"Stop renting space to others"

My office chair is the color of worn denim and sometimes clients hand me memories like folded receipts. People come to therapy with stories that carry the smell of old smoke and the taste of regret. For years I watched clients replay partnerships and losses as if replaying would change the ending.

I teach a practice that is tactile and plain. We map out what thoughts take rent in a day, we notice the chair they sit in and politely ask them to leave for a while. Letting go is not forgiveness on command. It is choosing not to spend energy on a person who is absent in your present life, like closing a book whose pages only scratch at old wounds.

You do not have to forgive them. You just have to stop renting them space.