This time of  year always makes me think of letting go.  Letting go of the gorgeous summer weather; the wonderful months of not having to set an alarm; the fun summer activities with my boys.  I’m always sad every year when the boys go back to school and the leaves start to turn.  This was brought home yesterday when I was dropping my youngest off at school.  As I was leaving, another mother was dropping off her girls.  As they walked toward the building, her youngest daughter burst into tears and refused to go in to the school.  The mother was dressed in scrubs, so I’m sure she was on her way to work, but she stopped with her girl outside of the building and just hugged her.  It brought tears to my eyes and my mother’s heart ached for them.  It was another reminder that life is a series of letting go.  When the letting go involves our children, it is especially bittersweet.  I used to shy away from grief in my moments of letting go.   Let’s face it, grief is not the most pleasant thing to embrace.  I think fear and grief are two things that people often do their best to bury or deny.  They get a pretty bad rap.  The way I look at grief has changed though in the past couple of years.  It is not just some terrible feeling that needs to be shoved down and avoided at all costs.   I am learning to become friends with grief and to embrace it in those moments of letting go when it pays a visit.  When I didn’t allow myself to grieve, I hung on to all the sorrows of letting go.  Soon I was carrying around this huge bag of loss and sorrow, and it was heavy.  One of the most freeing times in my life was when I finally embraced grief and let it do its job on me.  It’s o.k. to feel the loss of letting go.