"Getting over a painful experience is much like crossing monkey bars. You have to let go at some point in order to move forward."

C S Lewis

I’m always shocked a bit when I realize that we’re so close to the end of another year. It’s like suddenly there’s talk about what to have for Thanksgiving dinner and what will Christmas be like.

As we inch closer to December 31, we have choices we can make. 

We get to decide how we want the rest of the year to go and how to finish it up. 

And how we want to enter into the new year. 

Whether it's been the toughest year of your life or you've been able to sigh and say, well, it wasn't that bad compared to 2020, I want you to pause for just a second.

And think about the hard parts of 2021. 

Before we can move on to the next step, we have to let go.

It sounds easy, simple. Right?

But when you have a broken heart or you feel crushed by a huge sucker punch life has given you, it is NOT EASY to let go. ...

Forgiving yourself involves many things but mostly it has to do with letting go. 

When you can forgive yourself, you are free of the cycle of beating yourself up. 

When something we do hurts someone else or when we make a poor judgment, we can get stuck going round and round, thinking "if only."

We can be harder  on ourselves and not be able to forgive ourselves when we think we've done something "wrong."  We get stuck in shame, especially if we were shamed as children.

I asked a few people this week if they could forgive themselves. 

Sometimes I was met with a puzzled look. Other times, an almost tearful look.

I got these answers:

"I think about it every day"

"I think it's hard"

"I don't know how to forgive myself"

"I never thought about it" 

I realized most of us don't really know how to forgive ourselves. 

I thought about this topic a lot and came up with a few things to think about:

1. It won't help...

Letting go is hard

It doesn't matter whether we're letting go of physical clutter or emotional clutter in our lives. 

It's straight-up hard. 

In exploring around all the edges of what it means to let go of clutter or anything in our lives that we need to let go of...I'm finding one thing to be true. 

It's about fear. 

Letting go involves letting go of your fear. 

A tale of fear

I remember a time way back in 2008 when I began a year-long leadership program.

In our group, we all were all challenged to get clear on our personal strengths so that we could be impactful leaders.  

We began this process by engaging in a high ropes course. 

The high ropes, if you've never participated in one of these intense experiences, helps you discover your personal courage as well as your strengths. 

On the first day of the course, we had to climb up a 25-foot redwood tree. (I'm actually not sure how high it was but let's just say...

 “If you let go a little, you will have a little peace; if you let go a lot you will have a lot of peace; if you let go completely you will have complete peace." Ajahn Chah 

When I heard this quote the very first time, it stopped me dead in my tracks. 

I knew it was true.

But I didn’t have much experience with letting go.  

I come from a family who loved to keep things. Everything, actually. 

There wasn’t a whole lot that got thrown away. Letters, old bank statements and checks for years and years, clothes that no longer fit, even empty boxes...because, well, the idea was that we might need these things SOMEDAY.

And yes, my parents were of the Depression-era. I get it.

It was a time that affected that generation for their entire lives and my parents and grandparents were deeply impacted along with everyone else. They didn’t believe in getting rid of anything. 

So I grew up with the mentality of keeping things, unaware...

It was February 25, just a week before we were to leave for Fiji, the trip to celebrate my turning 70, when my husband, Thom, said to me. 

“You know, Jo, this is dangerous and a silly thing to go on this trip. But I’m choosing to do it anyway.” I said, I know. I’m choosing as well. 

I had planned my dream birthday trip for a year. My request to my sons was this:

 “The only gift I want for my birthday is for all my grandchildren to be together and you guys, of course.” They said, “okay, Mom, let’s do it.” 

Just weeks before we left, COVID 19 made its ugly entrance into the world.

We knew it was risky. We tried to console ourselves by saying there’s not that many cases of corona. 

How could we know that we would be caught in another country as they closed their borders? And how could we know that we'd use all our resources to overcome some tough times?

Having the best birthday of your life on a...

I’ve decided to come clean and tell you the truth:  I’m going to write you every week. Whoa. I cringe because I’ve said this before. But this time I really mean it.

When have you promised yourself (or someone else) that you’d do something? And then - it happens. You stop doing something you meant to do. And usually it goes like this: you miss a week. A week turns into 2 weeks and then 2 becomes a month, and then the next thing, it’s not happening.  AT ALL. Please tell me you’ve done this, too.

The thing is, I KNOW what happens for me. It’s called a big fat, mean saboteur, who sits on my shoulder.

I hear him breathing in disgust, reading what I’ve just written. “So, Jo ... when did you get so bold that you're telling people you’re going to write them every week? Really?” (I can imagine him rolling his eyes). “How long will it last THIS TIME? You can’t even think of what to write about."...

 "In every journey or adventure, there will be the unexpected, the low points, the funky stuff that happens. This is true for travel or for life. And there are always lessons to be learned." 

In 2015, my husband and I visited our son and his family in the tiny South Pacific nation of Vanuatu. We were stoked to be so close to an active volcano. The events that happened were, shall we say, a little scary.

It all started a little bit wonky, and it was the beginning of our trip to see the live volcano on Tanna in the South Pacific island of Vanuatu.

That tropical morning, we got off the plane from Efate, the main island of Vanuatu, and arrived by plane an hour later on the island of Tanna. I pulled out my reservation sheet and, for the life of me, could not find the name of the hotel we were booked in. People were everywhere, pushing, shoving, and loading up people and baskets in trucks.

A Ni Vanuatu man ran up to us and grabbed the papers out of my hands. I’m...