Category Archives: Get rid of clutter

Owning My Story

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Brené Brown

From an email sent to a friend:
If you are reading this now … I hit Send
If you aren’t reading this, you won’t even know this conversation almost took place.
I am chuckling as I started this email four hours ago ….
Sometimes I feel incredibly young at heart, sometimes I feel like the vulnerable little girl, wanting to be accepted, sometimes I feel as though I could be a hundred years old.
And I fear I might hit send, and regret it … or hit delete and regret that even more  …..  Well, it’s coming your way.

It seems whenever I meet up with someone new, I have to play the little “how much do I want Vuln-imagesthem to know about me?” game. This is the mental jockeying done with new encounters. Will they be a small part of my life, a work connection, a friendship, deep, superficial?? The mental assessments happen very quickly. In a recent conversation, I realized I said something that would lead to revealing more of myself than I might have wanted … I said, “they contacted me after having read my book.” As the words tumbled from my mouth, it registered in my head that in all the conversations we’d had, I never mentioned my book. The reluctant author in me, does not want patronized sympathy in place of genuine friendship.My grief story is generally not the first thing I share with others.  And yet, I have had the most meaningful connections with people, because of the willingness to be vulnerable. But the little voices in my head warn me, as I verge near the precipice of letting someone in on the painful parts of my story, that when I let my guard down I risk getting hurt. Vulnerablility Stephen Russell has said that “being vulnerable is being open for wounding … being open to the wounds of life means also being open to the bounty and beauty. Don’t mask or deny your vulnerability: it is your greatest asset.” (I can’t say that I am in complete agreement with him—my greatest asset?)
Now I know I don’t want to be, or need to be a jellyfish, exposed to everything, self-protection is needed for survival, but I also know that I want to be willing to risk. I’m still working on the risk plunge, but I am further in that direction in the wanting of it, of trusting my instincts of when to risk. I have not yet succeeded, but I’m taking great aim towards this thing. And then when I get hurt, as inevitably still happens … recovery time is lessened.
I try to keep a soft shell around my heart, it allows for more expansion.

IMG_1537Madeleine l’Engle said: When we were children, we used to think that when we were grown up, we would no longer be vulnerable. But to grow up is to accept vulnerability … To be alive is to be vulnerable.

I also used to think, I would have the answers as I got older … instead I see the number of questions increase.

 

(Jocelyn has published a book on grief; Who is Talking Out of My Head – Grief as an out of Body Experience,  available at DWFriesen Press, and through Amazon)

Does this Clutter make my Butt look Big?

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Things sneak into the closets of my mind …

Your house is your home only when you feel you have jurisdiction over the space. Joan Kron

Every year I am challenged to declutter and this year is no exception, and I have found that one of the best ways to avoid doing and to just talk about doing, is to do online research on the topic, and thus further avoid doing.

January is a busy month for donations at the second hand clothing store where I spend Tues afternoons. People are cleaning out closets. Out with the old and in with the new … and this is the time of year to question why I hang on to some unused items. (But I paid good money for it—and I know I might need it, IMG_1371someday.) While discussing with a friend about the stuff that collects so quickly, she hauled out Peter Walsh’s book, which I interpreted as a divine sign. (Note to self—she is organized and can find items immediately.) And No the clutter does not make my butt look fat, but it does make me feel heavy in spirit. While I have accepted that I will never be a Good Housekeeping poster child, a cluttered space carries a feeling of chaos, and  I prefer a sense of calm in my home. And my calm is disrupted by my clutter. When I have trouble finding things, I know it’s time to re-organize. Most of my friends maintain their homes well, but I am acquainted with a range of house keeping habits, from one that vacuums three times a day, to a spinster librarian, with cats and cat food dishes located in bulk around her small house, to a dining room table that has not seen food for years, because it is covered with stuff. Twenty-one is the number of Srabble games she owns—just in case the church might ever hold a scrabble tournament. (Does no one else own scrabble?) Everyone of us has our own reason for clinging to unneeded items, and lately my reasoning has come into question.

MIT finds a correlation between smarts and messiness, but it’s MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) and the writer went on to suggest messy-desked people might be skewing the results in their favour. Anyways, they say that “Messiness is often associated with artistic, creative and scientific or mathematical genius, spontaneity, but also with carelessness, eccentricity, madness and unreliability.”

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Cleanliness was next to Godliness in my childhood days … my sisters and I rushed through the Saturday morning chores so we could watch Dick Clark’s American Bandstand at noon. An automatic association for me is to clean and then celebrate with dance, not unlike a Guy Davis blues song —his line goes,  had some old shoes on, got new shoes now, and I feel like dancing …. thinking old thoughts, got some new thoughts now, and I feel like dancing … Yes, decluttering the closet and the mind leads to dancing and an increased mood of feel good.

An immaculate home (or conception) has never been part of my story, but the closets have become slightly more organized and I feel like dancing.

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