Letting Go

I met my friend Chris (years ago) at a Storycircle Conference in San Marcos.  On Tuesday, I drove to Kerrville to meet her and attend her local Storycircle meeting.  Before the meeting, we had a delicious lunch in the old Schreiner's building.  If you're traveling to or through Kerrville, you must try the restaurant located in the building that used to be a bustling department store.

http://www.storycircle.org/index.php

If you don't know about Storycircle, please click on the link above.

The topic on Tuesday was "Letting Go."  The leader, Caroline,  (they alternate leadership) had written an essay about letting go, and she'd made fall-colored paper leaves and hung them on a tree as a centerpiece.

After she read, we each wrote things on a leaf that we wanted to let go of.  I invite you to do this prompt if you like--considering objects in your house or closet, relationships, feelings, beliefs, whatever....

Here are some lines from her essay that provoked lively writing and conversation:

"Autumn shows us the beauty of letting go...What if trees refused to let go of their dying leaves, holding on to them in case they might need them next spring?  Instead, they shed them easily and naturally to make room for new growth.  We, on the other hand, have to make a conscious choice to shed the old, to lighten, to open, to release, to move forward.  So let our stories today be ones of letting go on many levels, from things to feelings to relationships, examine all that you want to, need to, will leave behind."

She offered this quotation as a prompt:

"I became a connoisseur of object surrender when I turned my adult son's room into  guest room.  I surveyed my overcrowded museum of domestic life and realized that deaccessioning required many of the same skills as collecting: knowledge, discernment, selectivity, and diligence."

And this one, from Elena's favorite movie, Frozen: "Let it go, let it go.  That perfect girl is gone."