stuff

From the Ashes

February 9, 2015

When people let go of their clutter, the spiritual work can deeply penetrate. – Tosha Silver, Outrageous Openness

burning our stuff One extremely short month tomorrow, we leave the UK.

I haven’t been writing very much because all we have been doing since my last post about stuff, is getting rid of more stuff. The amount of stuff two humans can accumulate over the course of a few years is absolutely absurd.

Stuff.

The question that has been echoing through our rooms and across our days is always the same: why did I keep this? And we know that no matter how carefully we choose, when we open the boxes at the other end, the question will probably be the same: why did we keep this?

Why do we keep anything? How does one thing – ordinary to all but us – end up on the permanent life list? How does one thing make the cut?

We have made the cut many, many times. Today, again, we ask: yes or no? Things that made the yes pile three weeks ago are greeted with a sigh of exasperation and a resounding ‘no!’

Why?

All I can think is that as we get closer and closer to the end of this life and the beginning of the next, we are shedding more and more layers of ourselves as we shed the stuff of our past. Security blankets, buffers, and the emotional baggage of our past life – so present a month ago – are seeming less and less like the new us. We can’t see how this thing – once so precious – fits into the new version of ourselves. As we pack, the new versions of ourselves are beginning to emerge.

And they don’t need this stuff.

Today we burned a whole lot of stuff. Old journals, paper copies of Unfurl, receipts, and piles and piles and piles of my notes and writing went up in smoke. The last thing that went on the fire was a package of Taos Sage. Putting it close to the edge so that it would smoke instead of burn, we smudged ourselves in the clouds of smoke, releasing everything we didn’t want to take with us.

I know that things will get messier and more complicated and more wrenching and more challenging before they get better. I know that it will get harder and easier to say goodbye to the items that have made up our lives. But I also know that no matter what, a month from now, we will get on a plane and begin the next chapter of our lives. No matter what, two weeks later, we will land in Costa Rica. And I know that no matter what, we will have chosen, consciously, every single thing that is coming with us.

And that feels really good.

Costa Rica, Leap and the net will appear, The Move

On Stuff

January 13, 2015

Those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything. – George Bernard Shaw

Yesterday my husband found me sitting on the floor of our office debating the future of a pile of alphabet magnets. A pile of alphabet magnets that I had not seen in 6 years. A pile of alphabet magnets I had forgotten I had.

For one brief moment of madness, I was debating packing them.

Two contradictory things happen when you commit to getting rid of almost everything and starting again: you come face-to-face with your former selves and you have to pack for a self you don’t know yet.

As I pack these boxes, it is my former self that I am discarding. The things that in other circumstances I might have kept for another 10, 20, 30 years, are now going into charity boxes or finding new homes via ebay. And with every pass through a room or across a shelf, something else feels less important. Something that a month ago was definitely coming, goes into a pile, not making the cut-off criteria of: do I love it enough to ship it? Does it match who I want to be?

I won’t be unpacking these boxes. My future self will be. The self that opens these boxes will be one that is no longer wrapped up in the tying up of a great big job. She will have nearly a year of living without this stuff under her belt. She will have committed to a place. Will my future self be grateful for the things collected in her previous life? Will she even recognise them? Or will she wonder what the hell I was thinking putting these things in a box and shipping them across the world?

And how do I make those choices for her?

The ironic thing is that we thought we had made a decision to change our lives. What we have found is that there is no single decision that changes your life. A change like this – just like real life – is made up of thousands of small, seemingly insignificant decisions. And in the end, you can only get there by making one decision at a time, doing the best you can, and knowing your future self will understand.

At least I hope she will.

Because the alphabet magnets aren’t coming.

Do you want to be part of a warm and open-hearted community of women, gathered around a virtual hearth fire? Would you like to join those women for discussion about spirituality, questions, self-care and magic?

Do you crave open, honest conversation about spirituality?

Then we would love it if you would join Sas Petherick and I for Heart and Hearth.

Costa Rica, fear, Leap and the net will appear

Let It Go

January 5, 2015

This is not a light and casual Full Moon! It it kicking off 2015 in a big way- with focus on what needs to shift, change, transform, end and/or be released in our lives. – Divine Harmony via Mystic Mama

clothes meghan genge 9 weeks tomorrow. This was the first thought I had when I woke this morning at 4.53am. We leave 9 weeks tomorrow. How am I going to get it all done?

Having just looked at my lunar app (of course), I have discovered that 4.53am was the exact moment the moon became full. And apparently this full moon means business.

Post-Christmas has been clear-o-rama-fest here. Every charity box from here to London is full of our old clothes (why did I keep them?!) and Ebay is humming under the weight of us selling other people our crap.

Over Christmas we – and probably just about every other household in the western world – watched Disney’s Frozen. In the few days afterwards, Mark and I would jokingly break into the chorus of ‘Let it Go,’ flinging our arms wide and taking in the piles we were accumulating. In the past few days it has become slightly less joyful and a little more stressful.

Let it go.

Why do we keep this stuff? Why does it take a major move to make us get rid of it? In the months since the first wrenching cleanse, have I missed a single thing we tossed?

Can I even remember what those things were?

Reading about tonight’s full moon, in the quiet hours before the stuff cleanse begins again, I am struck by how much I want to let go. I would not be sad if someone else came and just took all of this away, but I know that this shedding is an important part of the process for us. I would be overjoyed if I had woken up this morning and had suddenly become the best version of myself, but I know that energetic shedding is a part of the process too.

It’s all the same. It’s all stuff.

We are lucky. We get to decide what we are taking to Costa Rica, but we are under no illusions that WE will be any different unless we also consciously choose to let go of more than just our stuff. So we are going there too. It hasn’t been pretty, and it hasn’t been fun. But we are going there. The small, frightened, limited, hard-on-ourselves us aren’t invited along on this move. They are being released like a pair of worn-out pajamas. And apparently this moon is in full support. (I do love a good support team.)

Let it go.

Because that is when the magic happens.

Do you crave open, honest conversation about spirituality?

Then we would love it if you would join Sas Petherick and I for Heart and Hearth.

From the Ashes

When people let go of their clutter, the spiritual work can deeply penetrate. – Tosha Silver, Outrageous Openness

On Stuff

Those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything. – George Bernard Shaw

Let It Go

This is not a light and casual Full Moon! It it kicking off 2015 in a big way- with focus on what needs to shift, change, transform, end and/or be released in our lives. – Divine Harmony via Mystic Mama

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