Letting Go and Leaning In

Encouragement to Release What Didn’t Serve Us This Year and Welcome What’s Next

There’s something about the closing days of a year that feels different. December carries its own whirl of festivity, but tucked around the edges — in the quiet evenings, in the days between Christmas and New Year — there is space. A pause. A chance to breathe.

I’ve come to see this time not as the season for grand resolutions or sweeping promises, but as a gentler moment of reckoning. A time to look back with honesty. To let go of what no longer serves me. And to lean in to the life I want to live, slowly, one step at a time.

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Why Letting Go Matters

There is a kind of freedom in release.
When we hold on tightly to old hurts, unhelpful patterns, or draining relationships, our hands are too full to receive what’s ahead. Letting go doesn’t mean pretending it never happened, or denying our pain. It means acknowledging it fully — and then setting it down.

It might mean:

• Choosing not to replay the same harsh self-talk in our minds.
• Stepping back from friendships or connections that constantly drain rather than nourish.
• Releasing the expectations of what we thought life “should” look like, and instead meeting it as it is.

Letting go is not giving up. It’s clearing space.

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The Power of Acceptance

There have been times in my own life when I fought desperately against what was happening — trying to fix, solve, or outrun a reality that was simply hard. But eventually I realised: I couldn’t make the storm disappear. I could only learn to walk through it.

Acceptance doesn’t mean liking the difficulty. It means naming it: this is where I am, here and now. It allows us to grieve, to feel the sadness or disappointment, and still to trust that it won’t last forever.

Sometimes the greatest gift we can give ourselves is to stop resisting the season we’re in. To allow ourselves to be human — weary, angry, hopeful, broken, healing — and to keep moving through it one step at a time.

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Leaning In to What’s Next

Once we’ve made space, there is room to lean in. Not with the pressure of rigid resolutions, but with openness. With curiosity. With gentle intention.

Leaning in might look like:

• Speaking to ourselves with kindness instead of criticism.
• Choosing connection with people who bring warmth and reciprocity.
• Leaning into joy where we find it — even if only in small sparks.
• Allowing new rhythms, new priorities, new ways of being to take root.

This is less about reinvention, more about alignment. Who am I becoming? What feels life-giving? What am I ready to welcome?

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Questions for Reflection

As you sit with the turning of the year, you might ask yourself:

• What am I carrying that no longer serves me?
• What expectations of myself or my life am I ready to release?
• Where do I need to extend compassion — to myself, to others, to the past?
• What small practices, joys, or intentions am I ready to lean into for the year ahead?

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The threshold between years is not only about new beginnings. It’s also about endings. It’s about the sacred work of release — letting go of what is heavy, so that we can move lightly into what is next.

So as you step into a new year, may you have the courage to set down what no longer belongs to you. And may you lean in, gently but surely, to the life waiting on the other side.

“We do not heal by holding tightly, but by letting go. We do not grow by resisting, but by leaning in.”

Chat soon,

Ciara x