I’ve always prided myself on being prepared.
Certainty.
Precision.
Control.
Those have been my north stars for as long as I can remember. How much can I plan? How much can I anticipate? What variables can I eliminate so the outcome bends in my favor?
Preparation felt like protection & control felt like safety. If I could foresee it, I could survive it. If I could manage it, I wouldn’t be blindsided. And for a long time, that worked.
Until it didn’t.
Lately, I’ve been watching more TV than usual. Not “avoid your responsibilities” levels, but enough to notice patterns. One to three episodes a day; a respectable binge, if I do say so myself. My current rotation? The Bear & Being Mary Jane.
Two very different worlds. One chaotic kitchen in Chicago. One polished newsroom & personal life in Atlanta. But both protagonists share something familiar: they are gripping tightly to the version of life they believe is best. Managing, orchestrating & overcorrecting. Trying to bend outcomes through sheer will.
Sound familiar?
There’s a scene in the final episode of season two of The Bear—slight spoiler, but stay with me—where the protagonist gets locked inside the walk-in refrigerator during a chaotic but critically important service: Friends & Family night. The handle of the fridge breaks. He cannot intervene. Cannot direct. Cannot fix. He has to sit there, trapped in the cold, listening to the noise outside, forced to trust that his team will carry it.
For someone who thrives on control, that’s torture.
And yet… things don’t implode.
They adjust & survive without him micromanaging every detail. At least that’s where I stopped in the episode.
That struck something in me.
Because sometimes letting go isn’t about quitting. It isn’t about giving up. It isn’t about irresponsibility. Sometimes it’s about accepting that white-knuckling your way through life is exhausting.
I know this intimately.
There are things in my own life I’ve held onto long past their expiration date. Not because they were right, but because they were predictable & familiar.
And familiar, even when uncomfortable, can feel safer than unknown.
But lately, I’ve been asking myself different questions:
What if uncertainty isn’t the threat I’ve made it out to be?
What if unclenching doesn’t mean collapse?
This letter was born from that tension.
If you’re gripping something tightly right now, whether it be a role, a relationship, an identity, a plan, a behavior, & you know in your body that it no longer fits, this one’s for you.
Dear You,
There’s something you’ve been holding onto that doesn’t feel right anymore.
