Love is Letting Go

Love is Letting Go

“Love is letting go” I was told this by my own therapist recently and it sent profound shockwaves into my consciousness.

I recently lost my beloved Dog, Kaya. She was 14 years old and I had the gift of spending her whole life with her. Our connection was deep and profound. She was my teacher, my best friend and my beloved. She cared for me and I cared for her. The connection and understanding between us is the most profound I’ve known.

Over the past several years as she’s aged, I have felt the immense terror of losing her.

That day has finally come.

I’ve been asking myself which has been worse: the terror of loosing her or the pain of her loss.

Now that I’m on the other side of loosing her, I see that the terror of her loss held much suffering for me. A desperate kind of clinging. Clinging to something profoundly beautiful that made some sense of the chaos of life. Clinging to someone that helped me feel my love. Clinging to a beautiful creature that soothed my anxieties. These experiences of her qualities are the richness of life, while the holding-on-so-tight has held me in it’s frozen fear.

I really thought she was “my” dog.

However, since her passing, I’ve come to see that she’s not mine. She never was really mine. I couldn’t keep her. She doesn’t belong to me. She belongs to the universe, to the earth and now she’s gone back. We were only visiting. She’s gone home.

Possibly her last gift to me has been the experience of letting go. The experience of love inherent in the surrender. In letting something be as it is. In not demanding it be the way you want. In accepting life just as it is.

As the terror of loosing her is passing, along with the pain of her loss, I’m left with a heart so full up with love and peace. She is gone but the love is even stronger.

Love isn’t clinging to form. Love is letting go.