This is what I thought.

This is what I thought standing here. That I often hold onto the past. It's true that I find it difficult to let things go. Constantly struggling to understand and find answers in the things that have happened. Hanging on to them like trophies.

A couple of years ago I discovered something that broke my heart clean in two. It brought great unhappiness and uncertainty into my family. I patched myself up, but allowed myself to be defined by it. Letting go is not easy. How do you let go knowing that you will never revisit it? Knowing that you will never hurl that past all packaged up at someone again in anger? That you don't still carry it like some enormous burden on your back, that unattractive chip on the shoulder for all to see?


Standing here this is what I thought. The defining moment is not what happened or when it happened but when I choose to let it go. That is the moment that will define me and say the most about me. That is when I will be free of it. Liberated. It may sound obvious to you as you read this, but until you know it, really know it, it is not obvious at all. It has been a long time coming and today I feel it is possible, within reach.


So that is what happened today to me on the beach where we flew the kite and shouted at each other above the wind and found a bleached white wishbone from a dead gull and met some friends as we were leaving to return home to eat sandwiches, make tea and put on dry socks.