Move On and Remember

Moving on is not about forgetting, is not about denying the memory. Moving on is about having gratitude for what has impacted your heart {your life} without forcing yourself to dismiss your experience or vilify it. Moving on is about folding the memory into yourself — letting it remind you that you fought for something, that you tried, that you felt.

Moving on often means doing our best to forget something that was highly impactful to us. A relationship, a job, a home, a community we were a part of…something was loved and then lost, and we are left trying to figure out who we are now as we grapple with the effects of a swift exit from our lives.

It takes an insane amount of effort to edit out our deepest experiences, so another tactic we try is to downplay the effects they had on us. We tell ourselves, “it didn’t matter that much anyway. I didn’t try my hardest, didn’t love my best, didn’t show up like I could’ve.” Mostly lies, of course, but it’s what we tell ourselves to gain distance from the raw edges that have been so unceremoniously exposed. We want to stop the bleeding so we throw a box of Wonderwoman bandaids at the mess and walk away, willing ourselves, cruel with ourselves, not to look back, as a single, hot tear sneaks its way down our clammy cheek.

What if, instead of dismissing or denying those things we need to move on from because of timing…