The Subtle Art of Letting Go

October 22, 2025

Photo by Blake Cheek on Unsplash

For most of my life, I’ve lived with purpose, deliberate, structured, and forward-leaning. Every step of my career was part of a plan. Becoming a Senior Executive in government didn’t happen by accident. It took patience, preparation, and precision, the discipline to think five moves ahead, the willingness to make hard choices, and the constant drive to execute. My mind was trained to build, control, and deliver results.

Then came cancer, and with it, a reality I couldn’t plan, fix, or outwork.

In the ten months since my diagnosis, I’ve been learning how to exist in a world where progress looks nothing like it used to. Where the measure of success isn’t tied to deadlines or decisions, but to simply getting through the day, sometimes just an hour, without breaking apart.

It’s a strange recalibration. For years, my sense of worth came from forward motion, projects completed, people led, problems solved. My life was defined by momentum. Now, progress looks like standing up when my body wants to rest. Like managing the neuropathy long enough to sit outside and feel the sun. Like finding one small thing to be grateful for, even on the days when fear tries to drown it out.

At first, that felt like failure, as if all the discipline and drive I’d built over decades had evaporated. But slowly, I’ve come to see that this, too, is work. This, too, is achievement. It’s just quieter, more internal. There’s no award for getting through another sleepless night or another round of treatment, but those small victories are as real and hard-earned as anything I ever accomplished behind a desk.

I’m learning that resilience isn’t about how much you can push through. It’s about how deeply you can stay present when everything feels impossible.

Being strong in this space is different. It’s not about holding everything together; it’s about holding on while everything changes around you. I’ve had to unlearn the instinct to organize the chaos, to stop trying to make sense of something that defies logic.

My brain still wants to plan, to impose order where there is none. I’ve even created a spreadsheet to track my treatment cycles, recovery periods, and CBC results, trying to use my old skills to find a pattern where one doesn’t seem to exist. It’s what I’ve always done, look for signals in the noise, connect the dots, build a map. But cancer doesn’t play by those rules. It shifts, hides, and contradicts itself. Some days the data gives me comfort; other days it reminds me how little control I truly have.

That might be part of the lesson too, that not everything can be charted or predicted. Some things have to be lived through, one uncertain moment at a time.

Letting go of control has been one of the hardest lessons of my life. For someone who’s always relied on intellect and structure, surrender feels almost impossible. But I’m slowly realizing it’s not weakness, it’s wisdom. It’s the understanding that strength isn’t found in resistance; it’s found in release.

I’ve had to rewire the way I think. To stop asking, “How can I fix this?” and start asking, “How can I live through this?”

To accept that healing isn’t linear, and that stillness, which once felt like failure, can actually be grace.

Healing doesn’t move in straight lines or predictable steps. It doubles back on itself, pauses without warning, and sometimes feels like it’s disappeared altogether. I used to see those pauses as lost time, as proof that the treatment, were not doing enough. But I’m beginning to understand that stillness has its own kind of purpose. It’s where the body gathers what it needs, where the mind begins to rest, and where the spirit quietly repairs what can’t be seen.

Stillness isn’t surrender; it’s space. It’s the deep breath between storms, the quiet that allows strength to take root again. What once felt like standing still is actually the slow work of healing happening beneath the surface; unseen, but essential.

There are moments when I miss the old rhythm of my life, the clarity of purpose, the steady hum of responsibility, the satisfaction of crossing things off a list. But this experience has forced me to listen differently. To feel more deeply. To recognize that there’s a kind of progress in patience, a kind of power in vulnerability.

Some days, I feel strong. Other days, I feel like I’m barely holding on. Both are true. Both are real. Maybe that’s the lesson. Life doesn’t ask us to be unbreakable. It asks us to stay open, even when everything in us wants to shut down.

Letting go, I’ve learned, isn’t the end of control. It’s the beginning of trust. Trust in the people who show up. Trust in the body that’s still fighting. Trust in the process, however uncertain it may be.

This is not the path I would have chosen. In learning to release what I can’t command, I’m finding something new, a softer, steadier kind of strength.

Maybe that’s what it means to truly live, not to conquer every challenge, but to keep showing up with open hands, even when holding on feels impossible.

Through all of this, I’ve come to see that leadership isn’t just about vision and results; it’s about grace. It’s about leading yourself with the same compassion you offer to others. It’s about recognizing when to step forward and when to be still.

ShadesofInsight.com began as a reflection on resilience, but lately, it’s become a chronicle of surrender, not as defeat, but as growth. Cancer has taken many things from me, but it’s also given me a new kind of clarity: that real strength is not about control, but about courage; not about directing every outcome, but about trusting the moment you’re in.

I’m still learning, to let go, to hold faith, and to lead myself gently through whatever comes next.