Moving On

What does it mean to move on? When someone you love dies, there are always those who will feel you have grieved long enough, & will tell you it's time for you to move on (for the record, people should be able to move on from their grief when they are ready...not when someone says they should). Then there are those whose relationships have ended, & in order to find peace, they must learn to move on. What about those who have hurt you? Would it not be easier to feed the grudge you have against them, instead of letting them "get away with it" by ignoring them or choosing to not dwell on what they did?

Throughout the years, I have moved on a lot. I've moved on to different homes, different relationships, different jobs, & different attitudes. I actually like where I've moved on to at this moment in time.

It's weird to me how getting older is both unpleasant due to the aging process, yet awesome due to the things I have been learning about life & about myself.  

Leaving behind a very dysfunctional marriage & a skewed way of viewing the world was good for me. Moving on from a subsequent rebound relationship was also healing, because that relationship taught me that I had worth. I had somehow forgotten that while I was married the first time. The rebound relationship didn't last, but it taught me a few things about myself & others.

Moving on & getting married again was the best thing I could have done. I love my husband with all my heart. He's a good man & he loves me too. I am blessed. Because of my past relationships, I have learned some things about myself to make me a better wife than I was the first time around, although I'm still a work in progress. Though I have moved on from that first marriage, I am still haunted now & then by little things that trigger unpleasant reactions in me. That's the part of moving on that takes a little longer. As long as I'm still moving forward & not backward, it's a good thing.

I guess I felt the need to write this post because moving on is not always easy for people. It hasn't always been easy for me. Maybe others can relate. Sometimes it feels better to hang on to the hurts, to the past, to the wrongs done to us....because by hanging on to them, we don't have to deal with them & understand them, in order to let them go & move on. Moving on is necessary for our own peace & joy in life, but it isn't always easy. 

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It can be hard to confront the emotions we have been so used to feeling, instead of just letting go of them & "yielding the victory" to our past...to the ones who hurt us. But it's the best thing we can do for our sanity & emotional well-being. When we do this, we're not really giving victory to those who've hurt us. Instead, we're enjoying the victorious freedom that comes from letting go of the heavy baggage we've been lugging around.

For me, there have been people in my life who have hurt me, betrayed my trust, disappointed me, judged me, let me down, behaved in cruel ways towards me, gossiped about me...& so on. I'm sure most people can say the same thing. I have experienced loss...& trauma. I've had my share of pain.

But do you know what?

I have overcome all that. I don't dwell on those things because my life has been more good than bad. I choose to focus on the good. I have decided that I am nobody's victim. I don't need to try to please others, because no matter how hard I try, I will surely disappoint someone. While I still do try to please, I have learned that the best thing I can do is to just be the best that I can be, & to accept myself, whether or not others accept me.

I have sometimes had trouble "letting go", when there has been an injustice done to me. I mean, I may have forgiven the person & even moved on, but moving on & letting go are not always the same thing. Moving on, for me anyway, means that I have put whatever it is behind me & am moving forward instead of spinning my wheels in the same spot.

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When you remain in the same spot, you don't move forward. You get stuck. But sometimes you can move forward while still carrying unnecessary stuff with you. That's the part that can be hard  -- the "letting go" aspect of things.

I was reminded a few days ago, by a couple of people near & dear to me, that I need to "let go". Then as they were telling me this, it hit me that although I have moved on, I hadn't "let go". I realized that the reason I hadn't done so was because I had this need to feel vindicated... or to have others know my perspective of a situation where I had been wronged, & until I knew that those people actually understood where I was coming from, & that they had the whole picture of that situation instead of just part of it, I couldn't "let go".

Once it hit me that I had been holding on while I was moving on, I was able to see what I was doing, the way that others saw it. I was finally able to "let it all go" & leave it behind, where it belongs. 

So as we try to move forward in our lives, we may need to take a personal inventory now & again, & see if there is anything that we are having trouble "letting go" of, that is keeping us from truly moving on. Why carry icky things with us through life, when they're icky? I mean when you think of it that way, it makes sense, right?

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So from here on out, moving on for me will mean....

Forgiving those who have hurt me...
Letting go of the icky things that keep me spinning my wheels in the same icky place, and
Moving forward & leaving the past behind me by learning from it & then truly moving on.

 **Have an opinion about this post? I would truly appreciate your feedback in the comment section below, or in the confidential feedback form on this page.**