Notes from the Counselor on Letting Go

Notes from the counselor on Letting Go

Dr. Muriel Redman McKenney on Letting Go

Dr. McKenney was blessed with what some call a photographic memory. She could remember events in detail from her earliest years. Her ability in school was excellent in that she remembered everything she read including the periods.

Her memories also meant that letting go would be a hard thing to do. During her formative years many of the adults around her made promises and statements that to them held no value. To her promises made by her parents were sacred.

During the war when she married her husband against her family's wishes, whatever little value her parents' promises to her meant to them went up in smoke.

They had promised to stay together forever, as most parents do. Yet time had introduced changes in their feelings for one another and they lived separately at the time of her marriage. This was just one of a number of promises they would not keep.

When you basically have perfect recall, it can be difficult reconciling the real world with all its warts, with the world you were promised. In the difficult years ahead of her, the most difficult thing for Dr. McKenney was letting go of the idea that her family would always be there to show love and kindness.

With her parents separation they became less kind and more self involved. While she lived in a shack the year her daughter was born, her mother lived a few miles away in what in those days was a very fine house. It was hard for her to let go of the ideas she had grown up with.

But she was abundantly happy in her day to day life because she loved being a mother and thanked God every day for the gift of her children and husband.

These are the notes of Dr. Muriel R. McKenney, The Counselor, on Letting Go:

"Into each life some rain must fall, and too much has fallen in mine."

The words of this song express the way many of us feel. Things happen to us that we have little or no control over, but that we must deal with in the best way we know how.