then I carefully folded the paper, lit it on fire, and held it until the flame reached my fingers before dropping it into the bowl of ashes. I took a deep breath, maybe the first truly deep breath I'd taken in a year.
Bailey and I sat outside for a while longer letting the crisp night air wash over us both. Then I cleaned up the candles and we went inside, leaving the bowl of ashes to bathe in the moonlight.
The next night, I sat under another bright, starry sky with more pieces of paper and wrote new intentions for the coming year, things I want to work on, changes I want to make about my way of being in the world. I ripped those papers up and put them in a ceramic bowl, and then I left both bowls - the ashes and the papers - out on the table overnight to collect water from an impending rain shower. The next day, I washed the ashes down the driveway. The intentions will be buried in my garden under tonight's October full moon to complete the cycle of letting go and renewal.
It's hard to explain the lightness I've felt since releasing the last year to wherever sorrows and burdens go to dissolve into the unknown. Each inhale since has seemed to reach places in my body that had been cluttered with emotions that hadn't been serving my best interests. I remember Bandit without breaking down. I'm genuinely grateful for the changes that created new and better ways of being in the world.
The year has been burned, but from the ashes I am able to be more fully present in my own life. For that, I am truly grateful.
NOTE 1/9/2024: For an exercise in Beth Kempton’s Winter Writing Sanctuary 2023, I revised this a bit for a more step-by-step exploration of letting go. You can read that here.
I did a version of this, which I will post about eventually. But, it was just one event. And it was SO cathartic. I can see a bigger version in my future.
Letting go of our loved ones, especially the furry ones, is so difficult. Your sharing reminded me of something I hadn't really stopped to fully consider. In the months leading up to when my ex said he wanted to get divorced, we had to say goodbye to two dogs - Maddie and Gus. With Gus especially, I knew that the dogs were in many ways my last connection with my ex. I had this intuition that saying goodbye to them meant my ex would be more likely to leave. It was true, and it was for the best. It still hurts, all three losses. I'm looking forward to freeing everything. Thank you for the idea.
Happy New Year!
Wow. I’m so sorry for your pain but so glad you are overcoming in such a beautiful and inspirational way.
I think I need this ❤️