Written by
Joan Green Sullivan
“‘Why did you do all this for me?’ Wilber asked. ‘I don’t deserve it. I’ve never done anything for you.’ ‘You’ve been my friend,’ replied Charlotte. ‘That in itself is a tremendous thing.’”
-E.B. White, Charlotte’s Web
In my teenage bedroom, I had a poster of a seagull flying over the ocean soaring through sunbeams. Its message was simple:
“If you love something, set it free. If it comes back, it’s yours. If not, it was never meant to be.”
This seemingly simple proverb is a life lesson, in part, about relationships. The advice is easy to give, but incredibly hard to follow.
Relationships are tremendous things! They are simple, complicated, delicate, solid, tenuous, enduring and so much more. Building a relationship and being in a relationship are different sides of the same coin. Most of us struggle with the who, what, when, why, and how of relationships.
In my sixty years, I have come to understand there is a sequence to relationships.
Relationships must begin with myself, actually learning to love myself.
I will skip the personal struggle and simply tell y’all that I am learning to surrender my doubts, so here are some of my hard-earned truths:
- God loves me.
- He says that I am beautifully and wonderfully made.
- I am worthy of His love and receive blessings because His son died so that I am saved and healed.
Now, this is my journey and may not resemble yours. I find that the more I learn to love and accept myself, the easier it becomes to build relationships with others. For me, the relationship blueprint includes three vital elements: Love, Release, and Acceptance.
Mindful Love
Relationships are treasures, gathered like seashells along our journey. The shells glisten, sparkle and capture our attention.
We choose ones to pick up and carry for ourselves; others we pass by for someone else to choose.
Along the way, our sand pails become full. The time comes when we empty the pail and reexamine our shells, our choices. Maybe it’s a significant birthday, graduation, marriage, move, retirement, or grief that requires something or even someone different than it did before. Maybe it’s a rainy day or a dry season that makes us peek again at what is in our pails. I find that mine is usually full and sometimes overflowing.
Difficult Release
“Set it free.” That’s the struggle. I do not want to… I’ve worked hard to build and maintain connections. It’s not easy to let go when Wilber’s words, “I don’t deserve it,” echo so loudly in the quiet of my mind. So often I just want to buy a ten-gallon bucket to replace my simple pail, and yet…that bigger bucket is rarely the answer.
“Set it free.” That is a choice or even the choice. Let it go, especially when it is difficult. Experience the waiting season that comes next.
I have lost relationships through job changes, death, and choice, and for me personally, I have found that the struggle with making the decision is much more difficult than the patience required in the waiting season.
I cannot “set it free” until I am ready to accept that the relationship may not have been mine to keep in the first place.
Deliberately choosing to trust and release any relationship hurts; it can leave wounds that scar but rarely fully heal. I buried my first husband knowing that memories, tears, and loneliness were all I had to carry in my pail in that moment. I walked away from a 30+ year friendship because our values and life choices grew into toxic opposition. Those memories, the good and bad? Into my pail they went. I released my son to a tsunami named Addiction, expecting I would bury him next to his father one day. As anyone who loves an addict knows, sometimes the best way to love them is to let them go.
And then, but yet, still…if a relationship comes back to you, it is never the same.
Tremendous Acceptance
I remarried six months ago. The love returned with a completely unexpected man in the most incredible way. Last week my son celebrated his first year of sobriety, with a chip and a tribe of people who love him unconditionally. And the long time friend? That one stays, a shell on the beach, one that I won’t allow back in my pail, for my own good.
So my pail, which was nearly barren five years ago, is now filled with shiny shells, again. I think, in the end, relationships are about the process of loving, choosing, losing, and finding ourselves, and “that in itself is a tremendous thing.”
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JOAN GREEN SULLIVAN is a native of Augusta, Georgia, where she taught for almost 30 years. After losing her first love, an Air Force veteran, to an aggressive brain cancer, and, soon after, enduring open heart surgery herself, she found love again and remarried an Army National Guard veteran in late 2025. Joan is a newlywed, widow, mom, MaaMaa, sister, aunt, friend, and retired educator. She is a fighter in every sense of the word: a sexual assault survivor, recovering alcoholic, a Black Belt in Kempo Karate. She is using creativity in words and art along with a deliberately cultivated positive attitude to learn how to live again, advocate for caregivers, enjoy her life, and face its challenges. While caring for her husband, she began writing again with Mission Belonging which led her to Veteran’s Spouse Project. Her work has been published in three anthologies: We Were Not Alone: A Mission Belonging Anthology; Tea with My Monster: A Mental Health Awareness Anthology from Beyond the Veil Press; How to Heal a Bloodline: A Mental Health Awareness Anthology from Beyond the Veil Press. Her art can be found online in “In This Together” A Digital Exhibit by Mission Belonging. Her monologue, “Defiant Confidence,” is part of the In*Between Series with Veteran’s Spouse Project.
She is still here. She still has much to learn and share.
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