By Marie-Dominique Rail

Posted on November 25, 2023

Mantra for Saying Goodbye

“I release with love, I honor what has been, I trust what is becoming.

Every ending is a doorway, and every goodbye carries the breath of a new beginning.

Saying Goodbye

There are moments on our path when the word “goodbye” finds us. Not because we choose it, not because we desire it, but because life, in its natural flow, invites us to release and continue walking forward.

We say goodbye to a story into which we poured all that we had to give: our love, our energy, our trust, our resources, our dreams. We believed with all our heart that it would last, that it would hold. We tried to keep what was slipping through our hands like grains of sand. And yet, no matter how sincere our devotion, sometimes life asks us to let go and accept the closing of a cycle.

We say goodbye to a person. Not always in anger or rupture, but sometimes in the gentle recognition that our paths are simply no longer meant to cross. The bond remains in gratitude, yet the story shifts its form. Within this “goodbye,” a part of us bows to what has been, knowing that nothing will ever be quite the same again.

We say goodbye to a place, a home, a landscape that has carried us, nurtured us, witnessed a portion of who we are. We close a door for the last time, our heart tender, held between nostalgia and the call of the unknown.

We say goodbye to an animal of light, a faithful companion who understood us without words. Their absence leaves an immense emptiness, far greater than their size, yet perfectly aligned with the depth of their presence in our lives.

And then, there are the small goodbyes of everyday life: a habit we release, a season that fades, a dream we gently surrender to the river of impermanence.

All these farewells remind us of a simple, essential truth: everything passes. Nothing remains still. Our joys, like our sorrows, transform. And perhaps this is life’s greatest teaching—to love without clinging, to cherish without holding, to savor each moment in its purity, knowing it belongs only to now.

Saying “goodbye” is a way of honoring the passage. It is to recognize the beauty of what has been lived, even as it ends. Though the word may sound like closure, it also opens—toward a new chapter, another experience, a fresh breath of life.

For in truth, every “goodbye” carries within it the quiet promise of a “hello.”