Many of the Christian clients I work with are not grieving who someone was day to day. They are grieving who that person could have become. Potential is one of the most beautiful and most painful things a heart can hold, and it often keeps people tolerating a daily reality that is slowly hurting them.
Why potential is so hard to release
For many of us, hope was how we survived. When home wasn't safe, the heart learned to live in what could be. So when someone speaks beautifully about loving us well, that old survival pattern lights up. But words are potential. Love is what someone consistently does. Someone can genuinely want to love well and still be unable to because of their own unhealed pain, and no amount of patience can do their healing for them.
Why letting go into nothing doesn't work
Clients often try to release a loved one into a void, and the heart resists, because that feels like saying the love meant nothing. So they grip, bargain, and return to familiar pain. This isn't weakness. It's a heart with nowhere safe to place its love.
Surrender as entrustment
In session, the shift often comes when letting go becomes a handoff rather than a freefall: entrusting the person to God, who loves them even more than we do. The love is not lost; it is kept. I also invite clients to surrender the potential itself, the quiet "maybe someday," because that crack in the door is where bargaining slips back in wearing faith's clothing. A simple question helps: "Am I waiting, or am I living?" Many feel the release in the body first: the chest softens, the breath deepens, tears come.
Craving or grief?
Letting go of a deep attachment can resemble addiction recovery. Craving says, "I need them back," and loops the person back into the pattern. Grief says, "I'm letting them go, and it hurts," and moves them through. Grief is heavier, but it is the healthier pain, and its waves come further apart over time.
A practice for when the waves return
1. Notice the bargaining voice and name it gently.
2. Place a hand where it hurts and breathe into it.
3. Return to the anchor: presence over potential.
4. Hand it over to God, as many times as it takes.
5. Do one present, ordinary thing that belongs to your own future.
The love that heals is the love that is present. This is the final step of my F.A.P.E.S. Method: surrender. Not giving up, but giving over.
Tracey Nguyen, RN, MN, is a holistic nurse psychotherapist in Toronto working with complex trauma, narcissistic abuse recovery and codependency. This article is educational and not a substitute for professional care.
