“If you let go a little, you will have a little peace.
If you let go a lot, you will have a lot of peace.
If you let go completely, you will have complete peace.”
— Ajahn Chah
There is a quiet, haunting truth in these words — one that only fully reveals itself when you’ve lived in the tension of holding on.
For many of us, especially those with a history of trauma, letting go isn’t a spiritual cliché or Instagram-ready affirmation. It’s a lived experience laced with fear, memory, and deep survival instinct. To let go means confronting the very parts of ourselves that once kept us safe. It means loosening the grip on identities built in response to pain, and softening around patterns we once thought were personality, but were really protection.
Why We Cling: The Trauma Lens
When we’ve experienced trauma; abandonment, betrayal, neglect, or emotional harm; our nervous systems adapt to survive. We learn to grip tightly:
- To control what feels uncontrollable.
- To predict what once hurt us.
- To become hypervigilant, guarded, pleasing, or invisible.
Letting go, in this context, doesn’t feel peaceful at first.
It feels dangerous. Vulnerable. Unfamiliar.
So we hold on; to people, to pain, to our roles, to resentment, even to suffering because at least suffering is known.
But healing asks something terrifying:
To release what once saved you, in order to become who you were always meant to be.
Letting Go a Little: The Beginning
Letting go “a little” might mean:
- Saying no when you were trained to say yes.
- Allowing yourself to rest without guilt.
- Feeling sadness without needing to fix it.
These small acts of release begin to retrain the nervous system. They teach your body that safety does not require control; that peace can coexist with uncertainty.
This stage is tender. It might bring tears, rage, or silence. But beneath it all, there’s the faint heartbeat of self-trust returning.
Letting Go a Lot: Facing the Shadow
To let go “a lot” is to enter the realm of shadow work — the process of facing the buried aspects of ourselves we once disowned.
Here, we begin to:
- Question the inner narratives shaped by trauma.
- Release the need to be “the strong one,” “the peacemaker,” or “the one who never needs anything.”
- Forgive not just others, but ourselves, for who we became in survival mode.
The ego resists. It fears annihilation. But what’s actually dying is the mask, not the soul.
This is where deeper peace becomes possible. Not because life is perfect, but because we no longer need it to be. Our worth is no longer tethered to performance, perfection, or protection.
Letting Go Completely: The Alchemy of Surrender
To let go completely doesn’t mean you forget what hurt you. It doesn’t mean you allow harmful people back into your life. It means:
- You stop identifying with your pain.
- You stop carrying the story as your name.
- You stop trying to heal by proving you’re no longer broken.
This is the point where healing becomes transcendence. Where peace is no longer something you chase but something you remember. Something you return to.
Not through effort, but through release.
Here, we no longer just “do the work” of healing; we embody it.
We live softer. We choose relationships that honor our nervous systems.
We find beauty in slowness, power in rest, and truth in tenderness.
What Letting Go Is Not
Letting go does not mean spiritual bypassing.
It doesn’t mean pretending it didn’t hurt.
It doesn’t mean forcing forgiveness before you’re ready.
Letting go is not a performance of enlightenment. It’s the quiet decision to no longer allow your past to govern your present.
And that is the most radical act of freedom.
Final Reflection
Ajahn Chah’s words were never meant to be surface-level advice.
They are an invitation into the sacred unraveling of everything we thought we had to be.
A roadmap for the journey home; not to perfection, but to peace.
Because peace doesn’t arrive when life finally cooperates.
Peace arrives when we stop believing we have to carry it all alone.
Journal Prompt:
What is one thing I’m still gripping that once protected me, but no longer serves me now?
Further Reading:
- The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk
- Homecoming by John Bradshaw
- The Wisdom of Trauma (documentary with Dr. Gabor Maté)
- Radical Acceptance by Tara Brach
About the Author:
Michelle Cuello (Mia) is a writer and artist exploring themes of healing, identity, and emotional depth. Her upcoming books, Ashes Before Dawn and The Air Never Breathed This Heavy, blend poetic storytelling with personal truth, offering reflections for those who ache, heal, and rise.