There comes a moment when carrying the story no longer feels necessary.
Not because it was insignificant. Not because it did not shape you. But because you have taken from it what you needed, and continuing to hold it begins to feel heavier than releasing it.
That moment cannot be forced.
It does not arrive through resolution or explanation. It arrives through a subtle internal shift where the story loosens its grip on your nervous system. Where you realise you are no longer bracing against it. No longer rehearsing it. No longer needing it to make sense of who you are.
For a long time, this story lived close to me.
It surfaced in quiet moments. In reactions that surprised me. In the way my body responded before my mind had words. I did not always realise I was carrying it, only that something inside me stayed alert long after the chapter had ended.
What changed was not forgetting.
It was permission.
Permission to stop asking myself whether it should have been different. Permission to stop wondering what I might have done to alter the outcome. Permission to stop measuring my healing by how unaffected I appeared.
I realised that holding the story had once been protective. It helped me make sense of what I experienced. It helped me name patterns. It helped me trust myself again.
But eventually, it no longer needed to be held so tightly.
There is a difference between honouring a story and living inside it.
Honouring means acknowledging what it cost you and what it taught you. Living inside it means carrying its weight forward even when it no longer serves your present.
Letting go does not mean excusing what happened. It does not mean minimising harm or rewriting the past into something more palatable. It means allowing yourself to exist beyond the chapter that demanded so much of you.
That is a quiet kind of freedom.
I noticed it in small ways. The story no longer rose automatically when I rested. My body softened where it used to brace. My thoughts moved forward without pulling the past along with them.
Nothing dramatic marked that shift, just space.
Space to be here rather than there. Space to respond rather than react. Space to carry what mattered and leave behind what no longer needed my energy.
If you have followed this series and felt yourself reflected somewhere within it, I want you to hear this gently.
You do not need to do anything with what you recognised.
You do not need to act on it, explain it, or resolve it immediately.
Sometimes recognition is the work.
Sometimes naming something quietly is enough to loosen its hold.
And sometimes the most compassionate thing you can offer yourself is permission to put the story down, not because it was small, but because you have grown beyond needing to carry it.
That is not avoidance.
It is integration.
And when you are ready, it makes room for whatever comes next to arrive without being shaped by what came before.
Copyright © 2026 Lynette Diehm.
All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced without written permission of the author.
