Social media makes it so easy for us to remain “connected” to those who hurt us and those who seek to remain at the periphery of our lives no matter if they deserve to be there or not. I recently went through my Facebook “Friends” and Instagram “Followers” to remove those who were only hanging around the periphery and would no longer be contributing to my path forward – this is my letter to those who were removed.

To the people I “unfriended”,

While walking on the path to healing I’m learning there are those who will walk beside me, invested in my healing and learning the new me and those who are too invested in my past and the person that I was and not the person that I am now.

Those who are too invested in keeping me in the past have no place in my present or my future. The person that you knew, no longer exists and those who aren’t a part of my healing don’t deserve to watch the progress. Every person that I’ve met in life has played a part in writing my story. Some of you wrote a line, some wrote a page, others wrote an entire chapter and I need to be able to write new lines, new pages, and new chapters. It’s not about erasing the past, it’s about recognizing those who can contribute to my new story – the one that remains to be written. Those who can’t contribute to that story in a healthy and productive way don’t deserve to bear witness to the new storylines.

We all walk along the path of life, meeting those along the way who will make an impact, positive or negative, on us. I’ve chosen to remove those who have a negative impact on me from my life and that extends to no longer allowing them access to me and my life. Social media is a way for us to remain invested in the lives of everyone we’ve ever known and sometimes that investment isn’t in the best interests of anyone involved. We cling to the photos of ex-partners to see if they’re miserable without us and are hoping against all hope that they are somewhere out there checking up on us too. We post photos displaying the “good” parts of us and our lives, carefully crafting the “perfect” image that we want to portray. We click through the photos of others and see the image they want us to see, not bearing witness to the messiness and chaos that exists in between.

I’m no longer interested in hiding the chaos and the messiness, I’ve spent too long crafting the “perfect” image and hoping that others will not look too deeply. Part of healing and moving forward is removing those who I worry won’t accept the chaos and realizing that they don’t want to watch me move forward but are too interested in anchoring me in the past.

This isn’t a judgement on any one of you as an individual, I’m not here to label anyone as “good” or “bad” but instead I’m reevaluating the parts that you all play in my life and whether those parts contribute to my past or my future. If you were a part of the group who anchored me to my past then I’m sorry to say that I need to let you go in order to move forward.

I am reclaiming my power and that means extending forgiveness to those who hurt me in even the smallest of ways – forgiveness doesn’t mean reconciliation, nor does it mean absolution. I can forgive you for writing the lines and pages of my story that hurt me and left me with scars that I am trying to heal from while also recognizing that you no longer play a part in my life. I wish you well, hope your life is everything you want it to be but just know that I am no longer accepting you to play a part in mine – even from the sidelines.

All the best,

S