Everybody seems to have a different rule about how long it should take you to get over something. If it\u2019s a relationship, they tell you half the length of it. If it\u2019s a loss they tell you approximately a year \u2013 long enough to go through each special occasion when you\u2019re used to having them by your side. We use language like \u2018moving on\u2019 and \u2018letting go\u2019 as though they\u2019re actions as simple as shutting a door and physically walking away. We uncurl our fingers and drop whatever we are holding \u2013 that\u2019s letting go, right? That\u2019s all it takes?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve experienced a single loss in my life that I\u2019ve gotten over in the time frame that seems to have been allotted by society as \u2018acceptable.\u2019 And I suspect that I\u2019m not alone there. It is not human nature to let go. We are, at our core, territorial creatures. We fight to hold onto what we love. Giving up isn\u2019t in any way instinctual.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If there\u2019s anything I wish we could talk more about it\u2019s the in-between stages of letting someone go. Because nobody lets go in an instant. You let go once. And then you let go again. And then again and again and again. You let someone go at the grocery store when their favorite type of soup is on sale and you don\u2019t buy it. You let them go again when you\u2019re cleaning your bathroom and have to throw out the bottle of the body wash that smells like them. You let them go that night at the bar when you go home with somebody else or you let them go every year on the anniversary of the day you lost them. Sometimes you\u2019re going to have to let one person go a thousand different times, a thousand different ways, and there\u2019s nothing pathetic or abnormal about that. You are human. And it isn\u2019t always as simple as making one decision and never looking back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Moving on isn\u2019t always about speeding enthusiastically forward so much as it\u2019s about having one foot on the gas and the other on the brakes \u2013 releasing and accelerating in turn. You\u2019re not a failure for getting to someplace amazing and still feeling like a part of yourself is missing once you get there. You\u2019re not pathetic for mourning while you grow. The bad things don\u2019t disappear in the blink of an eye and the good things don\u2019t spring up into existence without reigning at least a tiny bit of collateral damage. It takes time for everything to even out. And it should.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The truth is, none of us want to think of ourselves as works in progress. We want everything to happen instantaneously: Falling in love, falling out of it, letting go of what we know we ought to leave in the past and moving on to whatever comes next. We hate the in-between spaces \u2013 the times when we\u2019re okay but not quite there yet. The periods where we suspect that growth is happening but have nothing to show for it. The days when everything feels like it\u2019s falling into place and yet we still go home and cry into our pillow because there\u2019s nobody to share our good fortune with. If success is a staircase, we are eternally taking two steps forward and one step back and that\u2019s okay. That\u2019s how we keep ourselves in check. It\u2019s how we keep ourselves from blowing the whole she-bang.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We have to be patient with ourselves as we move through the parts in between the where we\u2019ve been and where we\u2019re going. We have to let the chasm motivate rather than dishearten us. It\u2019s okay to not be there yet. It\u2019s okay to be unsure of every step that you take forward. We don\u2019t talk about how moving on sometimes feels like we\u2019re fighting every part of our most basic instincts, but we should. We should talk about how growth is often every bit as painful as it is beautiful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Because growth and letting go are so complexly intertwined that we often only see one or the other. We forget that they can exist side by side \u2013 releasing the old while letting in the new. We forget that we have the ability to do the exact same thing. And that if we\u2019d only stop beating ourselves up over it, we might realize just how far we\u2019ve already come.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
We have to be patient with ourselves as we move through the parts in between the where we\u2019ve been and where we\u2019re going.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":114678431,"featured_media":1183779,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"thoughtcatalog_call_to_action":"","tc_post_redirect":"","thoughtcatalog_is_sponsored_content":"0","footnotes":""},"categories":[603229912],"tags":[],"anchortext":[],"posttemplate":[],"adcampaign":[],"coauthors":[219077519],"class_list":["post-1183776","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-relationships"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thoughtcatalog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/nataliia-rabinovych-BPemUY1shN0-unsplash.jpg","author_meta":null,"photo_credit":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thoughtcatalog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1183776","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thoughtcatalog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thoughtcatalog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thoughtcatalog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/114678431"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thoughtcatalog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1183776"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thoughtcatalog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1183776\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1183780,"href":"https:\/\/thoughtcatalog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1183776\/revisions\/1183780"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thoughtcatalog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1183779"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thoughtcatalog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1183776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thoughtcatalog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1183776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thoughtcatalog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1183776"},{"taxonomy":"anchortext","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thoughtcatalog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/anchortext?post=1183776"},{"taxonomy":"posttemplate","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thoughtcatalog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posttemplate?post=1183776"},{"taxonomy":"adcampaign","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thoughtcatalog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/adcampaign?post=1183776"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thoughtcatalog.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=1183776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}