Remember That Not Everything You Lose Is A Loss

“Everything you lose is a step you take.” – Taylor Swift

When things begin to crumble before our very eyes, we often try and mitigate the fallout by clinging to the shards of what once was instead of allowing them to go.

Rather than letting people be on their way, we first will cling to them and our feelings well past their expiration dates. We will try to convince ourselves that we are meant to stay in places we know we have outgrown, and so we do. We will remain in roles and situations and mindsets that are clearly not working because to let them go sounds far too painful and risky.

We claim we fight because we put so much of ourselves and our time into these scenarios, relationships, and places that it would feel wasteful to not at least try to keep them. But the truth of the matter is that you can only put off the inevitable so long until fate takes the wheel.

What is meant to go will always leave.

But on the other side of that truth is that the things that are meant to arrive always will as well. And the things that are meant to stay always will, too.

This is not to say that we can’t ache over these things we loved and cared about. This is not to say we shouldn’t take the time to process and feel and all of that. This is to say that we need to keep our perspective when we are able to, however.

When we focus too intently on the endings, we fail to look at the horizons ahead of us. We forget to notice the opportunities the empty space create. We drown out the whispers of hope in favor of the shrillness of fear.

Instead, it would be in our best interests to allow ourselves to feel the grief while we still walking forward towards our better, more aligned tomorrows.

While not everything happens for a reason, everything is as it should be at any given moment. Because when we look backwards, we will begin to see that everything makes sense given everything that occurred.

The burned bridges forced us to change directions. The lost love forced us to heal. The towns we outgrew forced us to find home in places that could actually make us feel safe.

Not everything we lose is a loss. Those relationships and moments and jobs and emotions and places that slip through our fingers only make room for everything we were meant to hold on to all along.

We just need to be brave enough welcome them in.