The Art of Letting Go

What it means to release control—without falling apart.

A personal meditation on how letting go is not a one-time act, but an evolving practice. It considers what we can and can’t release—timelines, identities, grief—and how letting go too soon can be mistaken for wisdom. The piece walks the fine line between acceptance and avoidance.

Letting go isn’t something you do once, nor is it something you should get accustomed to doing automatically. It’s something you learn to live with—and at times, challenge.

It’s a question I’ve asked myself many times: Should I be letting go? Especially in the year after my Stage IV cancer diagnosis. There’s wisdom in surrender, yes. But there’s also danger in letting go too soon—or for the wrong reasons. Sometimes letting go is liberation. Sometimes it’s avoidance dressed as acceptance.

I’ve let go of timelines, of identities, of outcomes I once fought hard to protect. But not everything can—or should—be released. You can’t let go of something you haven’t fully acknowledged. Grief. Anger. Shame. If you try to release them without naming them, they come back in stranger shapes.

Some things need to be held. Witnessed. Fought for.

This is what I’ve learned—not in theory, but in the quiet aftermath of living at the edge of what I could control.

There wasn’t a single moment. No breakdown in a hospital bed. No dramatic confrontation with mortality. Letting go didn’t arrive like that. It came in layers—quiet and steady, like fog rolling in until the familiar shapes of my life had softened, or disappeared altogether.

I had been diagnosed with Stage IV prostate cancer. Not curable. Not fixable. I spent months chasing every possible outcome that didn’t end in those words. I rearranged treatments, recalculated timelines, tried to outsmart the prognosis. I even went on a four-month expedition, thinking that if I just lived my life normally, it might become normal.

But at some point—some quiet point I can’t even name—I stopped.

I stopped clenching.

Stopped bargaining.

Stopped looking for the detour that would take me back to who I was.

And in that space—where the roadmap fell apart—something else began.

I started letting go.

Not in despair.

Not in defeat.

But in the way a tree lets go of its leaves in autumn—not because it’s dying, but because it knows the season has changed.

First, I let go of time.

I had always been a planner. A man of direction, goals, spreadsheets, frameworks. The five-year plan became a one-year plan. Then a season. Then a month.

Now? Some mornings, I just look at the sky and think: Today.

That doesn’t mean I’ve given up on hope. It means I’ve stopped asking time to reassure me.

Then I let go of strength—at least the kind I used to believe in.

The kind that pushes through pain. That gets the job done. That doesn’t need help.

Now, strength looks different. It looks like resting when I need to. Asking for help. Telling someone, “I’m scared today.” Sometimes it looks like doing nothing—and not apologizing for it.

Letting go of that older, tougher version of myself didn’t feel like weakness.

It felt like honesty.

Like coming home to someone I’d abandoned.

Then came the deeper letting go—of who I thought I was supposed to be.

The provider.

The fixer.

The one who had it all figured out.

This was the most difficult for me, because I didn’t want to see them go. I relished being those things. They made me who I was. I grieved for those identities. They weren’t bad versions of me—in fact, they were the best versions of me. Or so I thought.

But what I realized was this: they were done. And I couldn’t carry them into this new terrain. The weight of them would’ve broken me.

So, I set them down.

And when I did, I found something I hadn’t expected: space. Breathing room.

Space to be softer. More curious. More present.

Not always, but more often than I used to be.

There were days I didn’t let go gracefully. Days I clawed at control like it was oxygen.

Letting go is rarely peaceful in the moment. It’s terrifying. It feels like surrender.

Because it is.

But not the kind of surrender that means giving up.

The kind that means giving in—to what’s real. To what is.

And that is what makes it so damn difficult.

Letting go doesn’t mean the pain disappears.

It means I stop making it worse by pretending it’s not there.

It doesn’t mean I’ve stopped loving life.

It means I’ve started loving it as it is, not as I wish it were.

And that shift—that brutal, beautiful shift—has given me something I never expected:

Peace.

Not the postcard kind. Not the “everything happens for a reason” kind.

But the kind that lives in the breath.

The kind that comes when I stop fighting the tide, and float.

The kind that whispers: You’re still here. You can still make a difference.

Reflection Prompt

What are you gripping tightly today?

What might happen if, just for a moment, you loosen your hold?