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Wow @Owlunar; this page has been a beautiful read. I hope you (and others) don't mind me jumping in as the topic is something that resonates; with most women I think.

Letting go for me took many years of therapy processing multiple traumas. I chipped away at it till eventually the penny dropped. There's a sort of pattern to it if this makes sense. That includes safety and understanding.

They said 'Acceptance' helps, but this was something I failed at because it didn't deal with the pain or help me understand the why's.

There seems to be two trains of thought; one as an adult and one as a child. Trying to understand what I felt as a small child, especially as it was traumatic, was pretty much impossible for the adult in me. So I needed to give 'her' a voice. That's who owns the pain, not the grown up me.

One example...I wrote a letter to my grandmother 30 years after her death as it was still so very painful to even say her name. I started out writing just for the sake of it which was full of "I miss you" and "Wish you were here" stuff, then intuitively it took an emotional turn where I wrote 'without thinking or judgeing my words'.

As I ripped through the pages with the pen, 'it' came out. "I hate you for dying!" I was a teen when she died which left me alone to deal with my lunatic mother. I pushed that guilt and shame of hating my Nan down so deep, it became a 'feeling' instead of intelligable words.

In that moment, with shoddy and torn pages in hand, I finally let go of the pain because I understood it and finally allowed myself to feel angry without guilt or shame. I gave myself (at that age) a voice without judgement.

To this day there's no remnants of pain associated with her name or memory.

Hope x