It’s so interesting what triggers emotional days. Sometimes, it’s not what you think. It might be something you saw or thought about a week ago that you’ve been unconsciously holding onto. It simmers quietly, and then something, anything, becomes the catalyst. Suddenly, on a random Monday, you find yourself releasing emotions tied to something that happened ten days earlier. The mind is mysterious that way.
I remember when you mentioned how Oprah spoke about the importance of forgiving her mother. While I respect her truth, my immediate thought was: What is the actual mechanical process of letting go? People often say we have to forgive or let go, but what does that really mean in practice? What are the steps? The truth is, most people don’t actually know. They say the words, but they don’t do the work. They talk about forgiveness, but they avoid the real emotional labor that comes with it.
In my experience, the first step is awareness, recognizing that there is something unresolved, that there is pain, grief, or resentment inside us. The second is willingness, we must become willing to let it go. And to develop that willingness, we repeat it as a mantra: I am willing to let go of this pain. I am willing to let go of this resentment. I am willing to breathe. Writing it down makes it more powerful: I am willing to let go of my father’s food addiction that I carry with me. I am willing to let go of the guilt I carry. I am willing to heal.
Next comes instruction, we need guidance from someone who’s done the work before us. What do we actually do? We write about it. We talk about it in therapy. We dedicate a yoga class to that specific wound. And during that class, instead of letting the mind drift, we intentionally study the emotional injury. We feel the resentment, the sadness, the fear. We activate the nervous system just enough to re-experience the wound, so we can finally process it, rather than continue to suppress it.
We cry. And this is crucial.
We have to feel the pain. We have to grieve. Crying is not weakness, it is part of the mechanism of healing. Most people avoid crying because they fear the pain will never stop. But it does stop. The crying ends. The pain subsides. And what follows is a release. A relief. An opening. When we let ourselves cry, we finally give the body and the psyche permission to begin the recovery process. Crying is like an internal exhale, it’s the heart’s way of cleansing itself.
As we breathe through it, we begin to understand that no one person was the root of all suffering. The people who hurt us were hurt by others. Dysfunction is passed down generationally, one link at a time. And we, through our breath, our tears, and our willingness, begin to break the chain.
We breathe again. We feel the grief of the entire human experience. We forgive ourselves. We forgive others. Whether it was harm done to animals, someone we shouted at, someone we ignored, someone we belittled, we take responsibility, and we begin to release it.
And then, after all of that, we realize that was only the beginning.
This is a practice. We repeat it again and again. And one day, maybe years later, we notice the change: We’re not running from our partner anymore. We’re not exploding with anger. We’re not withholding love or affection. One day, we breathe freely. We give ourselves freely. We stay present, without resentment, without shutting down, and without falling out of love.
We allow ourselves to trust. We allow ourselves to feel helpless. We allow ourselves to fear pain, but we know it can’t destroy us like it did when we were children. No adult experience can replicate the deep helplessness of being a child rejected by a parent. But those memories still shape our defenses. They build walls around our hearts. And only through real emotional work, writing, breathing, crying, forgiving, do those walls begin to soften.
This work is not easy. But it’s much harder to remain asleep. One day, we wake up at 80 years old and realize, Shit, I should have done this sooner. We look back at all the time we spent chasing things, escaping reality, numbing out. We ask, What the fuck was I doing, jumping out of airplanes and spending money on meaningless crap, thinking it would fix me?
And even today, we must ask again: What am I chasing right now?
The answer, if it is something negative, is likely anxiety. And that anxiety is often rooted in resentment, guilt, and old pain. If we do not work every single day to release it, it will weigh us down. It will weaken our vitality, hijack our relationships, and keep us from becoming who we’re meant to be.
But if we choose to feel, to cry, to breathe, to write, to love, and to forgive, then we begin to heal.
And that’s the real work.