Creating Then Letting Go

Recently, I sat down with one of my mentors and cried over letting go of a goal I've been carrying for years. Nothing had physically ended because the community gathering I was grieving still happens monthly. What ended was my vision of what I wanted it to be.

I founded that gathering (separate from Breath Is Prayer) here in Sedona with a clear idea of how I wanted it to grow. I pushed again and again to make that vision a reality, yet it never happened.

And the yearning for it was weighing me down.

When we think of letting go, it’s often in terms of grieving a loved one’s passing, or releasing our desires to change someone. It might be about letting go of the past, letting go of shame… you get the idea.

But rarely do we talk about creating something—a business, an event, even a home—and putting so much of our time and devotion into it, only to realize we’ve hit a wall. There’s no moving forward with it.

So let’s talk about releasing our own creations.

What I Built

Eight years ago an idea for a new monthly gathering wouldn't leave me alone, so I started it. It was kind of a sister gathering to Breath Is Prayer, and it grew out of something I'd been doing personally for years. Just like the Breath Is Prayer ceremonies, I had a vision for how it might expand.

And it did expand! It grew quickly into something people came back for month after month. Within the first year, I realized it was more than I could manage on my own, so I invited a collaborator to help build it with me.

That partnership has taught me more than almost anything else in my work life, though not in the ways I would've chosen.

Some seasons we worked together beautifully. Others... Well, we couldn't agree on much, and the tension would build between us until one of us finally caved. That's been the rhythm for years now. Ease, friction, repair, ease again.

And every time, I told myself it should be smoother by now. I've written before about how change takes its sweet time, and about how “supposed to” is one of the least useful phrases. Yet I was always thinking, “Isn’t a collaboration like this supposed to be easier?”

Recently the friction came back and intensified, but this time I just couldn't move through it the way I usually do. It felt stuck inside me and I couldn't figure out why. I tried to flow with the feelings through movement, hoping to get some clarity, and I did my breathwork. Still, something was trapped.

So I called my Family Constellations mentor and asked her to work with me on it because I didn’t know what else to do.

She set up a constellation (they work for more than just family systems!), and what came up was the vision itself. Memories from eight years ago surfaced, along with all my hopes for the community and how I wanted it to evolve. My mentor helped me pull that vision into the open, name it, and feel how much I still wanted it. After working with the constellation some more, I received a clear message: this vision will never happen.

I broke down right there because I innately knew how true that message was. The tension between me and my collaborator wouldn’t resolve because I hadn’t processed the truth. I needed to let go of my dreams for the community gathering.

Over the years, it had changed in ways I wasn’t invested in, moving further and further away from my goals and aligning more with my collaborator’s. I was clinging to a future that was no longer possible.

My mentor helped me grieve during our session because facing the truth opened a floodgate. I hated the fact that I needed to move on, but releasing my hold on that gathering was the only way I’d feel lighter.

After the session, I continued to sit with the sorrow. And when I’d moved through all the heartache, I actually felt an inkling of relief.

I've written before about how grief becomes a teacher, and I feel that wisdom more strongly today. Grief doesn't only belong to the people we lose; we grieve visions and dreams too. We grieve the version of something we were so certain we'd get to build or experience.

We create things the way we raise children. We pour ourselves in, we shape them as best we can, and then at some point the job changes. They have their own life out in the world, whether or not that matches what we imagined, and our work becomes letting go and accepting what our creation has become.

Lack of Communication

When I brought in the collaborator, we were both so excited about the work that we never sat down to make a shared vision.

I had my own, and I knew exactly what I wanted attendees to experience. But I never said it fully out loud. And my collaborator had a vision of their own that they also never fully articulated.

So for eight years the two of us have been steering toward different goals. Every disagreement about logistics or money or how an evening should flow was really a disagreement between the two visions we were each trying to bring to life.

For months, the only exit I could picture was walking away completely. I thought the best thing to do was hand the whole thing over to my collaborator and be done with it. But that option never brought me any peace because it felt like being pushed out of something I built.

What happened instead was an internal shift. Instead of walking away, I released what I thought this gathering was supposed to become, and I made peace with what it actually is.

It’s a beautiful community event that I still feel proud to be connected to.

Since I reached that place of truly grieving and then letting go, the relief has been liberating. I show up to the event, and I do the parts that bring me joy, which is the whole reason I created it in the first place. I'm no longer fighting what is.

What Came After

Within a day of that constellation and all that release, three invitations arrived in my inbox, all of them about facilitating at retreats this fall. Three, after a very quiet summer!

I don't think that's a coincidence. When you spend years clinging too tightly to dreams, there’s no room left for new opportunities to flow in. After I made space energetically, the opportunities trying to reach me finally made it through.

I owe a lot of it to my work with my mentor and the constellations.

People sometimes come to me hoping a constellation will change another person, like a mother who won't listen, or an ex who won't take responsibility.

That isn't how this works. Just like you can’t go to therapy by yourself and expect the therapist to change someone who isn’t even at the session, Family Constellations isn’t a spell you cast on others.

It doesn't reach into your relationships and rearrange them, because we can't control other people. We can only control ourselves and our own responses. Once you truly accept that, it takes such incredible weight off your shoulders. What a constellation shifts is your inner relationship to those people and to the history you share. You gain greater perspective.

My collaboration didn't change. I'm the one who changed, and I feel so much lighter and happier because of it (look at all these new opportunities coming in!).

If you're curious how the process actually works, I walk through it in Exploring the Depths of Family Constellations.

In my longer sessions, we’ll look at the family you were born into, but also current partnerships and friendships where you might be stuck in patterns waiting to be brought to the surface and seen.

Some people come for one constellation and that's all they need. Others keep working with me in coaching afterward, because seeing something clearly and integrating that wisdom into your life are two separate skills. The second one takes time, and you need someone in your corner while the new way of being takes hold.

An Invitation

If you're clinging to a vision that isn't becoming what you hoped, you may not have to fully walk away. You may only need to release certain parts of it, so you can allow new energy to flow in.

That kind of release can be powerful, and nobody else has to know you did it. The space it will make in your life will surprise you.

If you're struggling with letting go, I'd love to sit with you through it. Book a FREE 15-minute discovery session with me, and let's look at what you might be ready to release.      

One More Thing!

Our women's retreat here in Sedona is October 2nd through 6th, and we have only one double room left! That's space for one woman, or two friends or family members who'd like to share it.

At the retreat, you’ll experience four days of breathwork, movement, sacred ceremony, hiking, meals from a private chef, and time away from everything that usually has your attention. We built it for women who are tapped out and ready to come back to themselves. All the details are here: Embodying the Sacred Feminine Retreat.

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