I was helping my daughter up the stairs the other day when I noticed that she was having more trouble than usual.\u00a0 She was using the stair rail to pull herself up onto each step, but she wouldn\u2019t let go once she got there.<\/p>\n
I tried gently to explain to her that she would do much better if she let go of the rail behind her so that she could grab hold of the rail in front of her.\u00a0 As any toddler would do, she ignored me and kept up with her laborious task.<\/p>\n
It got me thinking, though.\u00a0 How often do we have trouble moving forward because we won\u2019t let go of something behind us?<\/p>\n
One of the hardest things for me to let go of is anger.\u00a0 I don\u2019t get angry very often, but when I do you\u2019d better watch out.\u00a0 I was angry with a friend of mine from high school.\u00a0 We got into a fight in 2001 and didn\u2019t speak to each other for years.<\/p>\n
He found me on Facebook in February.\u00a0 When I saw his message, I freaked out. \u00a0I had lived in three different states and gotten married since then.\u00a0 Questions littered my mind.\u00a0 How did he find me?\u00a0 Why did he want to talk with me? Should I write back?\u00a0 Should I \u201cbefriend\u201d him on Facebook?\u00a0 Should I ignore him? What would my husband say?<\/p>\n
I was too scatterbrained to answer any of these questions myself, so I asked my husband and a few others what they thought.\u00a0 They all said the same thing: we both have probably grown up enough over the past nine years to have a conversation as adults.\u00a0 If not, I could always go back to ignoring him.<\/p>\n
So I took a chance.\u00a0 I messaged him back without befriending him asking why and how he found me.\u00a0 Turns out he had come across my name while searching an old high school network.\u00a0 Then he said something that stuns me, even today.<\/p>\n
He said he was sorry.<\/p>\n
I couldn\u2019t believe it.\u00a0 After nearly a decade, all he wanted was to apologize.<\/p>\n
As I read his apology, I realized that I had been holding on to bitterness, anger and resentment towards him my entire adult life.\u00a0 I never wanted to be that kind of person, but there I was, bitter and resentful towards a friend who just wanted a little forgiveness.<\/p>\n
It took me a few weeks, but I finally let go of all that anger.\u00a0 In return, I\u2019ve discovered a new friendship.<\/p>\n
I guess my daughter\u2019s not the only one who had to learn how to let go.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I was helping my daughter up the stairs the other day when I noticed that she was having more trouble than usual.\u00a0 She was using the stair rail to pull herself up onto each step, but she wouldn\u2019t let go once she got there. I tried gently to explain to her that she would do […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3],"tags":[712,714,1976,713],"class_list":["post-2919","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tartan-news","tag-anger","tag-letting-go","tag-meagan-ewton","tag-moving-forward"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5s3vR-L5","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2919","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2919"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2919\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2964,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2919\/revisions\/2964"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2919"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2919"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2919"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}