LETTING GO. HOW HARD CAN IT BE?

It’s Easy Until You Try.

Portland baby boomers, Oregon baby boomers, or what the hell ALL baby boomers, know how to let go.

We’ve doing it for years. Sometimes with help we don’t ask for.

Think of the era boomers grew up in.

Let go of the old and embrace the new.

We were young and did youthful things like abandoning our parents in search of a real life.

Does that sound right?

It wasn’t really abandonment as much as it was dealing with the feeling of, “I’ve had enough of this and I don’t care what else I find it’s got to be better.”

Take this writer for example.

The plan was clear from the beginning.

Graduate from high school.

Graduate from college.

Get a job in a big company with benefits and security.

Meet a girl, have kids, buy a house.

Raise a family, alienate them, then retire to the porch and complain about the weather.

Slip and fall, break a hip, move into a retirement ‘home.’

Complain about the weather and that no one visits.

Out live all your friends and die a stranger in your home town.

How hard would it be to let go of that timeline?

With tune in, turn on, and drop out included on your to-do list why wait for something to change your mind.

Who hasn’t heard of the high school girl who dated a hippie, got pregnant, then got shunned by her family?

It was a “You made your bed now sleep in it” moment of fear.

Where was Roe v Wade, The Pill, or responsible sex for the girl who was turned out by her family?

They needed help. They needed support from other women, but needed the father of the baby to step up even more.

Too many young boomer dudes were like, “And how is this my problem? I’ve already got a new girlfriend and you’re scaring her.”

The abandoned young mother-to-be needed community. She needed that village that’s supposed to help raise her child, but where to look?

It’s not on a map. Neither is letting go.

If she found any help and support it came from her peers. She let go of those who shunned her, banned her from their lives, and found a new family.

To dispel any thoughts that all new ‘families’ were related to the Manson Family, they’re not.

Young bucks had two options in the sixties and early seventies: Get to college or get drafted for the Vietnam War.

Some guys were heroes in war, others heroes in peace.

The army guys heard this: “Ain’t no use in going home, Jodie’s got your girl and gone.”

Hometown guys heard this: “Her boyfriend’s in the army and he’s coming home, Jodie.”

Better to let go.

The girls grew up, found better partners than a runaway hairball.

The guys grew up and learned to treat women better.

Some instances they both tried to forget their past.

They let it go.

They traded social consciousness for comfort, open mindedness for between the lines thinking.

Most of all they traded freedom for the sort of secure feeling false promises deliver.

You can let it go, but remember where you put it.

What have you let go of?