Stuff

When you connect with people you care about....you get the chance to share stories and compare notes.  You can vent if you need to and celebrate victories and accomplishments no matter how small.  And you almost always learn things and take away ideas and inspiration that can resonate with you for days...and days. That's what happened with Becky.  

It rained all day...this photo is 
from a couple days ago.

She and I spent quite a bit of time talking about our lives....past and present. We talked about our hopes and joys....and our worries and burdens.  

We both face challenges with our "stuff." We hang onto things we no longer need and collect too many things just because they have potential. And we both find ourselves making new piles from ones. Some of our "stuff" overlaps....and some is very different.....but our challenges are the same. And we are going to quietly support each other as we try and weed through our past and see what stuff will be part of our future. 

Shortly after I got home Becky sent me an article from  The New Yorker called"How to Practice" by Ann Patchett. Ann helped a friend clean out her father's house after he died.  She knew the house well because she had spent a lot of time there as she was growing up.  Kent went through several stages and phases in his life...and he kept everything. All of it had meaning.....to him.

I read the article and was quite moved....and now I am reading it again picking out nuggets of wisdom to record.  Writing it down will preserve the words that resonate with me...and give me the chance to practice my hand lettering. 

These are Ann's words as she began to participate in the purge.

There are lots of nuggets from this article that I'm going to write down....and some of them may find their way here on the blog in one form or another....others just in a notebook for me to revisit.

Ann goes on to write about how she and her husband declutter their own home....going through EVERYTHING as they pretended to move....but stayed in the same place.  "This was the practice: I was starting to get rid of my possessions, at least the useless ones, because possessions stood between me and death. They didn't protect me from death, but they created a barrier in my understanding, like layers of bubble wrap, so that instead of thinking about what was coming and the beauty of what was here now I was thinking about the piles of shiny trinkets I'd accumulated.  I had begun the journey of digging out."