Everyone wants to let go of their past. Especially when the past haunts you with things and ideals that nearly destroyed your life. We all have something in our life that we wished would have never happened. We all have situations that were beyond our control. Many of those things, could have been different if we had a choice in the matter. But sometimes, life just happens, and when it does we have to happen with it.
I remember when a young, happy and brilliant 7 year old came to therapy for help with physical and sexual abuse. She was so energetic and excited, as she ran to the room with the toys, that would be her place of healing herself through play therapy. I knew she was hurting, but she wanted to play. I felt her pain, but she wanted to play. I cried for her, but she wanted to play.
I also remember a 10 year old in Zimbabwe Africa, who I felt so sorry for, as he rolled his little Tonka truck in the mud, while it was raining, because he didn’t have a tarp to cover the place under the tree where he and his family lived. I’ll never forget that smile on his face, as he sat in the mud, rolling his truck. His eyes, they looked up at me as though, they were calling me to play. So I did. And I cried like never before. He didn’t understand my tears and I, well, I didn’t understand his strength.
There is this delicate balance between letting things go and holding on to things. There is this tension between what hurts and what hopes. If hope can be found through pain, then life must be able to be found through death. So as you “let it go”, “hold on to it”. There is something that happens between those two worlds that is simply magical. Something that heals, while it hurts, because forgiveness does not have amnesia.