Dr. Helen Titilola OLOJEDE

There is a curious paradox at the heart of spiritual life: we must learn to let go before we can truly receive. As 2025 fades and 2026 waits to be born, we stand in that liminal space where endings and beginnings touch, where release makes room for renewal. It is a good time to ask ourselves, what can I let go as the year winds down, what can I embrace in the new year? The practice of letting go is perhaps one of the most challenging spiritual disciplines we face. We sometimes carry so much: resentments that may have calcified into bitterness, regrets that replay endlessly in our minds, expectations that were never met. We sometimes clutch these things tightly, sometimes without even realizing we are doing so, as though holding on might somehow change what has already passed.

Yet there is a profound freedom that comes when we finally open our hands. To let go is not to pretend that hurt never happened or that disappointment was not real. Rather, it is to acknowledge that we cannot move forward whilst dragging the full weight of yesterday behind us. It is to recognize that some things, no matter how tightly we grasp them, can never be changed or reclaimed. Forgiveness often lies at the heart of this letting go. As 2025 draws to a close, we should forgive others because we deserve to be free. We should forgive ourselves for the ways we stumbled, for opportunities missed, for words we wish we could take back. This forgiveness is an act of mercy, a refusal to let past mistakes define our future.

Something in us must die if something new is to emerge. The self we were, with all its limitations and wounds, must be released so that we might become who we are called to be. Renewal waits on the other side of release. When we let go of grudges, we discover lightness. When we release failed expectations of 2025, we make space for what actually is, rather than what we wished might be. When we stop carrying burdens that were never ours, we find we have the strength for what truly matters in the year ahead.

Nature teaches us this rhythm. Trees let go of their leaves, trusting that spring will come again. Seeds must break open in darkness before new life can emerge. As this year closes, I invite you into this same pattern of release and renewal. What might we lay down? What old stories about ourselves or others might we finally let rest? What disappointments or hurts might we give over to grace? And in that letting go, what space opens within us? What new possibilities begin to stir?

This is the pattern in every ending. Let us release what no longer serves, so we become vessels ready to receive what is yet to come.