The Women on My Massage Table: What I Learned About Letting Go at 30, and Again at 53

When I was thirty, I was a massage therapist. And for a couple of years, I treated the same kind of 50 something woman. I didn't know it then, but I was looking at my future self.

Fifty-something. Menopausal. Frozen shoulder out of nowhere. Type A. A lot of them going through a divorce. Angry. Unhappy. Overwhelmed.

And oh, most of them had adrenal fatigue. Some had fibromyalgia. Some had MS, or pain no doctor could figure out the cause.

It was so weird how many of them were the same woman. Over and over.

And here's what's wild. Even at thirty, I noticed the letting-go piece. I could feel it under my hands. I would invite them to fully let go. Many of them just couldn’t do it.

I'm fifty-three now. And I think it's happening to me.

That's a strange thing to say out loud. It feels a little crazy to say it. But it's true.

They didn't know how to let go. So they were forced to let go.

Forced time off. Disability. A move. A divorce. And then something else would top it all off. A parent dies. A kid goes through something hard. All at once.

It was so painful to watch. I'd have my hands on a shoulder that would not release, and I could feel how letting go was a foreign concept, especially for women.

But here's what I also noticed. The ones who came through it best were the ones who actually surrendered.

And I mean really. Not a weekend retreat away. Not a reset. They let go for real.

It looked like giving up. People called them crazy. Said she's lost it, gone off the deep end. Some of them left. Moved. or some of them even changed their birth names. And they stopped caring what anyone thought.

Real letting go can look like falling apart from the outside.

The mystics had a name for it. The dark night of the soul. St. John of the Cross wrote about it five hundred years ago. His idea was that when the sun of your old life goes all the way down, and you can't see a thing, that's when you finally see the stars. They were always there. The busy daylight was just hiding them.

He put it another way. “Even though this holy night darkens the spirit, it does so only to light up everything.”

So here I am. Watching myself go through the thing I watched them go through. Feeling a little crazy. Stepping back. Letting it be dark.

And here's what surprised me. It's not all dark.

I have moments of real letting go. I know they're real because of the peace. This relaxation that comes over me. I'm writing again. I'm in my book in a way that feels right, not thinking about work or money or strategy. Just allowing the flow.

I gave up on making it all happen. And money still showed up. Just not the way I was hoping it would. It came when I stopped working so hard.

That's the thing about surrender. It feels like giving up right up until it feels like being held.

I couldn't have told you any of this at thirty.

I can tell you now. Because now I'm in it.

If your body's started sending you the bill, I have a free hypnotherapy to help your nervous system settle. Click here and I'll send it over.

With love, Brenda