The Season of Letting Go: From Performing to Being

A gentle reflection on retiring, healing and moving from performing to being—finding rest, creativity and courage in a season of letting go.

 

At the Start of 2025: Building Momentum

A year ago, at the start of 2025, everything felt possible. I had just launched Adelaide Document Processing, a little home-based typing service, five months earlier and upon returning to work in January after the Christmas holidays, I welcomed my first three clients. I was approaching twelve months of volunteering in Spiritual Care at a local residential care facility, attending my late Mum’s Uniting Church congregation and enjoying the rhythm of activities with the Wise Owls over-fifties community of Nazareth Catholic College. It felt like I was finally building something steady.

 

When Momentum Unravelled: Letting Go of Performing

After Easter something shifted. I crashed—emotionally, physically, spiritually—and the momentum I had worked for began to unravel. I let go of the business name and rebranded under my own name as an act of transparency and authenticity. A returning client and one new client arrived, but the spiral had already begun.

In response I made small, deliberate changes to my outer world: new glasses, a fresh hair colour, updated makeup, a new phone and computer, even professionally cleaned windows. These weren’t vanity projects. They were quiet acts of care, a way of saying, I’m still here. I’m still worth tending to. My outer world was catching up with the inner work I was beginning to do. 

Diagnosis, Permission and Retreat: Choosing Healing

July brought a turning point. An official CPTSD diagnosis (Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder) offered clarity and a new language for patterns I had lived with for years. That clarity felt like permission—to stop pushing, to stop performing. In September I was approved for support that allowed me to step back and focus on healing. One by one I stepped back: from client work, volunteering, church—until only Wise Owls remained. 

In that quieter space something unexpected began: I started writing again. Living with a health condition means energy levels change from day to day, so I learned to companion myself gently—choosing practices that adapt to me rather than forcing myself to adapt to them. Writing fit that need. It was flexible, forgiving and deeply grounding. 

Returning to Writing with Intention

I didn’t just pick up writing again; I returned to it with intention—gently, tentatively, authentically. I have always been a reader and a writer, but in this past year I chose to do more with my words. I made writing a regular practice, a way of companioning myself through change. 

I launched this Gentle Self blog, a space to share reflections of my decade-long simple living journey freely and without monetisation. I stopped chasing and started listening. I began to notice the small things: the rhythms of the day, the ways rest shows up, the quiet permission to be imperfect.

Somewhere along the way one of my poems was nominated for the 2025 Community Housing Arts (CHARTS) Awards and I later won the Poetry and Literature Award—an unexpected, quiet affirmation of this new path. (You can read more about my CHARTS Awards experience here).

 Letting go wasn’t failure. 

 It was the beginning of something truer.

  

 

From Performing to Being: A Season of Letting Go

At 56 I have officially retired. After reflection I decided to step away from all work, paid and voluntary. I no longer want to keep up the effort of maintaining a business presence. I no longer want to chase jobs, clients, opportunities—or people. I am done chasing and I am done performing. 

This shift is not a dramatic break but a gentle reorientation. The Season of Letting Go is a metaphor for an organic cycle: autumn’s shedding that makes room for winter rest and eventual spring growth. From Performing to Being names the internal shift—moving away from an external-facing life of roles and expectations toward an inner life of presence and healing, rest and renewal and gentle self-care. 

What I Am Choosing Now: Simple Living Practices

This season of letting go feels like momentum in practice: the quiet propulsion that comes when I stop striving and allow myself to rest in being. As I shared in my recent Word of the Year reflections, Momentum is not just forward motion—it is also the grace of release.

I am choosing practices that support healing and wellbeing: writing, creating and staying gently connected with community in ways that feel right for me. I companion myself with presence, not pressure. I allow days to be different and honour the limits my body and mind set. I listen more than I perform.

Closing Reflection: Rest, Creativity and Quiet Courage

This season has taught me that stepping back can be an act of quiet courage. It can be reclamation of self. It can be the beginning of something truer than the life I was trying to maintain.

It taught me that rest and creativity can coexist with grief and loss. Letting go made space for a quieter, more honest life. I am learning to befriend the slow work of healing and to trust that being—rather than performing—will lead me to what’s next.
  
If these reflections speak to you, I welcome you to walk alongside me here on Gentle Self—where we explore small, steady practices and share the quiet work of living with change together.

Go gently,

Denise Marron 🩷 

Simplicity Advocate and Author at Gentle Self. ,

  

  🌿 10 Years of Simple Living 🌿       
     January 2016 - January 2026

  
 🤔 Learn More About Denise 

 

  

Living simply, writing gently, 

companioning with care. 🌸