Let Them Be: for N., who reminded me how to let go

Let them be,

he said—

and it rang through me

as revelation.

Let them be.

Not the muttering of defeat,

not resignation.

But presence.

A wide and steady presence

that bows to the reality of this moment.

Let them be in their timing,

in their tangle,

in their unfinished ache

and their unasked questions.

Let them be

in the part of the spiral they are walking now,

whether rising or falling

or circling still.

Let them be—

and stop trying to press

your own hands into the wet clay of someone else's becoming.

Let them be

means:

I honor your process.

I will not interfere

with your soul's arrangement.

I will not yank the fruit

from your vine before it is sweet.

And in this,

I let me be too.

Let me be exceptional in the ways that I am.

Let me walk with the sharpness I came here to carry.

Let me want what I want,

refine what I refine,

and not need you to want it too.

Let them be is a sacred posture.

A hand over the heart.

A gaze that softens without collapsing.

Even if their pain is sharp and flying.

Even if they cannot see me,

not really.

Even if they flinch

when I offer my truth.

I do not have to pick up what they throw.

I do not have to be the vessel that holds their confusion.

I can be a field—

quiet,

open,

full of sky.

Let them be

is the deepest kind of love.

The kind that says:

“I trust life to do what life does.”

It is a love that doesn't grasp.

That doesn't tug at timing.

That doesn't barter.

Let them be

in their sacred confusion.

Let them be

in their thorned unfolding.

Let them be

as they are,

until they are otherwise.

And let me be as I am,

until I am otherwise.

This is the great mercy.

This is the only way

we get to live

in reality

together.