I ran my fingers through my hair for the hundredth time that week, feeling the familiar tangle of ends that had grown increasingly stringy and lifeless.
It was long—longer than it had been in years—but somewhere along the way, length had become my only measure of its worth. I couldn’t bring myself to cut it.
Instead, I did what many of us do when we’re not ready to let go: I found a way to hide the problem. Long braids seemed like the perfect solution, since my angel-baby girls wanted mama to have ‘braids like us.’
For eight weeks, I didn’t have to confront the reality of what my hair had become. The braids looked neat, intentional even. I actually loved them so much that my plan was to take them out, let my hair “rest” awhile, and then get them right back in.
When I finally took the braids out, the truth was undeniable. My hair wasn’t just stringy anymore—it was damaged, brittle, worse than before. The very thing I thought would preserve what I was trying to save had only hastened its decline. There was nothing left to do but reach for the scissors and cut away three to four inches of what I’d been so desperately trying to keep.
The relief was immediate. Not just physical—though my head certainly felt lighter—but emotional. I felt like myself again, unburdened by the weight of something that had been dragging me down for months.
The Weight of What We Keep: A Reflection on Letting Go
This small act of letting go made me think about all the other ways we hold onto things that no longer serve us.
How often do we cling to relationships that have run their course, jobs that drain our spirits and impact our families, or habits that once brought us joy but now feel like obligations?
How many times do we, like me with my braids, find elaborate ways to avoid facing what we already know needs to change? Put that placeholder in to mask what really should go.
There’s something profoundly human about our resistance to letting go.
Perhaps it’s rooted in our evolutionary need to conserve resources—after all, for most of human history, scarcity was the norm.
Maybe it’s the sunk cost fallacy playing out in our daily lives, whispering that we’ve already invested too much to walk away now.
Or perhaps it’s simply fear: fear of change, fear of loss, fear of discovering who we are without the things we’ve used to define ourselves.
The Stories We Tell Ourselves
We’re remarkably creative when it comes to justifying why we should keep what no longer fits.
With my hair, I told myself it just had to be long, ignoring the fact that length without health is just… length. I convinced myself that cutting it would be giving up, that I just needed to try harder to make it work.
Don’t we do this everywhere? We stay in jobs that make us miserable because they’re “good on paper.” And hold onto friendships that have become one-sided because of shared history. We keep clothes that haven’t fit in years because they represent who we used to be or hope to become again. We maintain routines and commitments that once brought meaning but now feel hollow.
I’m not simply rhetorically asking these questions, either. The last few months I’ve sat with myself, truly thinking about them.
The stories we tell ourselves are seductive: “If I just try harder,” “Things will get better,” “I can make this work.”
Sometimes these stories serve us—persistence has its place. But sometimes they become prisons, keeping us tethered to versions of ourselves and our lives that we’ve already outgrown.
The Hidden Cost of Holding On
What struck me most about my hair journey wasn’t just the relief I felt after cutting it, but the realization of how much energy I’d been spending on something that was actively working against me.
Every day, I’d spend extra time trying to style lifeless strands, feeling frustrated when they wouldn’t cooperate.
This is the hidden cost of holding onto what no longer serves us—not just the obvious ways it limits us, but the subtle drain on our energy, attention, and joy.
These things don’t just take up space; they take up mental real estate, creating a background hum of dissatisfaction that can make everything else feel a little bit harder.
The Wisdom in Release
There’s an ancient wisdom in the act of letting go, one that many spiritual traditions have recognized for millennia.
The Buddhist concept of non-attachment isn’t about not caring—it’s about holding things lightly, allowing them to come and go as they naturally do.
The Japanese philosophy of mono no aware finds beauty in the transient nature of things, suggesting that their impermanence is precisely what makes them precious.
And, mostly for me personally, in Christianity through Ecclesiastes 3:11 we believe that “Everything is beautiful in its time.”
When I finally cut my hair, I wasn’t losing something—I was making space.
Space for new growth, for health, for a version of myself that wasn’t weighed down by what I thought I should want to keep.
Learning to Let Go
If you’re reading this and recognizing yourself in these words, take heart. Learning to let go is a practice, not a one-time decision. It starts with honest assessment—asking ourselves not whether something once served us, but whether it serves us now. It requires courage to act on what we discover, even when it means disappointing others or facing uncertainty.
Sometimes letting go is dramatic—the big breakup, the career change, the cross-country move.
But more often, it’s small acts of release: decluttering a drawer, ending a conversation that’s going nowhere, saying no to commitments that don’t align with who you’re becoming.
My hair will grow back. It always does. But next time, I hope I’ll remember the lightness I felt when I finally let go of what wasn’t working, the space that opened up for something healthier to take its place.
Sometimes freedom is just one decision away—the decision to stop carrying what was never meant to be ours to keep forever.
p.s. Because the locks are light, fresh, and healthy, I will absolutely put the braids back in later this year. And when they come out? Another session of cutting away that which holds me down.
Xox,
SKH
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