What If the Thing You’re Trying to Call In Needs Space to Land?

“You can’t receive what’s trying to find you while your hands are still full of what you’ve outgrown.”

I’ve just returned from a transformational retreat in Glastonbury after one of those weekends that is difficult to put neatly into words.

It was powerful. Profound. At times emotional, at times incredibly peaceful. There was frequency work, heart activation, release, reflection and a lot of space to simply be. Glastonbury itself has a way of amplifying things. Such a different energy to my many experiences at Glastonbury festival which it is famous for.

Often described as the heart chakra of the Earth, it felt somehow fitting that the deepest work of the weekend kept returning me to the heart.

Perhaps it is the history, the mythology, the landscape, the people who have travelled there seeking something for centuries. Perhaps it is simply what happens when you remove yourself from the noise of everyday life long enough to hear what has been quietly waiting underneath it.

I went there open to receiving whatever the weekend had to show me. What came through most strongly was something I have spoken about many times, yet somehow understood at an entirely different depth.

We spend so much of our lives asking for more.

More love. More abundance. More freedom. More opportunity. More clarity. A new relationship. A new career. The next level of our business. A different home. A deeper sense of purpose. A version of ourselves that feels lighter, braver, freer and more alive.

We visualise it. Work towards it. Journal about it. Pray for it. Strategise it.

Yet sometimes the question isn’t, “How do I get what I want?”

Sometimes the question is:

Where would it actually go if it arrived?

Because we can be asking life to bring us something new while every seat at the table is still occupied by something old.

Old identities. Old relationships. Old disappointments. Old resentment. Old versions of success. Old obligations. Old beliefs about who we need to be. Old stories about what should have happened by now. Even dreams we have carried for so long that we haven’t stopped to ask whether they still belong to the person we have become.

There is a strange contradiction in personal development. We are taught constantly how to manifest, create, achieve, expand and become. Far less is said about our capacity to release.

Yet receiving requires space.

The Heart Doesn’t Always Need More. Sometimes It Needs Less.

One of the strongest themes of my weekend in Glastonbury was the heart.

We hear phrases like “opening your heart” or “heart activation” and they can sound wonderfully spiritual while remaining slightly abstract. What does opening your heart actually look like when you come home on Monday morning and return to your real life?

For me, it isn’t about walking around in a permanent state of bliss or trying to love everything that has ever happened to you.

Sometimes opening the heart is allowing yourself to want something again after being disappointed.

Sometimes it is forgiving without reopening a door.

Sometimes it is finally grieving the life you thought you would have.

Sometimes it is accepting that the version of you who survived something does not need to remain in survival mode forever.

Sometimes it is allowing somebody to get closer.

Sometimes it is being honest about what you really desire rather than pretending you have outgrown wanting it.

Sometimes it is allowing yourself to receive love, money, opportunity, support or recognition without immediately questioning whether you have earned it.

The armour we build is rarely pointless. Most of it was created intelligently. It protected us at a time when we needed protecting. The problem comes when we continue wearing armour into rooms where there is no longer a battle.

Eventually, protection can become limitation.

This is where how to let go of the past and move forward becomes much more interesting than simply telling yourself to “get over” something. Letting go is not erasing your history. It is deciding that your history no longer gets to occupy every available space in your future.

That distinction matters.

You can honour what happened without building your identity around it. You can love someone and release them. You can appreciate who you once were without continuing to be her. You can treasure a dream and recognise that it belonged to a former version of you.

You can even be grateful for something and still know it is complete.

The Space Between Chapters

We also happen to be moving through an eclipse corridor, which feels beautifully symbolic to me.

Whether eclipses hold spiritual significance for you or whether you simply see them as extraordinary events in the sky, there is something about the imagery that feels particularly relevant. Light obscured. Shadows revealed. Something familiar temporarily appearing different. A moment where what is usually visible disappears and what has been hidden becomes easier to notice.

There are periods in our lives that feel exactly like this.

You know something is ending, yet you cannot quite see what is beginning.

The old identity no longer fits, yet the new one hasn’t fully landed.

The relationship has changed. The career has shifted. The dream has evolved. You have changed internally, although your external world may not have caught up yet.

Human beings are not particularly comfortable here.

We love beginnings once they have names. We love transformation once we can explain what we transformed into. We love the breakthrough when we can package it retrospectively into a beautiful story.

The middle is harder.

The empty room.

The unanswered question.

The space between letting go and knowing what comes next.

Our instinct is often to fill it immediately. Find the next person. Create the next plan. Launch the next thing. Make another goal. Consume another course. Ask another person what we should do.

Perhaps some spaces are not asking to be filled.

Perhaps they are asking to remain empty long enough for something unexpected to find us.

Sometimes the next chapter doesn’t require another strategy. It requires an empty chair.

That was one of my biggest realisations this weekend.

There are moments when growth is not about adding another thing to your life. It is about creating enough internal and external room for life to surprise you.

Five Ways to Create Space for What Comes Next

If you are standing somewhere between who you were and who you are becoming, these are the five places I would look.

1.⁠ ⁠Ask what is complete, not what is wrong

We often hold onto things because we assume releasing them means they failed.

A relationship does not have to have been a mistake to be complete. A business model can have served you beautifully and no longer be the way forward. A friendship can have been deeply meaningful and belong to another chapter. A goal can have motivated you for years and eventually become something you are pursuing because you cannot imagine yourself without it.

Completion and failure are not the same thing.

If you are wondering how to let go of the past and move forward, stop asking only what went wrong. Ask what has simply finished.

There is enormous freedom in recognising completion without needing to manufacture blame.

Look at your life honestly. What are you maintaining because it is genuinely alive, and what are you maintaining because you have invested so much time, identity or emotion into it that releasing it feels frightening?

Your energy knows the difference.

2.⁠ ⁠Notice which identity you are still performing

This one goes deeper.

Sometimes we have already left the situation, yet we are still being the person we needed to be inside it.

The responsible one. The overlooked one. The rescuer. The struggling artist. The woman who has to do everything herself. The person who always has to prove something. The strong one. The person waiting to finally be chosen.

Identity is incredibly powerful because once we decide who we are, we unconsciously collect evidence to keep that identity intact.

Real transformation requires us to notice when an identity that once protected or motivated us has become a cage.

Ask yourself:

Who did I have to become to get myself here?

Then ask:

Who no longer needs to come with me?

There may be qualities you keep. Wisdom you keep. Strength you keep. There may also be vigilance, fear, overworking, proving and self-protection that have completed their assignment.

Thank them.

Then let them retire.

3.⁠ ⁠Create an actual vacancy

We talk about “making space” metaphorically, yet sometimes it needs to become very literal.

Clear the drawer.

Delete the thing.

Have the conversation.

Take something out of the diary.

Stop checking the page.

Remove yourself from the obligation you keep resenting.

Leave an evening unplanned.

Give away the clothes belonging to a version of you that you are never going back to.

There is something powerful about giving an internal decision a physical expression.

When people search how to let go of the past and move forward, they are often hoping to change how they feel. Sometimes feelings follow action. Your environment is constantly giving your nervous system information about who you are and what chapter you are living in.

Make your physical world agree with the future you say you want.

4.⁠ ⁠Stop filling every gap

This may be the hardest one.

When something leaves, resist the urge to immediately replace it.

We are so uncomfortable with emptiness that we can mistake the absence of certainty for a problem that needs solving.

It doesn’t always.

There is a sacred period after release where the temptation is to reach backwards simply because the future has not introduced itself yet.

Don’t confuse unfamiliarity with wrongness.

The empty space may feel quiet because you are accustomed to noise. Peace can initially feel like boredom when your system has been trained on intensity. Freedom can feel strangely unsettling when you are accustomed to having something to fix.

Learning how to let go of the past and move forward also means learning how to tolerate the beautiful discomfort of not immediately knowing what replaces it.

Stay there for a moment.

Let the chair remain empty.

5.⁠ ⁠Become available to receive

We talk a lot about being ready. I have started thinking much more about being available.

They are not quite the same.

You can believe you are ready for love while being emotionally unavailable to intimacy. You can say you are ready for abundance while rejecting opportunities that arrive differently from how you expected. You can want visibility while hiding the most authentic parts of yourself. You can desire freedom while remaining fiercely attached to control.

Availability requires openness.

It asks us to loosen our grip on exactly how the next chapter should look.

That can be confronting, particularly if you are someone who has spent years making things happen.

There is a point where effort has done its job.

Your next move may not be another push.

It may be allowing.

You Cannot Receive With a Clenched Fist

Perhaps this is what I really brought home from Glastonbury.

Not another answer.

Not another thing to achieve.

Space.

There were parts of myself I could feel softening over the weekend. Places where I realised I had been holding on more tightly than I knew. Some of that was emotional. Some of it was identity. Some of it was simply the very human desire to know where everything is going.

The heart has its own intelligence. It also has its own timing.

Opening it does not mean abandoning discernment, boundaries or wisdom. It means noticing where discernment quietly became defence. Where independence became an inability to receive. Where strength became armour. Where “I’m fine” became a way of never admitting what you truly want.

This is why how to let go of the past and move forward cannot simply be about getting rid of painful memories. The past also contains identities, loyalties, expectations and versions of ourselves that we may secretly be afraid to outgrow.

There can even be grief in becoming the person you once begged to be.

Because she cannot take everything with her.

Every expansion contains a goodbye.

Perhaps that is why true transformation can feel both exhilarating and tender. Something is being born, certainly. Something is also being released.

The old version of you deserves compassion. She got you here.

She simply does not get to decide what happens next.

Your Life Needs Somewhere to Put the New

Maybe you are reading this knowing exactly what your “thing” is.

Maybe it is a person.

Maybe it is a version of your career.

Maybe it is resentment towards something that happened years ago.

Maybe it is a story about yourself you have repeated for so long that it feels like a fact.

Maybe there is nothing dramatic to release at all. Perhaps your life is simply overcrowded. Too much noise, too many opinions, too many commitments, too much information, too little room to hear yourself.

You do not need to burn your entire life down in the name of transformation.

Sometimes one honest decision changes the frequency of everything.

One no.

One boundary.

One cancelled obligation.

One admission.

One thing finally forgiven.

One door properly closed.

One evening where you do nothing except listen.

One willingness to stop chasing what keeps asking you to abandon yourself.

If you have been searching for how to let go of the past and move forward, perhaps the answer is not to force yourself forward at all.

Release what you already know has ended.

Then create space.

Real space.

The kind that initially feels uncomfortable because there is no guarantee attached to it.

The kind where you are no longer filling every silence with an old story.

The kind where your heart has room to open rather than simply endure.

The kind where life finally has somewhere to place the thing you have been asking for.

We are so conditioned to believe that the next chapter begins when something arrives.

Sometimes it begins much earlier.

It begins the moment you finally make room for it.

You do not always need to know what is coming next. Sometimes your only job is to stop standing in the doorway.

With Love

Jenna ✨