Courage; and The Art of Letting Go

Hello Lovely.

If you’ve been following me long enough, you’ll remember that I spent some time last year navigating through the And Space of holding on and letting go. One of the big lessons I was faced with in my healing from heartbreak process was letting go and releasing my attachment to people and outcomes. By nature, I’m a control freak. If I want something bad enough I make it happen. This is the fire in me (I’m an Aries Sun, Leo Moon, if you didn’t know). When things don’t go according to plan, I try my best to “fix” them.

I’ve learned that you can’t fix things when it involves other people. Because you can control what anybody else does, you can only control what you do. And this was hard for me to confront because, in my mind, relationships are fixable. They involve work and communication and compromise, but at the end of the day, if the other person isn’t willing, there’s nothing I can do to fix it. So I would hold on to the hope that they would come around when what I really needed to be doing was letting them go. As Mel Robbins always says “Let them.”

So, I’ve been navigating that push and pull of holding on to situations and people when I should be letting them go. And it’s been hard. I feel my firm holding on to things is why at the beginning of this year, I struggled a bit with choosing my word for this year.

I wanted to keep exploring my 2023 word Heart for this year because I was still healing from heartbreak and I just felt like I wasn’t quite done with that word yet. At the same time, the word Courage kept coming up for me for days ever since I heard Lydia talk about it as her word for 2024 back in late December/early January. I couldn’t get it out of my head. Courage just kept coming up. So when I thought about both courage and heart, that CS Lewis quote popped into my head. And so I settled on it being my word for 2024.

My “word” for the year is “Have courage, dear heart“—with an emphasis on the word Courage.

You know when they say the Universe works in mysterious ways, or the Universe has your back, or trust in the divine timing of your life? I’m beginning to understand why it’s so important to have trust in the timing and ways in which our lives unfold.

I downloaded a new Astrology app called Chani the other day and I was reading about the celestial transits currently happening in the sky and their impact on my birth chart. When I read about Chiron in Aries, I learned two things.

I learned that the root of the word courage is “heart“—as in the French “coeur” or Latin “cor“. I also learned that Chiron has been in Aries since February 2019, and how this transit relates to my placement as a Libra Rising is that it’s illuminating my love life and asking me to have courage—specifically, “courage to let pain into my heart, give it the grace of acceptance, and move beyond it.”

How ridiculously amazing is that? My heartbreak during this time was written in the stars and here’s Courage and Heart showing up for me again and again, and all for my own healing.

When I read that it had me thinking back to last month when I attended a collaborative event with StoryTell and Journaling Classes at The Drawing Room. StoryTell is a super lowkey, intimate gathering of storytelling. Anyone who wants to tell their story enters their name in a bowl and each storyteller is chosen at random to share their story related to the theme of the night. The theme that night was Courage and you bet your girl entered her name into the hat for this one and got to tell part of her story too!

We had done some journaling before the storytelling portion of the evening and I found that a lot of what courage means to me is this act of healing and growth. If it wasn’t for my heartbreak and the grief and the way my ex left me feeling like an absolute shell of the person I once was, I would have never created my jar of artist dates. I would have never had the courage to go out and do the long list of things I put into that jar and wrote about in my journals. I would have never learned to drive, never visited Boston or New Haven, and never would I have thought of buying my own place. I would have never met Emily or experienced Journaling Classes, or Reading Rhythms, StoryTell, or Skip the Small Talk. I would have never met the amazing group of people that I know now. I would have never known about Flower Cat, my new favorite coffee shop. So many things I just would have never experienced or bore witness to if I physically hadn’t been left, lost and alone.

Heartbreak was my catalyst. And through it all, I’ve sat in the mud with my feelings and learned to love those broken parts—those parts that are still healing.

Slowly but surely I’m coming back to myself. I’m hugging my inner child and reclaiming my creativity. And it all began with a little bit of courage and a broken heart. When I told my story, I had a very full-circle moment for sure!

To top it all off, that night was also an Aquarius full moon with the sun in Leo, calling for creativity and courage! Courage just coming up for me again and again.

I don’t believe in coincidences. This here is synchronicity. I’m recognizing the driftwood and reading it as a sign. I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be. As much as I want to love someone again—as much as I want to finally be with my person—I know now for certain that all of the redirection I’ve been pushed to will only lead me to that someone. He may not be here now but he will be soon. It’s so bizarre that just a few months ago I felt so completely helpless in my love life, almost sure that it just wasn’t in the cards for me. But as I’m writing this on the Pisces Super Full Moon Lunar Eclipse (hello eclipse season!) I feel an overwhelming sense of calm and knowing that I’m here where I’m supposed to be for a reason. That relationship and heartbreak happened so that all of these other wonderful things could happen. I had the courage to do the work, to crack open the shell and put myself out there, and in the process to learn and grow and love everything about me and my life.

And I’m still learning and still growing. I still feel the grief and the anxiety and that pang of fear that sometimes drowns me in doubt. But I’m learning to trust and give in to whatever the Universe and God have in store for me. I’m learning to let go and trust the timing of my life. And when my person comes along, I know he will be so much better than I could have ever imagined.

Life is astonishing sometimes.

Instructions for living a life:
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.

Mary Oliver

xx Tiffany