If You Struggle With Letting Go, This Rule by Mary Sarton Will Seriously Enlighten You
A powerful and transformational advice I apply daily.
My go-to forest for practising shinrin-yoku (the Japanese therapeutic act of spending time in a forest) is now bare. The trees stand tall but have no leaves. These days, I don’t just find calm and decompress amongst the trees; I’m learning how to apply the wisdom of nature in life.
I’ve always been baffled by the wisdom of trees.
How do they lose their leaves without despair? They just let them fall, one by one. They let go to prepare for new ones. Watching this, I wonder: can I use the same principle to let go of what doesn’t serve me anymore? Can I let go of the memories that have no significance to my present life?
Novelist, poet and memoirist May Sarton said something that explains how we can use the wisdom of nature to let go of bitterness, grief and emotional pain. “I think of the trees and how simply they let go, let fall the riches of a season, how without grief (it seems) they can let go and go deep into their roots for renewal and sleep … Imitate the trees. Learn to lose in order to recover, and remember that nothing stays the same for long, not even pain, psychic pain. Sit it out. Let it all pass. Let it go,” Sarton wrote in…
