Time to heal.

A little reflective post..

We have really picked up momentum with our decluttering efforts over the past month of so. As in, really picked up the pace. The list of things 'gone' includes two washing machines, a garden shredder, three chickens, two roosters, a massage table, a bloke stereo system, more than half of our books, household trinkets, some clothes, dvd's, cd's, gym equipment, sporting equipment, the list goes on. Looking back, it doesn't seem like so much, but I know there's things I've missed, and the simple fact that I can't even remember them tells me that - we just didn't need them. 

It's interesting to take a good, honest look at the things we own, and truly consider why we own them, and whether we need to own them. Particularly things that have an emotional attachment of some kind. Family heirlooms, gifts from family, things held onto since childhood. I am finding that a lot of the 'stuff' that I've been hanging onto, and lugging around through house move after house move, has a relevance to me from a particular point in my life. And that hanging onto it is not necessarily healthy for me. So the decluttering of physical stuff is having a real impact on an energetic and emotional level for me.

Like the stamp album I put together in the weeks following the death of my father, when I was 13 years old. I had no interest in stamps. But is was something to do, something to fill the void (like that void can be filled), something to keep my hands busy and my mind ever so slightly focused, while my world crumbled around me. That stamp album remained on the bookshelf wherever I moved to. Never touched, never looked at, never with a reason to keep it. So I let it go. I packed it up with a bunch of other books into a box destined for the op shop. And then I forgot about it, until that particular box went into the big red bin, and I had the sudden realisation of what had been in there. And then a wave of nausea washed over me, and then I felt lightness. Letting go of such a small, innocent possession as a stamp album, but more importantly, letting go of what it represented for me. Allowing me to move on.

And the cat and mouse mugs, a Christmas gift from my mother in a different time and a different place. I want to let them go, as we have many more mugs than we need. And I don't particularly like them, I never did. They are ok. But there is some kind of emotional hold on them, such that every time I think 'right, they're going into the box', I resist and hold back. So they remain in the kitchen. Maybe tomorrow I will part with them, and all the others that have been gifts over the years (most of them). And make space for us to get some new (old) mugs of our very own.

And the music books from when I studied piano, so many years ago. Exercise books with my teacher's scribble filling the pages. Stuff, just stuff, tied to a different point in my life, and so totally unnecessary for my life now. And not just unnecessary, but actually, I feel, holding me back from being the person I need to be now. All these things that I've been letting go of are things of the earlier version of 'me', things keeping me stuck in that earlier version. Hindering the evolution into the me of now. I'm loving the process, the purging of the unnecessary, the consideration of every single thing I own. Do I need this? Do I use it? Does it have meaning for me? Am I holding onto it purely out of emotional attachment, and if so, am I prepared to let it go?

This is a very healing path, the decluttering. By the second and third round, at any rate. The first round? That's the easy stuff. The second, third, fourth? That's the stuff where the attachments lie. But the momentum builds, and so more stuff keeps going out the door. And as it goes, more space is created to be the person I am now, and let go of the person who got me here. The convoluted path and the emotional baggage of the past is not important. Here, now. That is what is important to me.