The Sacred Art of Letting Go When Everything Falls Apart

Releasing the impossible weight of chaos, violence, and political turmoil.

Photo of the Mediterranean Sea from a Greek taverna in Kokkari, Samos. Photo by author.

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The sea is so still this morning that it feels like it's holding its breath.

Here on Samos, the air smells of souvlaki and salt air. The locals sit in the café, smoking and chatting, while a cat curls in the shade of a blue-painted chair. It looks like a postcard, except that the cat tried to climb up my leg while I was in the middle of another existential crisis.

My phone glows with endless news stories since Charlie Kirk was murdered. I have moments of rage that this man, who spread hate and division, has cast a cloud on my vacation. I know it's petty, but then again, so was he.

I didn't respect him. I didn't like him. And still, I feel heavy.

Not for him, exactly, but for what his death reveals about the place I call home. The place I will return to soon, where outrage is currency and violence keeps inching closer, normalizing itself. It's disorienting to feel so safe, so far from it all, while sensing that the ground back home is splintering underfoot.

The news of his murder reached me first on the island of Zakynthos, during what was supposed to be a sacred retreat—a gathering of women who'd come together to rest, to restore, to create the kind of healing space the world seems to have forgotten how to make. Violence punctured our carefully cultivated sanctuary, the way it always does. Even in paradise, even in a sacred feminine space, the darkness finds a way in.

Unknowingly, we had been preparing ourselves for this moment. I had read one of my favorite poems, "She Let Go" by Reverend Safire Rose, during our circle that evening.

She let go of the fear.

She let go of the judgments.

She let go of the confluence of opinions swarming around her head.

The words moved through our circle like a prayer, like permission. We felt that collective exhale, that shared release of the world's impossible weight.

Like a leaf falling from a tree, she just let go.

In that moment, I understood something I'd been missing: this wasn't escape. This was preparation. This letting go, this holy interlude, this refusal to carry every headline in our bodies. This was how we gathered strength to return to the fracturing world with something healing to offer.

I soak in the peace and ease of the people of Samos, allowing me to release the dread that is simmering. I will return home to an even more violent country than the one I left two weeks ago.

The hits keep coming. I think of my sweet, precious grandchildren back home. As of August 31, 2025, there have been 309 mass shootings in the US, with children tragically being victims in some of these events.

A man at the next table is chain-smoking and passionately debating something very important while his cigarette ash dangles over his coffee. I envy his certainty about things.

What I learned in Zakynthos, letting go with those women, is that this isn't guilt I'm feeling—it's responsibility transformed. For walking quiet stone streets while others walk on eggshells. For floating in turquoise water while the fabric of my homeland tears a little more. But that circle of women taught me something: rest isn't abandonment of the world. Rest is how we keep our hearts from hardening. Rest is how we gather the strength to keep showing up, even when doing so feels impossible.

This may be why rest matters most when the world is cracking, not because it fixes anything, but because it preserves something essential in us that the darkness wants to devour.

So I let the island cradle me. I let the sun blur the sharp edges for a while. I memorize the hush of this place, the unhurried greetings, the quiet stone streets, the way time seems to stretch here on Samos. It’s as if the island itself is reminding me—you don't have to move at the pace of chaos.

Soon I'll go back to the United States, where the air hums with tension. But I will carry this stillness in my pocket, like a smooth stone. This medicine was learned in a sacred feminine space. This understanding that letting go isn't giving up, it's gathering strength.

A quiet rebellion against the noise.

It wasn’t good and it wasn’t bad.

It was what it was, and it is just that.

In the space of letting go, she let it all be.

To read the poem in its entirety, click here.