Our old friends, acquaintances, romantic relationships, or situationships that we may have once been a part of, they all had their time and place. This means that part of growing up is learning to alchemize and transmute our life experiences with people into wisdom and knowledge about ourselves, our patterns, and our boundaries. And once you are able to do that, you realize we all had our own inner battles that we needed to work on, no matter who was at fault, who walked away, who was innocent, or who carried more responsibility than they were willing to admit (even while everyone, at some point in their life experience, has had those areas where they themselves were more to blame than they wanted to acknowledge). Because at the end of the day, the point isn’t to endlessly tally the rights and wrongs of each other, but to recognize the lessons, to take what serves our growth, and then to release the rest so it no longer weighs down our spirit.

So, if you are still connected with people from your past, yet you don’t actually have a meaningful bond anymore, and they are just lingering in your life out of old habit, nostalgia, or a sense of obligation, it’s worth asking yourself if that connection is actually serving your present self. Because sometimes we hold on to people not because they actually bring value or growth into our lives, but because we are afraid of letting go of what was once familiar. And yet growth often requires us to release those outdated ties, so that we have space to welcome new relationships, opportunities, and experiences that align with who we are now, and not who we once were.

And while this isn’t to say that every person from our past must be cut off or forgotten, it does mean that when it comes to truly dying to our former selves, we cannot keep resurrecting outdated versions of ourselves that no longer exist just to keep an old connection or tether of energetic familiarity alive. Because to truly step into who we are becoming as psychospiritually sovereign individuals in our own processes of transformation and rebirth, we have to let go of the attachments that tether us to who we used to be, even if that means certain relationships fall away in the process.

And since this isn’t about tallying the rights and wrongs of one another, while acknowledging there may be a period where it takes time for our hearts and minds to soften towards certain people or seasons of our past, once we do reach that place in our own growth, there is no hate, no bitterness, and no resentment for those chapters of our story—only the acceptance that some connections were never meant to last forever. And that what remains is the gratitude for the part they played in shaping us, even if their role is now complete, where we can now move forward in our lives on a path that truly mirrors the person we’ve grown into, and not the version of ourselves we had to leave behind in order to evolve.