The art of letting go: A practical guide to moving on

So I did. It is a bit long, but stay with me.

My balcony and the hardest goodbye

The winter air was sharp enough to cut through thoughts. The tea had gone cold. I wasn’t crying. I wasn’t angry. I was just standing there, finally realising she was gone. Not dead. Not far. Just gone from the version of me she once belonged to.

Three years. Too many memories. Late-night drives, calls, shared playlists, inside jokes that still sneaks a smile out of me when I’m alone… and now—nothing.

Maybe it began to end when she said, “I need a break from us,” and I heard, I need someone else. Or maybe it was the night I deleted her photos, not because I hated her, but because looking at them felt like pressing on an open wound.

I wanted to keep her. In my phone, in my stories, in the idea of my future. But love doesn’t work like that. People don’t stay because we love them hard enough. They stay because they want to. And she didn’t.

So I did the only thing left. I whispered, “It’s okay.” Not to her, but to whatever part of me still waited for her to come back. And those two words — silent, tired, honest — was the beginning of moving on.

This isn’t a story. It’s a map. Moving on isn’t forgetting. It’s growing beyond all that hurts you.

Name the grief (don’t bury it!)

We treat grief like an inconvenience — something to rush through. But grief doesn’t go away because you ignore it. It just hides until a song or a scent or a stranger’s laugh drags it back to the surface.

So name it. Call it what it is. Don’t dress it up or run from it.

I once wrote her a letter I never sent. Fourteen pages. Anger, love, confusion, gratitude. Then I burned it. Watched the smoke twist and vanish, carrying away what I couldn’t say out loud.

When you name your pain, it starts to make sense. The brain works through storytelling; it needs a beginning and an end. Saying “She left. It hurts. I miss her laugh” turns chaos into something you can hold.

Grief is not a weakness. It’s proof you cared deeply enough for something to matter. Feel it. Name it. Then, when you’re ready, let it rest.

Stop the dopamine loop (break the addiction)

Love messes with the brain. Every message, every photo, every old memory hits the same reward centre that fuels addiction. You start chasing the ghost of a person who’s no longer there.

That’s why you scroll. Re-read. Replay. Not because you want to, but because your brain wants another tiny dose of what it used to feel like.

So stop feeding it. Archive the chats. Or delete it, if you have the guts. Hide the playlist. Fold the T-shirt that still smells like them and donate it.

At first, it feels cruel — like erasing history. And memory. But it’s not erasure; it’s detox. You’re not deleting them. You’re unhooking yourself from the chemical loop that keeps you stuck.

You can’t heal while you’re still high on the past.

Grief is not a weakness. (Source: Freepik)

Practise upekkha (equanimity, not indifference)

There’s a word in Pali — upekkha. It means equanimity, the balance of heart and mind. Not coldness. Not indifference. Balance.

When a memory hits, don’t fight it. Don’t drown in it either. Just let it pass through you. Every time her name wandered into my mind, I’d say, “Hello, old friend. You can go now.”

I thought it was detachment, but it was more than that. It was kindness — to myself.

You can care deeply and still not crumble. That’s what upekkha teaches you. It’s not “I don’t care.” It’s “I care, and I’ll still be fine.”

Shatter the mirror (Nietzsche’s chaos)

Heartbreak breaks your reflection. For a while, you don’t know who you are without them. This is a very tricky space to be in. For a long time, a significant part of your identity was intertwined with theirs. Not in a negative way, but they, too, made you who you are.

Friedrich Nietzsche wrote, “One must still have chaos in oneself to give birth to a dancing star.” I think that’s what heartbreak does — it hands you the chaos. What you do with it decides what kind of star you’ll become.

When I moved on from her, I picked up the shards. I moved cities, started a business, took on a new job, and even cooked her favourite dishes, but for me.

Every small act of creation stitched a bit of me back together. That’s the thing about chaos — it’s not destruction if you build with it. That is why they say, “Take your broken heart and make it art.”

Don’t be afraid of breaking. Be afraid of never rebuilding.

Integrate the shadow (Jung’s individuation)

Every relationship holds up a mirror, showing you the parts of yourself you’d rather not see — the shadow, as Carl Jung called it.

The question isn’t “Why did this happen to me?” It’s “What did I learn about myself because of it?”

She taught me patience and vulnerability. She taught me that I could love without losing who I was.

When the relationship ended, the lessons didn’t. That’s the miracle of pain: it leaves behind wisdom disguised as a wound.

The love wasn’t wasted. It changed you. It made you more awake. More you.

Say the holy words

There’s no perfect closure. But you can make your own.

Go somewhere still. Take a deep breath. And say it aloud: “Thank you. And goodbye.”

I said it on my balcony, the same one where the tea went cold. The sky didn’t react. Nothing dramatic happened. But something inside me eased — a soft untying of the knot I’d been carrying.

Closure doesn’t arrive in a message. It happens when you choose peace over replay.

These words — thank you, goodbye — are holy not because they sound wise, but because they release you.

Build the temple

And then, you build.

Take what’s left — the ashes, the ache, the lessons — and build something from it. A story. A habit. A life.

This column is a part of my temple. My voice. My still-beating heart.

Turn the pain into something alive. Let it teach you softness instead of bitterness. Let the silence turn into song.

You’re not losing them. You’re finding you. And that’s the love story that lasts.

You don’t move on from people. You move through them — into the next version of yourself.

The scar becomes a star. The goodbye becomes a beginning. The silence becomes a song.

Hope this helps.