A ceremony for letting go

Following a particularly challenging motherhood chapter, I decided to have a 'letting go' ceremony. Here's the story, what helped me through the hardest parts and the ceremony I designed, and used.

We were sat around the dining table at my parents’ house, about 11 years ago, with family and some friends, and I was cradling my newborn baby, while she suckled and snoozed, and I drifted in and out of the conversation.

If this is the hardest part of motherhood, I thought, I think we’re going to be ok.

I’m not sure where I’d got that idea from. Perhaps because for some, the early days are the hardest. Perhaps we simply hear more about the sleepless nights and nappy-changing at the start than we do about what happens as the child gets older.

Either way, I said something along these lines - investigating whether this was, in fact, the hardest part; fingers crossed, hoping - and someone snorted with laughter in the way one might when they want you to feel stupid.

I blushed. Oh. Clearly I got that wrong. It was all going to go downhill from here.

Only, it didn’t. It went uphill. And then downhill. Back up, back down. Some stages were challenging, while others were peaceful and calm. Adding in two extra babies added both more joy and more stress. Therefore, I’m not sure if it was harder, or not.

On days when my daughter had a younger brother playing with her in the garden, digging up mud and dancing naked in the paddling pool: better. On nights when both or all three kids were sick or one needed to go to hospital: worse.

And so my motherhood journey has gone. Much like my career. Ups and downs; peaks and troughs; periods of uncertainty followed by periods of total certainty. Times when I’ve felt I’m doing everything right and times when I’ve felt I’m getting it all wrong.

But the past year and a half, as many longer-term readers will know, has been a particularly challenging motherhood period, with one child unable to attend school, which at points has had a domino-effect on at least one of my other children.

Also, on my career.

The physical and mental energy required to work out how to educate a child at home, a child who is in extreme burnout, doesn’t leave much for the career part of life. And so, I’ve muddled through but work - writing - has been crushed into ever-shrinking pockets of time.

In recent months, I’ve been pulled even more deeply into motherhood and further away from my work, and my earnings have been affected. I’m cutting back on spending, where I can, to accommodate this. But I’ve really had to hold onto hope.

Hope that the extra energy and time I’m putting in will help my child to feel better again. Hope that my work will wait for me, and that I can dive back in more fully, when there is more time available. Hope that soon, we’ll be on the up.

I’ve been so grateful to my Substack readers for their support during this time. I’m living almost entirely off Substack, with just a few course sales and coaching clients alongside. Thank you to my paid subscribers.

Using my SQ

I have been using SQ (spiritual intelligence) to guide me during this time. Including: creating an affirmation (second person, present tense) about what I’d like for my child and using a form of prayer to give thanks for all that is good, and to ask for support.

I have created a very clear vision of what I’d like, for our family - and for me - and I’ve travelled to that vision regularly, to ensure that the moves I make and the conversations I have are all aligned with, and moving us towards, that vision.

I have reached for gemstones and rolled them around in my palm whilst feeling crazed as I’ve said help me help me help me into the air, on the hardest days. I’ve pulled tarot cards to help me access my subconscious thoughts when I’ve not known what to do.

I’ve leant on these SQ tools and rituals, and they have brought solace and comfort during a sustained period of worry. As I wrote here, intuition has been crucial: listening to my child, listening to my inner knowing, following both our voices.

And, the magic has started to flow through our home. My child has recovered. School is back on the agenda (and not just back on: welcomed, warmly). This dominoes, too: happiness, hope, relief, a sense of lots of good luck coming our way.

We’re all quite lucky at the moment, aren’t we? one of my sons said after finding a £10 note on the floor, a day after I found a £5 note, the day after his brother won a box of Ferrero Rochers and a bottle of wine (!) at a summer fair.

We are lucky, I said, thinking beyond the material luck* we’ve had and into spiritual luck. The way a most difficult situation that, at points, I thought we might be stuck in for many, many years has become unstuck. There is movement, flow, JOY.

(*I also played the Lottery last night.)

Letting go ceremony

Now, I’m ready to skip off into the light, in much the same way as I assumed, that day with family and friends, a newborn in my arms, that the hardest work had been done and now, I could revel in a lifetime of light and laughter; happiness and ease.

Only, I know it’s not like this, really. I know there will be sadness and challenge again. Darkness, pain, grief. I know there will be chapters of ease and chapters of frustration. And to honour this, I decided to create a ‘letting go’ ceremony.

I wanted to let go of the properly hard year and a half - the sadness, worry, uncertainty, fear, anxiety, guilt - and to appreciate where we are, today. To bring forwards the learnings and lessons, and wave off the parts I won’t be taking with me.

So, I made myself a cup of chai (oat milk, boiled up twice on the hob, with black tea, cardamom pods, turmeric, cinnamon, nutmeg, black pepper and a spoonful of brown sugar) and I lit a candle.

Me + chai + candle + fluffy blanket

Then, I lay back on my yoga mat, a fluffy blanket beneath me, another fluffy blanket on top of my body, and I used a ‘letting go’ meditation that I’d written and recorded to drift off on a journey of processing, gratitude and - ultimately - letting go.

I returned to the room, drank my chai and did a body cleanse with a dried herb stick, asking for protection and continued luck.

This is the first day I have had home alone in many, many months. Maybe since October? I am truly revelling in the time and space to meditate, create, write, bang a drum, play the hand-pan and appreciate all that has passed, and all that is yet to come.

If you’d like to use my ‘letting go’ meditation to create your own ceremony after a difficult period or situation in your life, you are very welcome. It’s for paid subscribers only, though, because sometimes the magic needs to be unlocked…

Letting go meditation