Goldenrod.
Making my way through a giant box of unsorted bits and pieces from the center I closed this year, I found a piece of paper.
Well, I found what seemed like thousands of pieces of paper, but this one was more attention-getting than the others.
This page was large and goldenrod yellow, and it told me I need to write about the the thing I don’t want to let go of.
That’s literally what it said.
In my handwriting:
Write about the thing you don’t want to let go of.
And then, in smaller letters: on the blog
There’s no date.
Apparently past-me thought the instructions contained sufficient intel.
I don’t remember what particular thing-I-didn’t-want-to-let-go-of I had in mind though.
No idea. Not that it matters. It’s a good question that is always in fashion. Timeless.
Whoosh. Goodbye. Releasing.
During my five year tenure of play at The Playground, I let go of many things. In fact, that magical wonder of a space facilitated all kinds of releasing.
It even came with a secret elevator shaft which we used specifically for that purpose. Whoosh!
Energetically/symbolically, of course, not literally. The door was sealed off, though the stunning old-fashioned bell still worked on occasion.
It said BELL on it. It was perfect. I miss the Playground.
And here we are.
Here we are in the Year of Easing & Releasing, my Shmita year.
Over the past several months, I have let go of more than I ever thought possible. Sometimes beautiful and painful shedding, sometimes release like liberation.
Write about the thing you don’t want to let go of.
It’s a great sentence.
And I don’t know that I don’t know what it is I don’t want to let go.
I mean, I bet I do know. At the very least, I suspect many things, and probably more that I’m intentionally hiding from myself because it feels safer to convince myself that I don’t know.
If this year of Operation True Yes has taught me anything, it’s that I generally know a lot more about most internal mysteries than I’m comfortable admitting.
For whatever reason though, I’m not entirely ready to process this question yet. Which is okay. All hesitation is legitimate. And the way we play here — always — is Safety First.
We are here to heal pain, with acknowledgment, legitimacy, appreciation, love, creativity and play. Not to poke at it or force anything.
I’m going to try two things.
The first is that I’m going to proxy this!
I’m going to pretend that [the thing I don’t want to let go of] is carrots, since that’s the first thing that came into my head.
That way, I can ask the question like this:
What do I know about these carrots that I don’t want to let go of?
I can also ask related questions like…
- What happens when the carrots exit?
- What are some things that have helped me let go of carrots in the past?
- What changes (or in what ways do I change) when I become the person who lets go of carrots?
And the other thing?
Company. I’m inviting you to play with me here.
I’m leaving the question from past-me here for all of us to play with for ourselves.
Kind of like what some people call a writing prompt and I call skipping stones.*
You can write about a stand-in thing (like carrots, except whatever comes up for you), and you don’t even have to know what you don’t want to let go of, though you might. Assume/pretend you don’t know, and just focus on [carrots] or whatever your version of [carrots] is.
And I whisper a secret here…
The most important question here is not “What is the thing I don’t want to let go of?”, and it’s not even “What do I know about the thing I don’t want to let go of?”.
It’s this:
How can I approach this with kindness and permission, acknowledgment and legitimacy, presence and love?
Approach is everything. We come to these questions with curiosity and affection, and we also are committed to making sure we feel safe.
Play with me? And helpful notes on commenting/process.
There is a reason introspection is hard! It means looking at what is, which also involves separating from what isn’t.
This means that as we turn inward, we often encounter monsters and Ludicrous Fear Popcorn, and all our misperceptions and misinterpretations. No wonder people avoid it like the plague.
And now you also know why I put so much emphasis on playfulness, and safety, and playing at the edges.
As for releasing, well, probably nothing is more fraught than that.
For very reasonable reasons.
We remember that we all have our stuff. We meet ourselves and each other with as much love and understanding as we can muster. We lovingly refrain from giving advice! We are here to play, and whoosh sparklepoints with each other.
So feel welcome to take some breaths or play with a question or share anything sparked for you, or express appreciation/sparklepoints, or deposit a pebble of “I read this and I am here!”
My thank you heart is full of love and appreciation for everyone who reads. You are an important part of this space. ♡
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I want to let go of the ideas in my head that are making me feel that I am putting out fire with gasoline.
I will try to douse those mind carrots with some extra gasoline and watch them burn into a vaporous stream of sparklepoints.
Please wish me luck.
Luck! And a vaporous stream of sparklepoints is a marvelous image, I am going to make use of that!
Initial off-the-top-of-my-head thoughts on letting go of carrots, and carrots in general. You are all welcome to add more.
Carrots can be made into SOUP. Or added to soup.
Carrots can be JUICED.
Carrots can be COMPOSTED, a very easy way of letting go. It involves trusting that they will break down into their components/nutrients and return to the earth in a way that is safe. It involves making a designated space for this to happen.
Carrots are orange, second chakra glow of all those orange-infused qualities of giving-and-receiving, flow, sexuality, pleasure…..
Carrots have TOPS which are GREEN, and also delicious, and also often neglected.
Carrots grow into the earth.
Carrots are like diamonds (not just carats), because of the way they point down into the earth like an arrow or an anchor.
Carrots and vision.
Carrot seed oil, my favorite alternative sunscreen.
If carrots are composted, they can help beautiful things come to life. 🙂
Carrots that you don’t need or let go of might be delightful snacks for other critters, like maybe bunnies or horses.
I want to let go of the idea that I have to stay in the place-that-is rather than the place-I-want-to-be-in because I might make people sad if I decide to pack those boxes.
They want me to be happy, but the monsters have me so convinced I will just let everyone down.
There aren’t enough sparklepoints for this. (although I gave myself many when I spilled my pasta on my shirt…)
So many sparklepoints!!!!
Whoosh!
Skipping stones means ripples.
Like the layers within a carrot, which are like tree rings, but not quite yet mostly.
Really, really SLOOOOWWWWW ripples.
Well if this isn’t just perfect. Perfect timing. Perfect stone skipping. Perfect perfect. Of course.
My carrots are papers (let’s just say).
So what do I know about papers?
~They tend to congregate in All The Places
~They multiply like rabbits (only faster)
~Papers hold knowledge and information and understanding, which is of the utmost value to me.
~Papers = clutter very quickly
~Papers can be SO gorgeous. So many patterns and textures, and it lights up all of my insides to experience the beauty of this
~Papers help me to feel safe
~Paper comes from trees, and it makes me sad to think of so many trees cut down… so much waste
~Papers hold my most vulnerable thoughts and beliefs and questions and wonderings (and wanderings)
~Papers make me feel abundant
Well this is gonna be good. Thanks for the stone skipping Havi! {Leaving some tea and shortbread cookies behind for everyone who’s playing along!}
I just harvested carrots from my garden this morning. (Sparklepoints for making time to be in the garden BEFORE going to work, instead of saying, oh, I’ll do it later, and not doing it until I have covered them from frost at least three times.). But these are not just any carrots. . .no, these are paris market carrots, which means they are round! Still orange, but very round. So sometimes carrots have different shapes, which means they look adorable on appetizer plates, and that they make me laugh, especially when I try to envision Bugs Bunny with a round carrot.
Maybe they also belong in gardens for round houses?
When I am in the garden, I remember to breathe. So maybe my round carrots are like orange breaths that energize that second chakra, which is definitely a thing that surrounds a lot of baggage I think I want to let go of, but never manage to, so maybe part of me doesn’t actually want to. And now I will go think about why that might be the case, and probably chat with some orange monsters.
Mmmmmm carrots and ROUNDNESS. I get a spacious feeling from this combination!
There are lots of things I don’t want to let go of, which is why I’ve been avoiding Decluttering and Boxes, both of which are scary things.
But thank you for reminding me of proxies! Because obviously I need to replace the concept of Decluttering with something less scary and a little more kind.
What do I know about M&Ms? Said to be the most popular, or one of the most popular, candies. Chocolate candy! Hard candy shell. Ahhh! Good things wrapped in protection. Colors. As a kid I had favorite colors. Red ones were rarest and they were my favorite. No difference in taste but it mattered to me that I eat them in the correct order. Sometimes favorites first, sometimes favorites last, sometimes in color-wheel order. Note: color wheel, not rainbow.
Several times when I was depressed and taking antidepressants that weren’t quite doing the job, I had some M&Ms and felt better, so that I now think of them as a supplementary antidepressant. Oddly/interestingly, other forms of chocolate don’t have that effect.
Tonight orange and green M&Ms are glowing at me.
What do I know about orange M&Ms? They’re my favorite shade of orange. They glow at me, probably more frequently than any of the other colors.
What do I know about green M&Ms? They are glowing at me. This is not a favorite shade of green, though many things that I like, including M&Ms, come in this color.
It seems that I don’t know a lot about them. Yet.
One idea I have is to look around for things that are the color of orange and/or green M&Ms – surely those will also glow at me and will be Clews.
Mmmm to M&Ms, and to good things wrapped in protection. That is a good clue for me.
The first image in my head is of carrots batting at bits of Ludicrous Fear Popcorn.
Carrots stay fresh for a long time in storage, but not forever.
Carrots make me think of noses on cute things, like snowmen and bunnies. And can be turned into cute things, like flower-shaped garnishes. And two of the most enthusiastic reactions I ever received to my cooking were to the curried carrot sandwiches I improvised as a donation to my congregation’s raise-funds-for-summer-camp-scholarships table.
Carrots are good for the eyes, and skin.
… What would/might happen if I let myself believe that the fridge will contain enough food even if I don’t restock on carrots?
I am a capable and creative cook. I have experience in making substitutions and alterations when I don’t have the ingredient or amount specified in the recipe. In fact, I did that just tonight with the pot roast that’s in the crock pot, and I’ll be doing that with the ginger-chocolate mousse in a bit.
Things have a way of working out even when I don’t plan them out to tarnation. For instance, last night I ended up with two egg whites after cooking a fish recipe that called for two egg yolks. There happened to be two eggs left in the fridge. Today I bought more eggs, and then looked at the recipe for the mousse, and it called for four egg yolks and six egg whites. How fortunate is that?
Both yesterday and today I received intel about handling carrots. And I am remembering that Now Is Not Then, because Past Me would be weeping in frustration at the fungus and mystery rot and voracious rodents and the hella-hard, hella-long row to hoe and if I’m even in the right row with the right carrots. Whereas Present Me is enjoying the garden and the sunshine and reasonably confident of harvesting some carrots even if I eventually get blasted out by a tidal mob of popcorn-rabbit-demons.
I think that Popcorn Rabbit Demons is the name of my new band.
🙂
*bobbing head up and down to your new band’s tunes*
Hmmm! I am noticing that I do not want to let go of my role in _Cats_ (yep, proxy).
I love my role in Cats! Can’t it last for all time? “Now and forever at the Winter Garden Theatre!” That’s what the commercials always said.
And yet, things do end. All things end, I hear.
What do I know about my role in Cats?
I get to sing and dance and stretch and pose and be a cat. I get to feel special. I get to be noticed and appreciated. I have the companionship of other cats — or of other people being cats. We get to play together!
It’s a familiar role that I’ve been performing for years. Sure, once in a while I imagine being in some other musical, but this one is special! The costumes, the lights, the makeup, the effects…there’s nothing else like it.
What if I don’t *have* to let it go?
Or…what if, even if the show eventually closes, I can keep on singing, and preening, and being a cat?
Thank you for the stone. <3
*pebble*
Also I have only just realized that the tent that I am staying in for the next week is, in fact, a ROUND TENT.
Thank you Havi for this beautiful stone-skipping. <3 <3 <3
What do I know about carrots?
Homegrown carrots for me are joy + awe + inspiration + thankfulness for the beauty of the world.
The storebought ones I could not care less for.
More than once a carrot fresh from the ground has been the only thing that anchored me to safety in a storm-of-awful-feelings.
What do I know about carrots?
They grow very slowly. They require constant attention in their early weeks and a lot of patience. If not carefully weeded early, they stay small, thin, pale, never gain their round shoulders or sweetness. If they are loved from the start however, they become giant and beautiful and can soon shade out the weeds & care for themselves.
They smell earthy, sweet, refreshing, spicy, tantalizing.
They hold tightly to the ground. It seems to me they are deeply anchored and do not want to let go. To pull them up without breaking, I try to use a steady, strong hand. I grasp firmly by the shoulder, breathe in, imagine the unseen root extending deep into the earth. I pull gently against the carrot's resistance, straight upward, using the whole weight of my body, until finally the carrot gives in and releases the earth with a "pop".
I was eating a carrot from my garden at lunch today and had a strange experience. Suddenly I was viscerally aware that I was consuming another living being. The image of the carrot as it had been, with glowing orangeness, wholeness, vibrant foliage, would not leave my mind. I had to take several deep breaths and make peace with my act, life consuming other life, life causing death causing life again, before I was able to take another bite.
The thought of letting go of a carrot, leaving it on the ground for instance, is hard to think about. I want to savor the carrot, smell it, crunch it, taste it slowly. Or give it to someone else to enjoy. Maybe either of these is a different way of releasing.
Thank you!!! So much wise good loving intel for me here, and for so many people. And I agree about storebought carrots!
What do I know about these apples that I don’t want to let go of?
They are red and juicy, full of sugar. They are a bit much. Too many of them and too bright red. These apples are loud! They shout and hustle. They take up lots of space and they demand to be dealt with soon. They seem quiet but really they aren’t at all. There are far more of them than I need. A whole tree of apples.
They are very round and they smell seductive.
If I let go of them some people will be happy to have them. Other people might be scared by them and start hiding from me because they are frightened of so much abundance. Some of them can feed birds, others can go in the compost.
I can share the best ones because there are more than enough good ones for everyone. I can let go of the damaged ones, they won’t really be gone because they go in the compost.
They aren’t even a proxy 🙂 I really do have a tree full of ripe apples! But of course because of fractal flowers they are also a proxy 😉
Those are very useful things about apples! I can definitely see how they relate to [many things I don’t want to let go of]! It’s so true that people are frightened of an abundance, and also that I get frightened about people getting frightened when things are abundant, that is good to remember, thank you for the reminder that some can feed the birds too. And love to your (actual) tree!
A beautiful heart-shaped pebble and a quadrazillion sparklepoints. The glowing heart of safety in this post is resonating so strongly today with my own heart that I am leaking tears of happy and grateful.
<3
Wow! In your picture, that little blue and green guy, he lives at my house now! My name for him is George and he lives happily with my buttmonsters.
As for carrots … what I know about carrots is that they make my gut pixie unhappy and sick. There are so many different types of carrots (both actual carrots and proxy carrots and non-food carrots) and I’m still figuring out which ones my gut pixie doesn’t like. It feels really overwhelming sometimes. The pixie has been smiling at me more often lately though, so I think things are going well.
sparklepoints for me and for everyone!
What do I know about the thing I don’t want to let go of?
Rabbits.
(Perhaps the rabbits could eat the carrots?)
What do I know about rabbits?
They breed. And this is not so much because they have copious amounts of sex as it is because they have a mechanism whereby the release of the egg is triggered by sex, so they are very likely to get pregnant.
(All this talk of rabbits and eggs is making me think of the Easter Bunny. Apparently this was originally an Easter Hare. This is making me think of the joke where the bald man is told to paint rabbits on his head ‘because from a distance they look like hares’.)
There is that picture where there are three rabbits each with its head pointing towards the centre, so they share three ears between them.
I had a chocolate wabbit/for an Easter tweat/A lovely chocolate wabbit/sweet enough to eat/So I ate his ears on Sunday/I ate his nose on Monday/On Tuesday I nibbled at his feet/I ate his tail on Wednesday/Thursday I kept on/On Friday he was going/Saturday HE WAS GONE!/ O I loved that chocolate wabbit from the moment that he came/And if I get another one I’ll love him just the same.
Karen keeps rabbits. The current pair are called Smokey and Damson; the previous one was Panda. They live in a hutch in her kitchen and when she had a cat the cat was frightened of them, and wouldn’t be in the kitchen when they were let out to lollop around.
Rabbits lollop, and they have woffly noses.
Rabbit in the Winnie the Pooh books has many Friends and Relations.
Myxamotosis. (Ha, that reminds me of another terrible joke. So this man is in this café, right, and he’s very surprised to see a rabbit come in and order a cheese toastie. But the woman behind the counter acts like it’s no big deal, she serves the rabbit a cheese toastie, and he eats it and goes away again. Guy comes back the next day to see if the rabbit is there, and sure enough, he comes in, orders a ham and pickle toastie, eats it, and goes away again. The next day the same thing happens, except this time it’s a tuna melt. The day after that the rabbit comes in and looks at the toastie menu and says, ‘I’ll have a bit of everything.’ And the next day the man comes back, but the rabbit’s not there. So he says to the woman at the counter, ‘What happened to that rabbit that was there yesterday?’ ‘Oh,’ she says, ‘he died.’ ‘Really? What happened?’ And the woman says, ‘He was mixing my toasties.’)
Rabbits! A mild expression of annoyance.
Rabbits, or White Rabbits, an exclamation to be exclaimed on the first day of the month, and if it’s the first thing you say then you get post.
There is that scene in The Picts and the Martyrs where they have to skin, gut and cook a rabbit.
Rabbits are not native to Australia but were introduced for hunting purposes or maybe as a cheap foodstuff? Anyway, they multiplied like, well, rabbits, and now there is a rabbit-proof fence.
When my middle brother was born one of the cats brought my mother a rabbit as a present. It was received in the spirit in which she thought it was intended, but my mother doesn’t actually eat dead cat-slaughtered rabbits.
These are terribly gory stories! What else do I know?
Rabbits eat their own poo; they get ill if they don’t.
Rabbits have continuously growing teeth, and this is why they have to gnaw on stuff so much.
What about all the famous cartoon rabbits? Bugs Bunny! (This also brings us back to ‘Kill the wabbit! Kill the wabbit! Kill the wabbit!’ Except that Elmer Fudd regrets it, doesn’t he?)
I know a lot about rabbits for somebody who would have said that they’re not particularly interested in rabbits!
Hahahahahaha thank you for the laughs!
Especially about the bald man!
What do I know about the thing I don’t want to let go of?
The thing is not the job I just retired from. That door shut behind me and now I’m Living the Smile.
There are lots of things I don’t even want to examine to see whether or not I want to let them go.
One is anonymity. Now that I no longer have an employer to embarrass, I could add my picture to my postings, if I knew how.
My personal quality for this month is Deconstruction, which may involve paring the construction down to the load-bearing structure and the foundation. At least, it will involve removing the ugly add-ons, making it true to its current use, restoring it to beauty and repainting it in sparklepoints.
What do I Know –
1) I am not going to do it all at once.
2) I can do it peace-meal.
3) I can start when it is time.
4) I can study the blueprints AND simultaneously proceed intuitively.
5) No process is wrong. Doing it without a process is also not wrong. This involves fractal flowers.
6) I can use the Luscious Minimalism Handbook.
7) It may seem Hard, but it probably is Just Different.
8) I can make lists of reminders.
What do I know about the thing I don’ want to let go off?
This is not a piece of carrot cake so I am approaching it with the permission for silent retreat and for giving it a massive chunk of time, maybe in the end I will not want to let go of it but I will have found and explored transformation tools.
I am in the middle of a move WITHIN a move. (Like, I was leaving New York City to move to Faraway Point X, and now, due to Plot Twist, I am no longer going to Faraway Point X but to an Even Further Away Point Y, and have no idea what comes after!)
This is like transition to the transition-eth power. Hence, this question hits me like an explosion. (a non-violent, beautiful explosion, if that is possible)
One thing that people say to me about me is that I am Good at Letting Go. I do not agree with this, actually. But historically, I have let go of things with much greater frequency and dramatic flair than the average person, maybe. I have fewer problems changing countries, jobs, lovers, careers than a lot of other people I know. I SUPPOSE.
But the constant, which stays with me, which I have had a fantastically hard time letting go of, which I remain very attached to for some reason, is GUILT.
Guilt over the things I left behind, guilt over painful stories about What It Means, perception of loss, etc.
And I am laughing right now because it just struck me for the first time that Guilt is pronounced the same as GILT
And (it gets better!) according to dictionary.com, Gilt as a noun has, among others, the following two definitions:
1. the thin layer of gold or other material applied in gilding
2. a young female swine, especially one that has not produced a litter
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
The image of the girl-pig is so hilarious and PRETTY MUCH HOW I FEEL WHEN I FEEL GUILT/GILT, like a greedy little piggy who has not gone to Bolivia and just wants to bathe in the mud under the sun (I know Havi has written about the whole [piggy] metaphor before; the expression, to me right now, is mostly funny and lighthearted, like sure I can own this)
and the thin layer of gold definition is interesting to me because WHAT IS UNDER THE THIN GOLD FACADE? Maybe I am hoarding all the guilt/gilt because of its APPARENT VALUE to me (“feeling guilt is the sign of a Good and Conscientious Person, which you definitely want to be, so TAKE AND KEEP ALL OF THE GUILT”) without noticing that, underneath the surface coating, it’s actually just… like… heaviness without inherent value, which I do not need, which is weighing me down for no reason?
How about finding and hoarding actual gold (ie. things that inherently bring value and richness and beauty to my inner life) instead of things that are just covered in GILT/GUILT.
Hahhhhhhhhhh!!
Thank you for the skipping stone, Havi.
So much resonating, and gratitude for that.
I have a book launch coming up, and am performing my work. That’s all fine. I want to invite people, and want to talk directly to them in my performance, and the thought of these things generates a nauseous exhaustion in my body. I don’t want to let go of my cultural conditioning around being someone to other people in an attention-getting way. What do I know about this? It is very deep, determined, unconscious, and connected with shame. It is there to protect me. It is much looser now than it used to be. Doing the carefully chosen uncomfortable beloved thing and breathing through the feelings loosens it more. I know where and how I learnt it. I know some good answers to it, and some good replacement attitudes. I know letting go of something has to be done again and again and again and again, until finally it really does fall out of my hands. I know it is terrifying to work on this, and that any little bit is a victory, and that leaving this work till later is fine too, if that’s what I choose. Okay. This week I wish to enjoy sharing and promoting my creative work. (Even typing that accelerated my heart rate!)