Letting Go, Being Let Go and The Pivotal P’s

Dis­ci­pline is the new sexy!

Much like the big O, let­ting go and being let go doesn’t often or nec­es­sar­ily hap­pen simul­ta­ne­ously.  And while things can get messy with­out the whole truth fac­tor being present and accounted for, let­ting go and being let go at some point in our lives becomes inevitable.

In my life the inevitable hap­pened about one month ago. In actu­al­ity, today marks five weeks since I was led into a small room with­out a win­dow, under the guise of an impromptu depart­men­tal meet­ing and informed that my posi­tion was being “phased out.” It’s taken all of these five weeks to make peace with the move­ments and the deal­ings of that uncer­e­mo­ni­ous day. It’s taken every ounce of who I’ve always known I was to come to a mea­sure of grace.

Today is a good day. Today is a very good day for let­ting go.  I am not the first to be laid off. And although I did not know it at the time, I was not the only one that day who was told in some form or fash­ion that for rea­sons, which still aren’t quite clear, that this par­tic­u­lar pro­fes­sional rela­tion­ship was over.

Let­ting go or being let go you see applies itself to any power rela­tion­ship, whether in the pro­fes­sional or the per­sonal realm. I sub­scribe to the idea that the per­sonal is ever polit­i­cal and I also think the same may be said for the the rela­tion­ship between the pro­fes­sional and the per­sonal, at least as it applies to me.

For the past 4 and 1/2 years, I had been gain­fully employed as a Researcher at a con­ser­v­a­tive non-profit. I had my 15-second intro­duc­tion down-pat, and it had every­thing to do with find­ing foun­da­tions with the “heart” and “capac­ity” to “part­ner” with our mis­sion.  I was  was too com­fort­able in that posi­tion. Too com­fort­able in a place and time where the trans­fer­able skills that placed me in that hot seat for the longest job stint I had held in my life were now irrel­e­vant to the bot­tom line.

I lost and found myself at this job and in this posi­tion and I don’t despise any of it. If the trick was play­ing the role, while a lit­tle rebel­liously merg­ing the per­sonal with the pro­fes­sional; then the treat was and is dis­cov­er­ing my call­ing, my authen­tic self, my authen­tic voice, where there is no equiv­o­ca­tion and no cause for starched to per­fec­tion poise or fash­ion­ista ten­den­cies unless I wake up on that side of the bed.

Truth be told, they stole my thun­der.  And it serves me right. LOL.  I wanted to be the one to say ‘when’. I had been com­ing to ‘when’ for two years.  So you see the curve ball. Let­ting go or being let go is a real­ity check, and after the unchecked tears in the car, I had to remem­ber to tell God THANK YOU!

I am 34 with no title except for the one I imag­ine. It’s a great age, a great place to get to know one­self and dis­cover pas­sion. If being let go leads you to a merger of truth, no mat­ter the stage in your life, then I think we owe it to our­selves to embrace it.  I’ve dis­cov­ered that it is always about walk­ing in your truth, because no mat­ter what comes, you can ride the wind with­out look­ing at your feet, with­out feel­ing abused by out­side forces, with­out sink­ing into for­mer ten­den­cies, or depression.

You can defy gravity!

Let­ting go is process.  This has been the year for great change, not in the way of the grand ges­ture, but just a shift in my atmos­phere and I knew it, had felt it deep down for the past two years, but only now was it bub­bling to the sur­face where I knew my change was imminent.

Let­ting go and being let go.  One you con­trol the other you don’t.  No job owes you any­thing. Florida is a right-to-work state. Aside from the things that I never should have put off in the first place, like the doc­tor and the den­tal vis­its. In spite of some for­mer skewed pri­or­i­ties I feel blessed to be at this point. I am grate­ful that those that knew me and had been lis­ten­ing (or even read­ing) didn’t offer apolo­gies. They would miss a daily pres­ence as I would, but so many said “this is your time T.”

Let­ting go or being let go means the world at your feet in some sense. BIG TIME OPPORTUNITY!

Danielle LaPorte, author of The Fire Starter Ses­sions and whose White Hot Truth I devot­edly imbibe asked a sim­ply ques­tion: How do you want to feel? The stream of con­scious­ness was imme­di­ate. I wanted to feel  “PASSIONATE, POWERFUL, PRESENT, PRECIOUS, PRAYED-UP/PRAYERFUL.” That’s exactly what I wrote in my jour­nal. The piv­otal P’s I call them. That was month’s before being let go.

“The truth is, unless you let go, unless you for­give your­self, unless you for­give the sit­u­a­tion, unless you real­ize that that sit­u­a­tion is over, you can­not move for­ward.” — Steve Maraboli, Life, The Truth, and Being Free

Let­ting go and being let go. Time has marched. I’ve dared myself to move on and cre­ate the real­ity I say I desire. This is a new chap­ter. This writer-woman is fully engaged.

The fea­tured card-stock above (which I’ve fully embraced in the NOW as my motto and mojo) was cre­ated by my friend fel­low blog­ger Mariah Williams. Check out her Etsy shop for this and other sundry delights.

ABOUT THE WRITER

Hi there, I’m Tynisha C. Leon, writer, West Indian, mango-lover, founder and editor-in-chief of DASHEEN mag­a­zine — the online des­ti­na­tion where cul­ture feeds imag­i­na­tion. Join the cul­ture con­ver­sa­tions on Face­book, Twit­ter and Tum­blr!