Saying goodbye.  I have said goodbye a million different times.  The casual, non committal. The heart wrenching.  The hurried. The final. Sometimes the goodbye is new and comes too quickly.  Other times it drags on over time in the form of a million letting go goodbyes. Today I said goodbye to my loved ones as I made my way to the airport for my new adventure.  Truly the whole month of August has been a series of surprise and planned goodbyes.

I had planned a trip to WA to see my family.  That was a clearly defined trip of goodbyes. Stay at mom’s house, tearful goodbye. Stay at brother’s, another goodbye.  Tia, Tio, cousins, friends…Goodbye.  It was planned, it was lovely, it filled me with a deep sense of belonging and connection to my home.  The beautiful part of saying these goodbyes is that I know I will return to these people and this place, as I always do, when my homing beacon lights up. I don’t take this for granted, but it’s a goodbye I have repeated with these people in this place since I was 18. I know this goodbye. 

I also took a trip to Wyoming to visit my Father’s family. A place that was my home but I don’t remember well.  People who are my family but I needed to reconnect with. My Father died when I was 5.  Wyoming was my last home with him. This was a surprise goodbye, a second goodbye after the Final goodbye 45 years ago.  Does a 5 year old even truly understand that kind of goodbye?  This is a goodbye that I have had to recreate through family memories, personal moments and that one hypnotherapy session that finally integrated my 5 year old and 45 year old goodbyes. The depth of grief and joy from this (I lost count on how many goodbyes I have said to my Father) goodbye, the stories and pictures, witnessing the decades of grief this family still carries…this was a new goodbye. The kind that opened up parts of my heart I didn’t know were closed and quiet still licking their wounds. It was a much needed beautiful goodbye that ultimately made me feel closer to my family and father.

There was the painful email from an old love that freed me to say a healthy boundary goodbye. The goodbye that recognizes how well meaning ties of forgiveness and friendship can actually keep us open to old wounding. This is the goodbye that loosens the breath that has been held too long and lightens the soul.

As divine orchestration and timing would have it I had the opportunity to form a new connection. This goodbye was one that matched all the best parts of a new crush.  Tender, longing, exciting, too new for declarations yet a tug of the heart strong enough to produce some tears goodbye. The goodbye that comes too quick and you want to drag it out over as many minutes and seconds as possible sucking the nectar out of every last shared sweet moment.

There was the ugly crying mom goodbye to a son who brought her flowers and “dressed up for you”.  This goodbye aches on a cellular level.  Distance and time between me and my boy causing actual chemical distress responses.  This was a new goodbye. The surprise of this goodbye was that I was no longer saying bye to a child but a young man growing in his independence and wholeheartedly supporting his mom.  This goodbye tore my heart open in the way that is needed to create expansion and growth.  Those times when you think you could not possibly love someone more and then, expansion, pain, light, and more love.

The goodbye send off from friends who have seen you through your biggest life transformations.  These goodbyes were a reminder of deep roots sinking into the earth holding me wherever I go. The kind that are filled with laughter and sweetness and tears and group chats and insisting on syncing phone locations so they can find me anywhere. The goodbye that steadies the heart because you know you are held and can be even braver and bolder on new adventures.

Finally, the goodbye that I really didn’t expect but that caused a strange swelling of the heart and a slight panic at my independence, was saying goodbye to my Subaru.  I am very American in my attachment to my vehicle.  It is my source of independence and get away, travel and adventure, commute for the money and just generally take me anywhere I damn please, which I deeply adore and value. I didn’t expect this goodbye.  It’s not even gone forever, just parked at my cousins.  Yet it was a goodbye that needed to be said.  

The month of goodbyes is officially over and I am now favoring more hello’s, or currently “Selamat pagi”. I look forward to all that awaits on my adventure and I know that most of those goodbyes will be beautiful reunions of hello in the future.  I am truly blessed to have all the goodbye’s and hello’s because it means that I am living and loving and making connections wherever I am.