Goodbye

Merriam-Websters defines the word "goodbye" as being a concluding remark or gesture at parting, but if you have ever had to use the word you know its easier said than done.

Goodbye doesn't just mean you are leaving, it can mean that you are moving forward or that you are releasing a part of yourself. Goodbye can mean letting go of old feelings, or even people. But at every sincere goodbye, there is a person crying.
Its hard to let things go, whether that thing is someone you love, or whether it is just a secret you have been holding on to for way to long. Whatever it is you meet a crossroad where you can either carry on with it forever or leave it far behind you so that you can move forward.
Every stage of our lives ends in a parting of sorts. When you are young you part with the fiction to succumb to reality. When you move on into your early teens you part with your innocence and try new things, no necessarily bad things, just new. When you leave high school you part with old friends, whom you may never see again, you part with a life of simplicity that you once thought was complicated. The list could go on and on of things we part with every day.
But do we ever stop to say goodbye. To look back and give ourselves closure in a chapter, that may or may not have been happy, is to find peace in moving forward.
You can never move on without saying goodbye first.
Your goodbye may not be a person, it may be an attitude, or a possession, but whatever it is that you need to say goodbye to, let it be a happy goodbye.
Let yourself relish in the feelings of the good times and simply let go of everything else. Because a simple goodbye is not forgetting it happened, but letting yourself love enough to embrace the future.
The future is always waiting for us, it just take that simple word to let yourself believe it is possible.

Goodbye isn't just a word anymore...but an action of compassion.