Jun 26
(I am still fairly annoyed that, for some reason or other, I am unable to upload posts from work to my bloggity blog place… I blame it on some special hidden bit of WordPress that I am not aware of. No matter what it is, I cannot update directly from my work computer to my blog and so I find that sometimes I forget to update the blog… oops, my bad)
Okay… so I have done something for myself, part of self-care, that I have been struggling with on my own for a long time.
I signed up for an e-course! Specifically, the Making Space for your Goddess to Shine ecourse.
When I did this I got a lot of “feedback” from people in my life asking WHY I thought I needed to spend money to just go through my house and toss out crap I didn’t need anymore? The questions and comments ranged from the simple head patting type (“okay, you *think* you need help with things, if you really say so”) to the disparaging (“Why would you spend your good money on something that you should be able to do by yourself? What is this really going to show you that you don’t already know?)… and yet I still did it.
What can I say, I’m stubborn that way.
Because, despite knowing that I am absolutely ENTITLED to throw things away (or give them away or sell them or just get them out of my home in some manner) I have been resistant to doing it.
I have stuff. Mounds of stuff. Piles of Stuff. Massive mountains of stuff.
And the net effect of it is a sense of dreading overwhelm…
Which results in the internal dialog that goes like this:
“OMG, I have too much stuff, I feel stifled and closed in”
“Then get rid of it”
“But OMG, where do I start?”
“But OMG, where do I start?”
And (because I am me) the most logical place to start is not anywhere PHYSICAL. Nope, in order to make any sort of change type thing I need to UNDERSTAND what is making me feel the feels I feel…
Which is why I needed the guidance of something like this… because I suspect that the sense of creeping anxiety and discomfort in my home is less about the STUFF in it and more about something deeper that I am not allowing myself to notice…
And beause I needed to stop THINKING about spirituality and start DOING it (and by doing it I mean “build an altar”, which is something I seriously put off for a year…) and so a course that not only would help me discover something about myself, declutter my apartment AND give me a gentle push to set up an altar? Well… that’s gotta be worth a small hit to the credit card! (dont’ worry, I’ve already paid that off!!)
And so I paid…
And week one started and I dutifully downloaded and printed out the materials for week one…
Then was overwhelmed by the creeping anxiety and ran away
Literally… I freaked out and stayed out of my home for most of the week. I mean, I read over things, I did a bit of thinking about it… then I fled my home for everything but supper and sleeping. I shopped, I walked, I went of of town to stay with Reg and his daughters (Thursday through Sunday nights)…
I felt… alone.
So THIS week (which SHOULD be week 2) I decided to start week 1 over again and work them in combination. I had started to identify THINGS and categories for things… and I had planned out and started building my altar, I went through the sheets again and wrote down things as they occurred to me… and I checked in on Twitter to see if there were any other people taking the course along with me, out there… somewhere…
(You see, I also had a really hard time actually reaching out for support from the leaders of the course, but that’s another blog post… probably the previous one, actually).
And through this process I got support from @zenatplay and @kyeli (of Pace and Kyeli and The Freak Revolution (of whic I am also a very VERY quiet member)). I have to admit that once I didn’t feel ALONE in the process, I started to feel a little bit better about the idea of being in the process.
And I started to actually THINK about what was going on and my history and the creeping anxiety…
And it hit me…
I haven’t EVER spent the time to think about what I needed from my home!! That was the KEY to this whole feeling of unease in my space.
2 years ago (June 24) I finally made the move to leave my marriage after almost 10 years.
Since then I have not felt completely comfortable in my own space or by myself.
I have viewed my home as just a shelter, a temporary space.
When I moved into my home I had almost nothing.
The only thing I had to take comfort in was my computer. And I retreated online to find solace in my feeling of creeping anxiety at being alone in a space that hadn’t felt like mine. I started retreating when my marriage started to falter, when I stopped feeling safe and comfortable within the home of my husband… and it was the only place I felt safe with now…
The space was huge and empty and I felt hollow and alone… a small scrunched up soul in a huge vast emptiness trying to define myself. The comforts I had from a “home” were gone, I had none left.
TheEx dumped things that he didn’t want onto me. These were not things that I felt a particular connection with, but I felt I should take them for the very reason that I had NOTHING.
The space and emptiness, after having spent so many years collecting meaningful and beautiful things, hurt a lot. I felt LOST. I felt ALONE. I felt SCARED.
I felt HOME-less.
Because I was.
I had a space to live, I had shelter. I didn’t have a HOME.
I bought THINGS. Things that filled the space in my apartment. I bought things to fill my time. I bought CLUTTER… ho-hum items that didn’t do anything for me in any capacity. And why? Because the loss of so much loved history was hurting me.
This I realized last night:
The stuff I am holding, the stuff that is overwhelming me, has been filling space because I have felt ANXIOUS about the losses I have suffered, because I have felt uncomfortable facing who I am and what I want. BECAUSE I have not addressed MY needs and because I have not allowed myself the permission to make the space into what *I* need rather than just a place to hold stuff…
The stuff can’t replace my needs for love and acceptance. It can’t repair my broken family. It can’t create love.
But I can. I can make a place to flourish. To learn to be accepted for who I am, to accept the love that is all around me, to accept who I have become and the changes I have gone through unfurling after my marriage.
It’s not about getting rid of stuff… not really. Its about helping the soul flourish — finding the stuff that helps and reutilizing or removing the stuff that gets in the way or holds the soul back…
Tags: creativity, declutter goddesses, family, spirituality
Oh my goodness…
I have tears in my eyes reading this dearheart.
This is incredibly beautiful. Powerful. Precious.
Wow. Thank you. I am so, so, so honoured to read this and to be a part of this journey with you.
Big love, joy and sacredness to you on your journey,
Goddess Leonie
August 9th, 2009 at 10:49 am
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