“This Is Me Letting You Go” by Heidi Priebe is a sequence of brutally honest yet loving essays, Priebe strings together lessons that she has learned over the years, and ways for the listeners to face them and work through various challenges regarding coping with something we once loved. I picked this book up because I find myself picking apart past interactions and playing the ‘what-if’ game all too often. As I’m sure we all know, it is exhausting. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but constantly juggling self-doubt and school and a bomb curly hair routine gets hard. Everyone deserves reassurance, and this book felt like a continuous hug and was worth every second spent.
The overall theme of the book was letting a former lover go and how to completely disconnect your life from theirs. I am personally not going through a breakup, but each piece of advice was easily applicable to other aspects of my life where I am struggling with letting go. The essays were an array of romantic sentiments everyone dreams of experiencing, but why do we feel like we must wait for the approval or shared excitement from others? Priebe does an amazing job at driving the point of loving life for what it is – not the maybes or what could have been.
This book helped me realize that no one is truly alone. It is very easy to seclude ourselves because of what we are going through or be embarrassed by our problems (I know I do). But it is so crucial to understand that everyone is doing the same thing, and this book explains all the feelings I thought ‘no one understood’ so incredibly well. I felt so seen and understood while reading. Priebe opened many emotions I thought I was done feeling and helped me properly deal with what I was feeling. This book helped me undo many maladaptive coping mechanisms I thought were helping me and let me reevaluate how toxic I was being to myself. She helped me realize that it is okay to take accountability when you’re wrong, but you are not always in the wrong and making excuses for others’ pitiful actions is a pity to yourself.
The beautiful words in this book reassured me that I am not taking too long to process my emotions and that it is okay to miss how things used to be, or how I imagined them being. Priebe helped me romanticize each aspect of my life and gave the overall reassurance that everything, the pain and hardship, will always work itself out. “Just because the scene in the rearview mirror looks nicer than the scene on the road ahead doesn’t mean you’ll never reach another beautiful destination. It just means you’re not there yet.” as presented in the essay “When You Have to Leave the Best Things Behind.”
I recommend that everyone reads this book at least once in their life, whether you’re going through a nasty breakup or you’re the happiest you’ve ever been, this book will help you.