An email from an astrology website caught my attention this week. It offered a lunar eclipse webinar that would finally help us let go of people we want to leave in our past.

I still haven’t completely let go of some people who hurt me in the past. One example is my ex-husband. We were married for only three years more than twenty years ago and we have no children together. I am happily married with my loving husband for almost ten years now and there is no part of me that wants anything to do with my ex. Yet, sometimes, in my nightmares, I am still married to my ex.

As I went over the email, I was hoping to find the magic solution for letting go of people we no longer want in our lives. I then thought of an incredible woman I met a few years ago as a client. She was super successful in every aspect of her life, and she had just gotten divorced. “I want to put him in my past and move on,” she said about her ex, “I don’t love him, I don’t want to be with him, so why does he manage to trigger me so much? Why do I still dream about him?”

My answer to her was that it takes time to let go. How long? It can take years, decades, even lifetimes.

One of the problems I see in our world today is the expectation for immediate results. We think that we can just take this workshop, practice this meditation, do this full moon ceremony. We can just write our hearts and burn the papers, and ta-da, our pain is no longer a part of us, it’s in the past.

The bad news is that we can’t entirely let go of the past. We will always carry some baggage of pain. The good news is that it’s totally okay.

The problem is not that we still feel pain and anger around our past relationships. The problem is that we expect of ourselves to completely let go of these meaningful people from our past and be free of them. We don’t allow ourselves the grace of time. Then we get disappointed with ourselves for failing a task we could never accomplish. We don’t recognize that eliminating the pain of the past is against our human nature.

Struggling with this myself, I’ve realized that the best thing I could do about it was surrender to it. I know I want to let go of my ex, but I do not try to rush my healing. It will come when I am ready, or maybe it won’t come at all. If my suffering in this lifetime is to sometimes feel pain due to my toxic past relationship, I accept it, I embrace it. It is my pain to carry.

What we don’t want is to be managed by the psychological patterns that we created to protect ourselves from the pain we had experienced through bad relationships. We don’t want to keep our heart closed because we are afraid to get hurt again.

The eclipse season starts this week with Full Moon & Lunar Eclipse in Libra. The Aries – Libra axis speaks about my way vs our way, alone vs together, speaking our truth vs saying what will make us be liked, putting ourselves first vs putting our relationships first.

Eclipse is always a time for new beginnings. We can use this energy to improve our relationship with self and others. We can use the eclipse to let go of relationships we don’t want in our lives, longings for people who hurt us, and other behavioral patterns that don’t serve us well in our relationships. We can write our stories around that and burn the papers or write letters to the people who hurt us and burn these letters. We can pray that our angels will help us to let go and start anew.

But please, let’s not forget to give things time, and be compassionate with ourselves. Don’t judge yourself for being stuck on this one person you wanted to let go of years ago. Look at yourself and see how cute and loveable you are. Laugh with yourself that this is your story. What an interesting story it is. Be curious about when and how this story will come to an end.

Wishing you a happy Full Moon and Lunar Eclipse and a wonderful week,

With love,

Yael