Life changes have a way of exposing just how tightly we’ve been holding on to people, expectations, old stories, and a sense of control that was never really there in the first place. When everything around you starts to shift, the instinct is often to grip harder, to manage every detail, to make sure nothing falls apart. But somewhere along the way, that constant managing starts to feel heavier than the shifts themselves. That’s when you begin to realize: letting go of what you can’t control isn’t giving up; it’s choosing to finally live.

For a long time, I tried to think my way out of every uncomfortable feeling. If something went wrong, I replayed it in my mind, overanalyzing every word and moment, as if enough analysis could rewrite the past. If the future felt uncertain, I’d mentally run through every worst-case scenario, believing that if I anticipated every possible outcome, I could prevent it. All it really did was exhaust me. My mind was constantly in two places it couldn’t change: what already happened and what hadn’t happened yet. I was over feeling so mentally exhausted for years.

Letting go started small. It began with admitting that I am not responsible for everyone’s reactions, emotions, or choices. I can show up honestly and kindly, but I cannot control what people think of me, whether they stay, whether they understand my heart. That realization hurt at first. Control can feel like safety when you’ve been through trauma. But slowly, it turned into relief. When you stop trying to manage everyone else’s experience, you get your energy back for your own life.

There’s a quiet freedom in saying, “This is not mine to carry.” You can feel it in situations where you keep explaining yourself to someone who has already made up their mind. You can feel it in the urge to fix problems that were never yours to solve. You can feel it when you stay up late rehearsing conversations that may never happen. Letting go, in those moments, is choosing not to abandon yourself just to hold together something that’s already falling apart.

Trauma often wires you to stay hyper-alert, always scanning for danger, always bracing for impact. That makes it incredibly hard to trust life, to trust people, to trust yourself. But healing doesn’t mean forcing yourself to “just relax” or “move on.” It means slowly teaching your mind and body that you are allowed to rest, even when you don’t have all the answers yet. You start by giving yourself permission not to react to every thought and every fear as if it’s an emergency.

Part of letting go is accepting that some apologies will never come, some explanations will never arrive, and some endings will always feel unfinished. You may never fully understand why someone hurt you, why something happened the way it did, or why a certain season of your life was so hard. The closure you’re waiting for from others often becomes the closure you decide to give yourself: “I may never know why, but I know I deserve peace more than I deserve answers.”

Living more, for me, has meant redirecting my focus from what I can’t control to what I can. I can choose how I speak to myself when I make a mistake. I can choose to set a boundary instead of overextending myself. I can choose to follow a passion, even if no one else understands it yet. I can choose to be present in a moment of joy without apologizing for it or worrying about when it will end. These are small, powerful acts of reclaiming my life from the grip of fear and control.

There’s a tenderness in learning to loosen your grip. You might feel grief as you release certain expectations of who you thought you’d be by now, of how certain relationships “should” have turned out, of the version of your life you built in your head to survive the hard times. It’s okay to mourn those things. Letting go doesn’t mean they never mattered. It means you are choosing not to stay stuck in a life that only exists in your imagination, while the real, imperfect, beautiful one is unfolding in front of you.

Moving on isn’t a dramatic declaration; it’s often a series of quiet choices. It’s choosing not to text someone back when you know the conversation will only reopen old wounds. It’s choosing to leave a story in the past instead of bringing it into every new connection. It’s choosing to notice when your thoughts are spiraling and gently bringing yourself back to something simple and real: your breath, your surroundings, your next small step.

When you practice letting go of what you cannot control, you’re not abandoning your life you’re finally stepping into it. You’re making space for surprise, for joy that isn’t scheduled, for opportunities that don’t look like what you expected. You’re learning that you don’t have to micromanage every outcome to still end up somewhere good. In fact, sometimes the most beautiful chapters are the ones you never saw coming.

I’m still learning how to do this. I still catch myself trying to hold too tightly to old stories and imagined futures. But each time I remember to soften, to release, to say, “This part is not up to me,” I feel a little lighter. And in that lightness, there’s room; room to pursue passions that feel true, room to make choices that honor who I am now, room to actually enjoy the life I’m rebuilding.

In the end, letting go of what you cannot control is an act of trust: in yourself, trust in your resilience, and trust that your life can be bigger than your pain. You don’t have to forget your past to move forward. You just have to stop letting it be the only lens through which you see your future. You can thank it for what it taught you, set it down, and walk on—with open hands and a heart that is learning, day by day, to live more fully.

That is my goal right now to live more.