What Love teaches us about impermanence…

“Even as I hold you, I am letting you go.” ~ Alice Walker

There are some sentences that don’t ask to be understood so much as lived with. This is one of them. It lands quietly, then keeps unfolding over time. I hear versions of this tension every day in the therapy room: the longing to hold on, and the fear of loss; the desire for closeness, and the equally powerful need for freedom. We want to love fully without disappearing, we want to stay without suffocating and we want to be held without being owned.

Alice Walker’s words speak directly into this human paradox. They name something essential about love, attachment, and the reality of impermanence; that connection is not static, it is not something we secure once and for all. It is something we practice, moment by moment — while knowing that nothing stays exactly as it is.

From a therapeutic perspective, this is not a romantic idea, it is a deeply practical one.

We are always in motion

One of the illusions many of us carry, often unconsciously, is that there will be a point where things settle; where relationships stabilise, identities solidify, and the ground beneath us stops shifting. Much of our anxiety comes from trying to reach that imagined place.

But life doesn’t work like that.

We are always in motion; our bodies change, our roles change, our relationships change. Even when we are sitting still, something in us is moving — emotionally, psychologically, relationally. The people we love today will not be the same people tomorrow; we will not be the same people tomorrow.

In therapy, this becomes visible very quickly. A client may come in saying, “I just want things to go back to how they were,” or “I want to feel the way I used to.” Beneath that wish is often grief; grief for a version of life that no longer exists. And yet, rather than mourning it, we often try to resurrect it, we hold tighter and cling to familiar pattern — we try to freeze time.

Alice Walker’s quote offers a different posture. One that acknowledges closeness without denial and suggests that true holding already contains letting go.

Holding without gripping

There is a profound difference between holding and gripping, though they can look similar from the outside. Gripping is driven by fear, whereas holding is rooted in presence.

Gripping says: “Don’t change. Don’t leave. Don’t become something I can’t control.”

Holding says: “I am here with you, as you are, for as long as we share this moment.”

Many relational struggles, between partners, parents and children, even colleagues can be traced back to this confusion. When fear enters the system, holding turns into gripping, love becomes management and care becomes control.

In therapy, this often shows up as exhaustion; people are tired of trying to keep things together, tired of monitoring others’ emotions and tired of being vigilant against loss. Yet the idea of loosening their grip feels terrifying, if I don’t hold on, will everything fall apart?

Francis Weller offers a radical and grounding perspective here: everything we love, we will lose. Not because we are doing something wrong, but because this is the cost of loving at all. Nothing we love is exempt from impermanence; not people, not roles, not identities, not even versions of ourselves. When we resist this truth, we suffer more. When we allow it to inform how we love, something surprisingly freeing can happen.

The freedom of impermanence

At first glance, the idea that we will lose everything we love can feel bleak. But in therapeutic work, I often see the opposite effect when this reality is gently integrated, it brings people back into the present.

If nothing is guaranteed, then this moment matters. Impermanence, when acknowledged rather than denied, can soften our relationship to control. It can reduce the frantic energy that often lives beneath our attachments. It can help us love with our hands open rather than clenched fists. This doesn’t mean becoming detached or indifferent. Letting go is not the same as withdrawing. In fact, when done well, it often deepens intimacy, because presence becomes less conditional, less transactional and less driven by outcome.

In the therapy room, this is often where grief and gratitude meet.

Grief as a companion to love

Francis Weller speaks beautifully about grief as the natural response to loving in a world shaped by loss. Not just the grief of death, but the quieter, cumulative griefs we carry: the loss of youth, of dreams, of certainty, of versions of ourselves we can never return to.

Many of us were never taught how to grieve these losses. Instead, we were taught to be resilient, positive, forward-looking. While these qualities have their place, they can also leave grief unattended, leaking out sideways as anxiety, irritability, or numbness. When people begin to name what they are losing and not just what they want to keep, something often shifts. There is relief in telling the truth, relief in acknowledging that love and loss are not opposites, but companions.

Alice Walker’s quote holds this duality with remarkable tenderness. “Even as I hold you, I am letting you go.” There is grief in that sentence, but there is also reverence; it honours the bond without denying its fragility.

Letting go as an ongoing practice

One of the misconceptions about letting go is that it is a one-time event, as if there is a moment where we finally release something and then move on, untouched. In reality, letting go is a practice, something we return to repeatedly, often imperfectly.

• We let go of expectations.
• We let go of how we thought things would unfold.
• We let go of who we needed someone to be.
• We let go of who we thought we were.

And then, inevitably, we find ourselves holding again — forming new attachments, new hopes, new loves. This is not a failure of letting go, it is the rhythm of being alive.

In relational therapy, this rhythm becomes particularly important. Healthy relationships are not those without rupture or change, but those that can tolerate movement, that allow each person to evolve without interpreting change as abandonment.

Holding while letting go means staying connected without insisting on sameness. It means loving the person in front of you, not the version you first met or the one you wish they would remain.

Being present with ourselves

Many people I work with are holding onto outdated self-concepts; identities formed in response to earlier environments, relationships, or survival strategies. They may no longer fit yet letting them go feels risky. Who will I be without this role? Without this coping mechanism? Without this story?

Therapeutically, learning to hold oneself with compassion while allowing old identities to fall away is delicate work. It involves grief, fear, and often a deep sense of unknowing, but it also creates space for something more alive to emerge. To hold yourself while letting yourself go is to allow growth without self-abandonment. To stay present to who you are becoming, not just who you have been.

Love without possession

At its heart, Alice Walker’s quote is a statement about love without possession, intimacy that does not rely on ownership, and connection that honours autonomy.

This kind of love is not always easy. It requires tolerating uncertainty. It asks us to stay awake to the reality that nothing, and no one is guaranteed. Yet it also offers something rare in return: a deeper experience of aliveness.

When we stop trying to secure love, we can start experiencing it.

When we loosen our grip, we often feel more, not less.

When we accept impermanence, presence becomes possible.

I don’t see this as a philosophical idea, but as a lived practice, one that unfolds in relationships, in grief, in moments of transition, and in the quiet choices we make about how we show up.

To hold while letting go is not a contradiction, it is an act of courage, a commitment to love without denying reality. To stay open in a world that will break our hearts, again and again and to choose connection anyway. Perhaps that is the most honest form of love there is.