Moving Forward With Intention

 I cannot remember a time in my life when I felt so compelled to move forward, to shed reminders of the past, and to make room for what lies ahead.  I am a sentimental person at heart, and often find it difficult to physically release items and tokens that have been given to me or that I have collected through relationships, experiences, and other routine aspects of life.  From time to time, I have found myself in need of a good purge, usually because I need more room to store things, or have a significant move on the horizon, and the thought of packing spurs me into action.  Those clean-out sessions are reactionary in nature -- often, decisions being made about what to keep and what to pitch are made on the fly and without much thought. rat

This time, the urge to trim has come from a different place entirely.  I started to notice a desire to cull my belongings as the winter solstice arrived a couple of weeks ago.  Heading out of the year of the snake and into the year of the fire horse, the messaging about shedding what you no longer require has not gone unnoticed.  It started with a desire to really look in my closet and make some rational decisions about the clothes I have been holding onto.  The majority of items hanging in my closet represent my days spent working corporately, pre-pandemic, and do not suit the work I do now, nor the work I envision myself doing in the future.  The dust that clung to the shoulders of blazers was a testament to this fact, along with the discomfort I felt at the thought of donning much of what I was looking at. So, I started a donation bag and began to fill it with what no longer served me, feeling myself become lighter as each piece was released and prepared to fill someone else's wardrobe. 

Once that was complete, I began to look at my hope chest, quietly sitting near my bed, filled to the brim with...things.  I knew vaguely some of what resided inside of it, but hadn't given its contents the light of day for several years, probably since I moved into my apartment nearly six years ago.  This was going to take some time and some coffee to sort through.  Despite the urge to quietly tiptoe past this rabbit hole of memorabilia, I knew that this was absolutely where my energy needed to be spent.  So I grabbed a very large mug and a bag, and I opened the lid and began to explore.  

What struck me was the pace at which I was approaching this task.  It was not with grim determination to complete the job in one afternoon, nor was it done half-heartedly while scrolling IG for reels to send my friends.  It was done intentionally and with reverence for the fact that everything I had stored in this gorgeous trunk had been placed in there at some point in time with the intention that it was worth saving. Instead of plowing through it all, reactively sending momentoes to the donation bin or shredding pile, I took my time with what I uncovered, thinking back on the memories and story that these items represented.  I then considered whether or not these stories were still relevant in my life, and if they were significant enough to continue taking space.  It took a couple of sessions to completely review the chest's contents, and I know that I will need a redo to go back through printed photos to see if there are some that I should be passing along to others for their collections. When I finally closed the lid and stepped back, I felt peace fall across my shoulders and knew that for now, my work was complete.

Much like a snake shedding its skin to allow for growth, I recognize that this work is complete, for now. Just as the snake must constantly shed its skin, so must we, as we evolve and continue to move forward in our life journey. Learning how to be intentional and thoughtful during these transitions has not been intuitive for me, and I am grateful for the solstice energy that brought this practice to life for me.