We say it surprisingly easily to someone who is struggling with something: you have to let it go. It is usually said with the best of intentions, based on the belief that life becomes lighter when we stop holding on to what has happened. Most of us also know when something is over. A relationship has ended, someone we loved has died, a friendship has faded, a conflict will never be resolved in the way we once hoped, or something has happened that now belongs to a past we can no longer change. Our minds often understand this long before our feelings do, and somewhere between the two lies a far more complicated form of letting go than those few words suggest.

A simple image made me think about this. Imagine holding a stone in your hand. Your fingers are wrapped firmly around it and you can feel its weight. When you decide to let go of the stone, you can open your fingers while keeping your palm facing upwards. Technically, you are no longer holding on to it. Your fingers are relaxed, the tension has disappeared, and yet the same stone is still resting in your hand. It has not become a single gram lighter, and as long as your hand remains underneath it, you are still the one carrying its weight.

You can also turn your hand over and then open your fingers. Something fundamentally different happens. The stone falls from your hand, and from that moment onwards, you are no longer carrying its weight.

I find that difference fascinating because I think it comes remarkably close to what we regularly do in our own lives. We say we have let something go, and we genuinely mean it. We have accepted that a situation will not change and we are no longer trying to recover what has been lost. We understand that life continues, and we may even be able to say all of this out loud. In a sense, we really have opened our fingers. Yet whatever we have released can still travel with us every day because, without even noticing it, we have kept our hand underneath it.

This can happen when love comes to an end. You know the relationship is over and you have accepted that the future you once imagined together will never happen. At the same time, the other person may still occupy a large part of your thoughts. You wonder how they are doing, long for the contact that once felt so natural, or search for small moments in which the old connection can still be felt. You have let go of the relationship while continuing to carry the absence it left behind.

Something similar can happen when someone we love dies, even though that loss naturally feels very different. We know that person is not coming back, and after a while we no longer need to explain that reality to ourselves. Grief can still remain a weight we carry wherever we go. That does not mean someone is grieving incorrectly or is somehow unable to move forward. It simply shows that accepting something and no longer carrying its weight can be two very different processes.

The same can be true of an old argument, a disappointment, a missed opportunity or something someone did to us years ago. We may have decided long ago that we want to move forward, only to discover that a new event immediately brings the old anger back to the surface. Apparently, that stone was still resting somewhere in our hand, even though our fingers had been open for years.

That is where, for me, the more interesting question begins. Why do we keep our hand underneath something we ourselves say we have let go?

Part of the answer probably lies in what the stone represents. We tend to associate weight with something negative, although that does not always have to be the case. A stone can also represent something that once gave us security. A love in which we felt truly seen, a person with whom we felt at home, a friendship that seemed unquestionable for years, or a future we were convinced was waiting for us. When something like that disappears, we lose more than the situation itself. We also lose some of the certainty, warmth and familiarity connected to it.

Seen from that perspective, it becomes easier to understand why we do not simply turn our hand over.

Because when the stone falls, it can feel as though more than its weight disappears. We may fear losing the last hope of reconciliation, the feeling of connection, the closeness of someone we miss, or even the anger that reminds us that we were once wronged. We can carry pain for so long that eventually we fail to notice how that pain also keeps us connected to whatever we have lost.

Suddenly, the words you have to let it go become far less simple.

Someone who has lost a loved one may feel guilty when life begins to feel enjoyable again, as though laughter and happiness somehow say something about the love that once existed. Someone who falls in love again after a relationship has ended may discover that part of them still looks back at what was lost. Not necessarily because they want to return, but because an important chapter of our lives does not lose its meaning simply because a relationship has ended. Even anger can work this way. Someone who has been angry for years about what another person did may feel that letting go of that anger is almost the same as saying that what happened was no longer important.

I think there is a misunderstanding hidden in all of this that can make truly letting go so difficult. We can start to believe that when we release the weight, we also release the meaning.

Yet a memory does not have to remain heavy in order to remain valuable.

Someone who has died does not disappear from our lives when grief slowly begins to occupy a different place. A love does not become less real when we no longer long for the person with whom we shared it. An experience that hurt us does not have to be forgotten when we decide that it will no longer determine the choices we make next. We can preserve what something meant to us without continuing to carry its weight everywhere we go.

That sounds simple when written down. Real life rarely unfolds so neatly. We do not turn our hand over on some random Tuesday and suddenly discover that everything that felt heavy for years has disappeared. Letting go takes its own time, and we may even pick up a stone again after we thought we had dropped it. A song can be enough, a scent, a photograph, a birthday or an unexpected encounter. Suddenly we feel again what once seemed so close, and we realise that something which had found a quiet place within us can still touch us deeply.

I do not think that takes anything away from having let go. The difference is not whether something will ever affect us again. It lies much more in the place it occupies in our daily lives and whether we still feel that we need to carry it with us constantly.

That is why I have started looking differently at the simple advice that someone should let something go. That person may have opened their fingers a long time ago. The real work may only have begun at that point, because they still have to discover why their hand remains underneath the stone. What are they trying to preserve? What are they afraid will disappear when the weight is gone? What meaning have they attached to continuing to carry it? And could that meaning remain even after the stone finally falls from their hand?

Those are questions no one can answer for someone else. We cannot tell another person when the time has come to turn their hand over. We can only occasionally look at ourselves and ask what we are still carrying and why.

Because letting go turns out to be about far more than simply opening our fingers.

It asks us, eventually, to trust that whatever was truly valuable will not fall to the ground together with the weight. Love can remain without the constant ache of absence. A memory can remain without daily grief. A lesson can remain without the pain that once taught it to us. What happened remains part of who we have become, even when we decide that we no longer need to carry its weight everywhere we go.

And I think that is the real art of letting go…. Not forgetting what happened, and not denying how much something or someone once meant to us, but one day noticing that our hand is still underneath a stone we stopped holding on to a long time ago.

Then we can turn our hand over.

Not to throw away the past, but to give ourselves permission to stop carrying its weight.