Making Room ~

​Making Room
I hadn't planned on redecorating my home this summer.
It all started with a chair!
When you are short like me, finding the perfect chair becomes a quest because furniture, like many things in our world, is not designed with shortness in mind.
That quest turned into moving bookshelves, pictures, and mementos I had carried from one home to another because they once meant something to me or had been passed down over the years.
Some held beautiful memories.
Others quietly belonged to a life I no longer live.
Letting Go…
I love objects around me that tell stories. A vase full of stones from hikes and travel, an old photo, a book from my childhood. These things remind me of where I've been. I’m sentimental like that.
But now, I find myself asking, do these things still belong in the life I'm creating?
Healing has a funny way of showing up in ordinary moments.
Like standing in the middle of my living room, holding something I’ve looked at every day for years and realizing it no longer needs to occupy my space or my attention.
Over the past few weeks, I've donated furniture, rearranged rooms, replaced pieces that no longer felt like me, and welcomed more openness into my home.
And in that feeling of openness, I see why I kept parts of my past within eyesight. They were familiar. But it wasn’t about the item; it was about the version of myself it represented.
In the past seven years, I've redesigned so much of my life. I’ve spent time discovering what matters to me and how I want to live my most authentic life. So why was I still making space for pieces that belonged to someone I’m no longer?
It was a recent EMDR session that seemed to unlock something in me. I found myself standing in my quiet living room imagining the opinions of people who are no longer part of my life. Some have passed. Others have simply moved on.
The conversations weren't real. But the feelings were.
It made me think of how often we continue decorating our lives around voices that are no longer in the room.
And that felt like another level of growth…
Recognizing that the people who shaped us don't have to continue shaping every decision we make.
We can honor them without living beneath the weight of their opinions or expectations.
We can love them and still choose differently.
The Quiet After…
As my home has changed, I've realized something else has been changing too.
The constant hum inside me has grown quieter.
For much of my life, I lived in survival mode. I didn't know what it felt like to move through the world with a settled nervous system because I'd rarely experienced it.
Now I catch myself simply being.
I can't seem to stop looking around my home.
For the first time, the space around me feels like it reflects the life within me.
Every piece feels like it belongs.
So do I.
Peace,
J~

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