The Shape of Letting Go

When we said farewell after the Growing Through Loss webinar, we knew the conversation wouldn’t end when the call did. Some questions don’t close; they move underground. They compost. They turn into roots.

Since that gathering, both of us have been sitting in our own layers of letting go — some chosen, some not. The shifting of projects, pace, expectations; the quiet absences that open space for something unnamed. It’s a season that keeps teaching us how loss and life live side by side.

Last week, we met to see what the stillness and space in between had revealed.

“I’m learning that letting go doesn’t always mean release,” Val said. “Sometimes it just means holding differently — not with fists or open palms, but with cupped hands.”

Alis mused,

“It’s seasonal, right? The loss isn’t an end; it’s the compost. Everything that’s breaking down is also feeding the roots.”

Letting go doesn’t mean we stop caring. It means we trust that care can take a different shape — softer, slower, quieter. The roots still hold. The hands are still open.

We keep discovering that Growing Humans is really about this: learning to stay present in the tension between what’s leaving and what’s being born.

And the work isn’t just out there — in projects, communities, or the children we’re raising. It’s in here. What is leaving and what is being born is happening within us, too, as we grow ourselves.

“I once thought I was only the gardener,” Val said. “But I’m also the soil — what’s being turned, broken open, and made ready for what comes next.”

There was a long pause, the kind that softens the air between words. Our eyes found the divination card Alis had pulled at the beginning of our call.

An Almanac of Birds: 100 Divinations for Uncertain Days, The Marginalian

“We’re each other’s reminders,” Alis said.

“When I forget who I am,” Val replied, “you say it back to me.”

That is the shape of letting go — not disappearance, but return.

The way we hold one another like this — with curiosity, truth-telling, and grace — is something we learned from those who showed us how to be.

As we return to this conversation now, we do so in a season touched by loss. One of our beloved friends and mentors, Bill Torbert, whose work and way shaped much of what lives beneath Growing Humans, has just passed. This reflection feels, in its own small way, like a living tribute — to what he taught about inquiry, courage, and becoming together.

So we keep tending: noticing, naming, remembering.

Loss becomes soil.

Friendship becomes practice.

And the practice, always, is becoming human — again and again.

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An Invitation

What are you releasing this season?

What still wants your tending?

You might begin simply:

What I’m letting go of is…

What still holds me is…

We’ll be sitting with these, too — listening for what grows in the quiet after.

With care,

Val + Alis

If you missed “Growing Through Loss,” you can revisit the conversation and the questions that continue to guide us.

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