When we lose a loved one, be that a family member, close friend or pet, it’s so hard to say goodbye. But at some point we have to accept they’re gone and let go.
Letting go may seem like you’re giving up on that person or their memory. But nothing could be further from the truth.
It doesn’t help to be stuck grieving or mourning their loss. They wouldn’t want your life to stop or be limited because of their memory.
Yes, grieving and missing them is perfectly normal. And that can last a while. But it’s also normal to reach a point where you accept someone is gone and let go of the continued grief.
That doesn’t mean you aren’t sad about their loss. Nor does it mean your grief instantly stops. But it marks a shift whereby the pain that has been so overwhelming and hard to cope with begins to ease. You see there is life after death.
And so in order to help you get to that point we’ve put together this list of the best letting go quotes and sayings. Hopefully they will help you to let go of whoever you’re holding onto and allow you to begin moving on with your life whilst still remembering how special that person was.
Short Letting Go Quotes
“Sometimes the hardest part isn’t letting go but rather learning to start over” – Nicole Sobon
“Time doesn’t heal emotional pain, you need to learn how to let go” – Roy T. Bennett
“We must embrace pain and burn it as fuel for our journey” – Kenji Miyazawa
“Forget what hurt you but never forget what it taught you” – Shannon L. Alder
“Holding on is believing that there’s only a past; letting go is knowing that there’s a future” – Daphne Rose Kingma
“Broken hearts hurt but they will make you strong” – Unknown
“You don’t need strength to let go of something. What you really need is understanding” – Guy Finley
“Life moves on and so should we” – Spencer Johnson
“Life moves forward. The old leaves wither, die and fall away, and the new growth extends forward into the light” – Bryant McGill
“Pain will leave you when you let go” – Jeremy Aldana
“Unable are the loved to die. For love is immortality” – Emily Dickinson
“The pain passes, but the beauty remains” – Pierre Auguste Renoir
“Thank God I found the GOOD in goodbye” – Beyonce Knowles
Letting Go of a Loved One
- “I just wanted to tell you that I understand if you go. It’s okay if you have to leave us. It’s okay if you want to stop fighting” – Gayle Forman
- “When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight” – Kahlil Gibran
- “When someone you love becomes a memory, the memory becomes a treasure” – Unknown
- “If the people we love are stolen from us, the way to have them live on is to never stop loving them” – The Crow
- “Grieving is a necessary passage and a difficult transition to finally letting go of sorrow – it is not a permanent rest stop” – Dodinsky
- “Grief is the price we pay for love” – Queen Elizabeth II
- “Tears have a wisdom all their own. They come when a person has relaxed enough to let go and to work through his sorrow. They are the natural bleeding of an emotional wound, carrying the poison out of the system. Here lies the road to recovery” – F. Alexander Magoun
- “We must be willing to let go of the life we’ve planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us” – Joseph Campbell
- “Love is stronger than death even though it can’t stop death from happening, but no matter how hard death tries it can’t separate people from love. It can’t take away our memories either. In the end, life is stronger than death” – Unknown
- “You don’t go around grieving all the time, but the grief is still there and always will be” – Nigella Lawson
- “I still miss those I loved who are no longer with me but I find I am grateful for having loved them. The gratitude has finally conquered the loss” – Rita Mae Brown
- “By accepting the process of letting go, we make people and things that we can’t stay with forever a part of our history” – Dr Prem Jagyasi
- “Letting go doesn’t mean that you don’t care about someone anymore. It’s just realizing that the only person you really have control over is yourself” – Deborah Reber
- “The truth is, unless you let go, unless you forgive yourself, unless you forgive the situation, unless you realize that the situation is over, you cannot move forward” – Steve Maraboli
Sad Letting Go Quotes
- “Some things in life cannot be fixed. They can only be carried” – Megan Devine
- “You will lose someone you can’t live without, and your heart will be badly broken, and the bad news is that you never completely get over the loss of your beloved. But this is also the good news. They live forever in your broken heart that doesn’t seal back up. And you come through. It’s like having a broken leg that never heals perfectly – that still hurts when the weather gets cold, but you learn to dance with the limp” – Anne Lamott
- “The reality is that you will grieve forever. You will not ‘get over’ the loss of a loved one; you’ll learn to live with it. You will heal and you will rebuild yourself around the loss you have suffered. You will be whole again but you will never be the same. Nor should you be the same nor would you want to” – Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
- “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference” – Unknown
- “It takes strength to make your way through grief, to grab hold of life and let it pull you forward” – Patti Davis
- “Everything that has a beginning has an ending. Make your peace with that and all will be well” – Buddhist saying
- I know in my head that she has gone. The only difference is that I am getting used to the pain. It’s like discovering a great hole in the ground. To begin with, you forget it’s there and keep falling in. After a while, it’s still there, but you learn to walk round it” – Rachel Joyce
- “The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen” – Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
- “The melody that the loved one played upon the piano of your life will never be played quite that way again, but we must not close the keyboard and allow the instrument to gather dust. We must seek out other artists of the spirit, new friends who gradually will help us to find the road to life again, who will walk the road with us” – Joshua Loth Liebman
- “We must know the pain of loss; because if we never knew it, we would have no compassion for others, and we would become monsters of self-regard, creatures of unalloyed self-interest. The terrible pain of loss teaches humility to our prideful kind, has the power to soften uncaring hearts, to make a better person of a good one” – Dean Koontz
We hope these letting go quotes will have helped you to let go of after the death of loved one and realise it’s ok to move on.
Although it can seem like you never will get over losing someone so special with time we all find that we are able to let go of and say goodbye to those we loved dearly. That doesn’t mean we forget them – they will stay with us forever – but allows us to continue our lives with their memories always with close by.
