We must let go of what we thought our life was going to look like to be able to get to the authentic joy of feeling our life for what it actually is in this very moment.
We don't like to hear this, "Let Go." ....We resist. We hold on tighter. I'm not in the business of telling you things you want to hear. I'm here to tell you what I have learned through my own personal experience. I'm here to write the words you might not want to hear but you very much might need.
Let go of the past to get to your future.
Let go of old dreams.
Let go of people who you know in your heart can't follow you into tomorrow.
Let go of old hopes and let go of the way you wanted your life to be.
Embrace the life you are living to get to the "new" you that will walk out of your yesterdays.
You don't need to be perfect. We didn't come to this earth to strive for perfection or full healing or no bumps in the road. Life is meant to be wild and messy and dark and light. Embrace it. Face it. No one ever healed and moved into tomorrow by running away.
Let go of who you were to step into who you are meant to become. Understand this will be hard. It will be painful. It won't look beautiful and you might feel lost and alone for a long time but you'll get there.......you'll get there.
I was a wedding florist/designer with my own small business for over 10 years when my first husband died by suicide. The day he took his life? He also took parts of mine. His suicide stole from me my love for placing beautiful flowers into the hands of hopeful brides. I now knew too much about pain and unfairness and death. I now knew that you could say, "I do" and hold those beautiful flowers and believe that he would never leave but he could leave....by train, suicide, car accident, cancer, or choice. I didn't want my reality to taint those flowers that I would place in another woman's hands. I just couldn't get myself to do it. I ran my hands over my floral shears and I wept. Over and over and over. It's unfair. I still feel like it's unfair. I lost apart of myself. I lost my business that I worked so, so hard to build. I lost something that was mine...something that was so unfair to have taken from me by another humans actions. And yet? That is life. Life is brutal and unfair a lot of the time....and then its beauty and laughter and hopeful dreams all of the other days.
I had to let go.
I had to accept.
I had to feel lost and unsure as I still do many, many days.
I had to meet who I am now and mourn who I was "before".
Let go.
We have to let go to start our new story.
We need to let go, grieve, mourn....wail and sob and punch our pillow and cry out how unfair it is and then we need to get up and go outside and choose what we will now do with the rest of our life, the rest of the love in our hearts, the rest of our endless human creativity and grit.
I haven't picked up a floral shears in years.
I never picked them up again because God was whispering to me....."Leave them be, dear child. Leave them be."
I never picked them up again because my purpose was no longer to gift others joy through flowers and creative design........my purpose is to pick others up through words. I string them together and tie them with a beautiful ribbon each day so that I can gift you my human experience. It might not resonate with you and that's ok. I gift it to you anyways because no one gifted me any sort of map when my life burned to the ground and so I hope for you to have tools to find your way that I didn't have.
Let go, dear child.
Grieve over the dreams you lost, the life or career you worked so hard for, and then step forward into your new day.
You will find your way.
God's got you.
You are loved, adored, and thought of each day.
I love you, friends. And I want you to know that I know you are wondering what I think of my new purpose.....I know that you are wondering.....would I go back if I could? And my answer is, "No." Why? Because I am not that woman anymore. I remember her....I can feel parts of her in my memories....and I love her but she's gone. I like who I am now. I love my life that I have built over the years. I don't long for those floral shears. I loved being a wedding florist.....but I love what I do now even more...I feel like what I do now really, really means something and will continue to mean something long after I am gone from this earth and that brings me a lot of peace. People would forget the flowers I placed into their hands but they will never forget the words that I wrote into their hearts.
I wake up each day and thank God for my life.
I wake up each day and I'm excited to find out how my purpose and my new dreams will lay out in the years to come. I like the "new" me. I buy her flowers often.
Love always, Nik Bonkoski
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