What do you need to let go?

on murdering your darlings and other goodbyes

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Dear Darlings,

Kia ora koutou (hi hi hi everyone!) I hope you are well and surrounded in love.

Sharing a few beauties

In my small patch of the world, it is getting colder and rainier. My daughter took a picture of Maxfield Parrish clouds last night:

And this morning the trees were held in mist:

Mary Oliver’s ‘Summer Day’ poem is of course famous for the ‘one wild and precious life’ line;

but in that same poem, the part that doubles my heart size is her description of the grasshopper,

‘who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down’

Can you imagine? Feeding a grasshopper a chunk of sugar, sitting the grass in stillness, tuning so softly to the movement of her jaw?

What a depth and quality of attention to absorb this nuance.
What a quiet space she must have made for herself, for her poetry, for her soul.
May we all make a moment of such peace.

What about you?

What small beauties have you enjoyed recently?

What is bringing you joy?

(please reply if you’d like, let’s chat)

---

What do you need to let go?

I could feel myself drifting this month. Flitting from baseless fears to frenzied over-action. It all felt familiar and pointless. So I met with my coach, Mara Bear Vernon. She asked me, what do you need to let go?¹

Before I answer that question, I’ll tell you I have also been ‘murdering my darlings’, practicing Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch’s editing advice from 1916.

I am editing what I hope to be my next book. The first messy 100 pages are piled in a heap and now I am sifting through each sentence and word, picking, deleting, shining, enjoying. I am deleting things I think are useless, ugly, or gorgeous but unhelpful. I hope you don’t mind if I add them to the list of things I need to let go.

Things I need to let go

• the belief that there is one right way to do this

• the idea that my successes were only unearned tricks or sleights of hand

• this lovely line that might be just a bit too pretty: Smoothing the moment to soothe a skittish animal.

• this wordy explanation that doesn’t fit the story I’m telling

  “My general belief, buffered by lots of science, is that there are a few skills we can practice to build mental health:

  •   Emotional awareness and openness

  •   Clarity about what we can control and what we can’t 

  •   Direction and meaningful persistence to change what we can

  •   Flexibility to evolve to the changing circumstances of life

  That means that the opposite skills are the key themes of so much unnecessary human suffering and mental illness:

  rigid unyielding thoughts or perspectives, closed or avoidant of emotional experience, an unwieldy exaggerated sense of self or what you can control, and inflexible, static strategies to bend the world to one’s will.

  What could you let go? What would serve you?

Finally, further reading if you’d like

• Clare Keegan’s work is the expert example of spare breath-taking writing. I recommend you start with Foster but they’ll all break your heart.

• “How we choose and what we choose make a difference in what we become and in what the world becomes.” - SAINT BONAVENTURE

• My favorite poem:

Late Fragment by Raymond Carver

And did you get what
you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth.

From me to you - I send you clouds draped in gold, mist holding you close, a reminder you are beloved,

that all, all of us, are beloved on the earth.

Love, Kerry

1. she asked me so many insanely useful questions but there is not time or space so let’s focus on just this one