Twin Flames: Letting Go of The Grip

A note before we start: This essay has sat in my drafts for a while. As often happens, I started it when I was feeling one way and never finished it. Reading it now, I’m struck by how differently I feel. The work I was being asked to do when I wrote this has been done - I no longer feel that way. I’m far less angsty, and my feelings about my twin (and about what I was experiencing) are in a completely different place. This reads like an old version of me. And for that reason, I’m sharing it. It shows that we are always in process, and that doing the work the moment asks of us carries us forward into greater peace and freedom.

If you are still in the place of feeling stuck - if the longing hasn’t shifted, if the grip is still tight, if you keep arriving at the same wall - this is for you. I wrote it from inside that exact place. What follows is the essay as it stood then.

I worked with an AI chatbot to turn my usual brain-dump of thoughts into something that is (I hope) clearer and more helpful to read. The thoughts are mine. The learning is mine. The polished sentences and the way things round off neatly into bows are Claude’s.

If I had the time and the energy, I would sit and write these essays out fully myself. One day I hope that will be the case. In the meantime, I’m using the help available to me, even if it still feels a little like a shortcut.

The Grip

I'm here in the 9th year of my journey. There's always more to say. Last summer I ended up, against all odds, and completely out of the blue, in a romantic relationship with the man that ignited magic within me, and that I recognised as my twin flame when I went looking for answers in late 2017 and was led to the label. It wasn't UNION. And it didn't last. But what it did do was demand more growth, more understanding, more self awareness and a deeper connection with my inner wisdom and its guidance.

Along the way on my journey I learned astrology and became an astrologer. As such I am always aware of the collective energies and how they are influencing the twin flame collective and my journey specifically. The last few months have been the most intense I've felt on the journey. We have been pushed to let go of everything that keeps us imprisoned in old paradigms and old karmic patterns. We must make room for the new to arrive if anything is ever going to change.

Yet despite knowing this on one level and understanding why it is necessary. I've been in resistance to it because it feels like giving up. Having come so far. I don't want to let go and move on. I still desire a romantic relationship with the man I recognised as my twin. I still see a future with him. But when I try and fit that desire into where we are now and who we are now, I can see that it isn't right. And I can't make it right. No matter how much I try. I am faced, once again, with the truth. This is something beyond my control. All I can control is how I respond to how things are in the here and now. I can listen to my guidance, let my inner wisdom speak, and follow what is being asked of me. And right now. I am being told to let it go. To let him go.

And I keep arriving at the same wall. Because I don't want to let him go. I don't want to let go of the vision of the future I saw. Or the partnership I feel we can materialise. I don't want to let him leave my life. I don't want to move on and try and find a relationship with someone else. I don't want to stop being devoted to him.

So how I can I let go if I can't let go of him?

This is where I find myself when I ask that question.

How Can I Let Go?

You know the feeling. You've probably been feeling the push to let go too.

The longing that doesn't shift no matter what you do, no matter how many times you talk yourself through it, no matter how much you understand it. You understand it completely. And it stays anyway.

This isn't about whether what you feel is real. It is real. The connection is real. The recognition was real. The way meeting this person cracked something open in you, sent you down a path you couldn't have chosen for yourself, changed the shape of your life. Real.

I'm not here to tell you to let the desire go. I'm not there yet myself. And I'm not sure that's even the work.

Here is what I've come to think the work actually is.

There is the desire. And then there is the grip.

The desire is clean. It is honest. It is simply true about you. You want love. You want this love, or something that feels like this love. You want a partner, a real one. Someone to share the ordinary Tuesday with. That wanting is not the wound. That wanting is not the problem.

The grip is something else.

The grip is the white-knuckled attachment to the specific form it has to take. This person. This timing. This outcome. The grip says: it has to be them. It has to happen before I get any older. It has to look like this or it doesn't count. The grip turns a clean desire into a set of conditions. And life, which has its own ideas, keeps failing to meet them. And every failure feeds something old and tender in you. Which tightens the grip further. Which makes failure more certain.

The Taoists have a way of putting this. The usefulness of a cup is in its emptiness. You cannot fill what is already full.

The grip fills you. It fills you with waiting, with a fixed story about how this has to go, with one person as the only possible answer to the question your life is asking. And that fullness leaves very little room for anything else to arrive.

The Sufis understood longing as sacred. Rumi's reed flute doesn't stop crying when it's reunited with the reed bed. The longing is the music. The separation is what makes the song possible. The desire itself is not the problem. It is the mechanism. It is life pressing forward through you.

But here is the thing I keep coming back to.

There is a wound underneath all of this. It was there before them. It will be there after, if we don't tend to it. And the wound is why we grip. That is the connection most of us miss, or arrive at too quickly, or understand in our heads without feeling it in the place it actually lives.

The wound doesn't announce itself. It doesn't say: I am an old belief about your worth that was written into you before you had the language to question it. It speaks in the first person. It sounds exactly like your own voice. It sounds like clear-eyed assessment of a situation.

It says: they aren't responding because of something wrong with me. The distance is my fault. I am the most likely explanation for every disappointment. The silence means what I feared it means. I push people away. I am too much, or not enough, or both. If this doesn't work out it is because I was never really going to be chosen. Not truly. Not in the way I need.

And here is what the wound does with uncertainty. It cannot tolerate it. Because uncertainty, to the wound, is not neutral. Uncertainty is the space where the worst conclusion lives, and the wound will fill that space every time. Not maliciously. It is trying to protect you. It learned very early that it was safer to expect the worst than to be surprised by it. So it reaches, always, for the reading that confirms what it already believes about you.

This is why we grip. Not because we are weak or damaged or doing the journey wrong. But because somewhere underneath the love, underneath the knowing, underneath the genuine recognition of this soul, there is a part of us that believes we are not safe unless we can control the outcome. That the love will only be real if it arrives in a specific form. That we are only worthy if we are chosen, clearly, visibly, in a way that can be seen.

The wound turns love into a verdict. And it needs that verdict to go a certain way, because if it doesn't, it already knows what that means about us.

Jung would say the figure we cannot release has become a carrier. They are no longer just themselves. They are holding something for us. The hope that life will get better. The proof that we are loveable. The answer to something we have been asking since long before we met them. That weight is not fair to put on another human being. And it is not fair to put on yourself.

And this is the part that matters. The part I have had to sit with. No person arriving can heal the wound. Even if they chose you tomorrow, clearly and fully, the wound would find another question to ask. Another piece of evidence to gather. Another way to doubt. That is not a reflection of them, or of the love, or of whether the connection is real. That is simply how an unhealed wound operates. It moves the goalposts. It always will. The love cannot heal what it didn't cause.

The wound needs tending by you. With help, perhaps. But by you. That is not a bleak fact. It is a freeing one. It means it is already within reach. It doesn't depend on them.

And here is what I want to say to you about the love itself, because this matters too and it is not said enough on this journey.

The love has already done something. It has already made you someone different, someone further along than you were before you met them. That happened. It is not contingent on what comes next. The journey was real. The growth was real. The knowing was real. None of that reaches back and unmakes itself because the ending hasn't arrived yet.

You can be devoted completely and still not know how this ends. The devotion doesn't require certainty. It doesn't require them to have already chosen you. It just requires you to love them. Which you do. Which you have. Through years of very little encouragement and a great deal of absence.

That kind of love is not ordinary. It does not need an outcome to prove its worth.

So this is where I've landed, for now, in this moment of the journey.

I don't have to let the desire go. I am not ready for that and I don't think it is asked of me. But I can loosen the grip. I can let go of the specific form, the specific timing, the demand that it resolve in a way I can see and hold and call proof. I can fall back into the empty space and trust that the universe that has led me this far, that has taught me everything I have learned through the very suffering of this, is also holding me now.

The wisdom traditions all arrive here eventually. Tao. Sufism. Jung. Buddhism. Different languages, the same truth. They were not writing self-help. They were writing about the actual structure of reality. And the actual structure of reality seems to be this:

We suffer when we grip.

We open when we release the grip, not the desire, but the grip.

The attachment to a specific form.

The belief that it has to look exactly like this or not at all.

And perhaps that is the thing the twin flame journey is actually asking of us. Not to stop loving. Not to redirect the love elsewhere before we are ready, because we cannot give honestly from a place we have not reached. But to love without the grip. To want without the demand. To hold the knowing with open hands rather than closed ones.

The desire is yours. It is real and it is right. You are worthy of everything it is reaching toward.

The wound says otherwise. The wound says it will only happen if you do something to make it happen. Because you are not worthy of it happening anyway. Because being loved as you are, simply, without earning it, isn't really available to you.

The desire stays. The grip loosens. And something that has been holding its breath for a very long time gets to exhale.

The Fool* isn't reckless. He doesn't step off the cliff expecting to fall. He just trusts the ground that isn't visible yet.

*The Fool (Words and meaning from Biddy Tarot)

The Fool is numbered 0 – the number of unlimited potential – and so does not have a specific place in the sequence of the Tarot cards. The Fool can be placed either at the beginning of the Major Arcana or at the end. The Major Arcana is often considered The Fool’s journey through life and as such, he is ever present and therefore needs no number.

On The Fool Tarot card, a young man stands on the edge of a cliff, without a care in the world, as he sets out on a new adventure. He is gazing upwards toward the sky (and the Universe) and is seemingly unaware that he is about to skip off a precipice into the unknown. Over his shoulder rests a modest knapsack containing everything he needs. The white rose in his left hand represents his purity and innocence. And at his feet is a small white dog, representing loyalty and protection, that encourages him to charge forward and learn the lessons he came to learn. The mountains behind The Fool symbolize the challenges yet to come. They are forever present, but The Fool doesn’t care about them right now; he’s more focused on starting his expedition.

The Fool is a card of new beginnings, opportunity and potential. Just like the young man, you are at the outset of your journey, standing at the cliff‘s edge, and about to take your first step into the unknown. Even though you don’t know exactly where you are going, you are being called to commit yourself and follow your heart, no matter how crazy this leap of faith might seem to you. Now is a time when you need to trust where the Universe is taking you.

As you undertake this new journey, The Fool encourages you to have an open, curious mind and a sense of excitement. Throw caution to the wind and be ready to embrace the unknown, leaving behind any fear, worry or anxiety about what may or may not happen. This is about new experiences, personal growth, development, and adventure.

The time is NOW! Take that leap of faith, even if you do not feel 100% ready or equipped for what is coming (who knows what it could be?!). Seriously, what are you waiting for? Do you think you need to have everything mapped out before you can begin? No way! Not with The Fool. He ventures out on his journey with just his essential belongings – and now he invites you to do the same. You don’t need to wait for someone to give you the green light or hold off until you have all the skills, tools and resources you think you might need. You are ready! If you’ve been watching for a sign, this is it!

This is a time of great potential and opportunity for you right now. The world is your oyster, and anything can happen. Use your creative mind with a dash of spontaneity to make the most of this magical time and bring forth your new ideas in powerful ways.

The Fool is your invitation to relax, play, and have fun. Treat life like one big experiment and feel yourself in the flow of whatever comes your way. This card asks you to embrace your beautiful, carefree spirit, allowing yourself to connect to the energy that surrounds you and flows through you. Tap into your fullest potential by stepping into a place of wonderment, curiosity and intrigue. Live life as though you were a child once again. Laugh more, dance, and let your heart go free.

This is an excellent card to meditate on if you are struggling with dread, worry or self-doubt in your life. The Fool is your guide, as someone who is daring and carefree. He is the embodiment of who you really are – your free spirit, your inner child, and your playful soul. Any time you experience fear, remember the essence of The Fool as he encourages you to acknowledge that fear and do it anyway! You never know what the future holds, but like The Fool, you must step into the unknown, trusting that the Universe will catch you and escort you along the way. Take a chance and see what happens.

I have been guided to put focused energy into twin flame journey teaching, something I have been doing for years (my first essay on Quora was in 2019), but which I have never previously treated as a central offering.

My way of working is simple. I wait until I fully understand something through my own experience, have evidenced it in my life, and have felt the benefit in my being. Only then do I consolidate the learning into an essay. The essays I have written address the big questions that arise for many of us on this path - the questions that surface during the awakening the journey ignites. I recognise these began as my own questions. We are all different. Yet the deeper answer has always been the same. I have been saying the same essential thing since the beginning; I simply present it through the lens of whatever aspect of the journey is alive for me at the time.

We are all in a process. Fundamentally we are learning to understand ourselves fully so that we can take the reins of our experience and create the life we actually want. Freedom is the goal: freedom from inherited patterns and programs, freedom from the inner limitations that prevent what we desire from manifesting outwardly, freedom from unnecessary pain and fear.

The key to the journey is to understand that this is a process, and that you are the key. This is your journey, your process, your reality being created from within. You already have everything you need to walk it with greater clarity, optimism, and less suffering.

If I can help you reach a place of genuine confidence and trust - in yourself, in your inner wisdom, and in the journey itself - then that is what I am here for. If there is a question I have not yet answered in my essays, or something that is unclear, or that you would like explained again in a different way, please ask.

You can comment on this post, message me, use the chat box (please leave an email address so I can reply if I am offline), or email me at jennifer@conversationswiththegods.com.

I will answer as soon as I can. If the question is relevant for many people, I will respond with an essay.

What I can't do is tell you whether someone is your twin flame. That question of validation is one each of us must reconcile within ourselves; it is itself a significant point of learning on the path. For that, read this essay:

Are they really my twin? Confusion on the twin flame journey.

You can find all my essays here, and more about the twin flame journey and my own experience of it here.

If you would like personal one-to-one support, details of the services I offer are here.

Get in touch to discuss further. I don't keep regular slots; I trust that those who reach out are sent when I have the time, energy, and appropriate wisdom available. All the conversations I have had over the years with people on this path have been mutually enriching.

I look forward to hearing from you!

Love Jenny 🦋