Letting go of my past – childhood, teen years – took me a long minute. It took longer than most. I didn’t know it at the time, but when I returned home in my late twenties, I was starting a long goodbye. It was a process that occurred instinctively; I did not plan or understand it. I was back in Short Hills, New Jersey, but this time as an adult. During this period, I consciously savored the experiences – with people, places, things – of my young life and all the “me’s” it engendered, not realizing at the time I was saying goodbye.

During those years I lived at home as an adult I felt a lot of shame. I wasn’t properly “launching” according the culture in which I was raised which was harsh about that sort of thing. If I saw someone I knew from High School, I tried to avoid them. What could I say? For one thing, my spiritual nature was growing and I felt less and less like I had much in common with them, plus I wasn’t doing the culturally acceptable thing. I feared I would be seen as pitiful and weird and that was too sad to bear.

But that was a small part of the experience of that time. After my Father moved out of what had been the family home, the chaos went with him and a deep peace remained. Shortly after I returned, my Mother’s life shifted, she moved to Manhattan and I basically had the house to myself. That was on the outer levels. What I was doing internally was relishing the aspects of my childhood for which I still hungered.

While I was living at home in Short Hills, I delighted in it, savoring every morsel, sometimes literally. The foods – so many divine foods – flowers, trees, familiar streets, walks, the palatial stone houses, luxurious stores, restaurants – all brimming with delicious meaning. I took 6-mile walks through the most verdant part of my gorgeous hometown. I walked by my elementary school each time, honoring those memories.

I watched my favorite old movies. I went to cool indie cinemas to see interesting new films. I took the train into Manhattan – so fun! – and made sure to soak in the stands of sunny forsythias smothered with blooms that crowded the small-town train station.

When I was invited to my Aunt Millie or Aunt Bobbie’s house, with their smooth wooden corners and exotic eastern rugs, I binged on the warmth. Secretly, quietly I inhaled this life.

After a period of time my soul announced, rather dramatically, that it was time to leave. When I moved to my new life – radically different and magnificent in its own right – it took time to fully release the residual memories of my past. There were many crying times.
What was ultimately being released in that long goodbye was a version of me. All the elements, moments, people-memories that populated that me. I cried because I missed how – in the best ways – they had made me feel. Yet I knew I would never go back.

Of course I went back to visit from time to time, but I knew the long, loving embrace I made with my past and the willingness to take the time, despite many pressures, had allowed me to let it go. When I left in 1992, I knew I was done with it. And – in all lovingness – I was.