Meeting the Skeletons in Your Closet
The skeletons in your closet are real and seriously a drag! Clearing them lightens the load for you to live a life you’d prefer. What may seem impossible as a solitary soul, is so much easier when you have support. You don’t have to make friends those skeletons, but you can neutralize and disperse the block they have on you and your household. Often/usually linked to the households of our upbringing, including pre-verbal infanthood and ancestral narratives, un-witnessed stories (stored in the “stuff”) are waiting for your compassionate release!
Who/what are these skeletons?
Ancestral or generational trauma are on more people’s radar than ever before! This type of trauma activation is widespread and multi-faceted… and when it comes to peoples’ home life, it has the specific flavor of 20th century American Capitalism, passed down, now, through many generations. We have too much stuff, are tripping all over it, and the stuff gets entangled & pathologized with our lived domestic lives… for better or worse. The ghosts are, 3D & practically speaking, any thing that’s left unused/unappreciated, often without a good place to put it. Objects hold the stories they bore witness to. They are infused with the environment that held it, one way or another. They record how & maybe why there were passed. You might even say they have a soul — and most certainly do when it’s been human-crafted. You can clear the item, properly downstream it, or keep kicking that box of cans down the road…
On decluttering:
Quantum healing is a great option when doing ancestral trauma work (on the energetic levels), but our material-world life is a lot denser. My practice centers the meme: Not Too Much, Too Fast… Just The Right Amount, with buy-in from the people living in & tending the space. I do NOT generally endorse Marie Kondo’s approach, because its high-octane program potentially invites all manner of latent, ruptured trauma. The energetic load you clear wants to be filled! If you don’t have a plan for your upgrade, you may fall twice as hard, back into your old, unhelpful patterns. This is why it’s useful to engage compassionate decluttering as an integrated wrap-around therapeutic when working with those who are trying to onboard a more functional middleworld life. Trust me: glitches in the home matrix usually indicate there’s some skeleton popping off -- and decluttering alone isn’t going to neutralize their presence or impact. Decluttering is a metaphor for other aspects of our lives, obviously; there is definitely a correlation with the state of one’s home and the overall (or specific) state of one’s life. When the mental/emotional/spiritual space is cluttered, it’s hard to tease out what’s relevant, what needs to be addressed, what needs some loving kindness. Knowing the narratives of these skeletons is helpful! That is to say, releasing trauma and lessening the activation impact, is about more than clearing energetic or physical space, taking a pill, or praying for miracles of quantum healing… having at least some narrative around what the trauma stories are…it’s a great tool for making big changes in your life; so you consciously KNOW what (1) you ARE and (2) are NOT choosing, moving forward.
Intuition is one thing (it is!)…but having language to describe why you’ve got 20 rain jackets crammed in the front hall closet, taking up 80% of the space while you live with three other humans… that understanding of your narrative could be the key that breaks the spell! Because it’s 20 jackets in the hall… and 30 pairs of boots under the bed… and 12 boxes of plastic grocery bags just inside the garage door etc. Each of those piles has a story and probably deep-seated belief behind it. This is why layering therapeutics as a long-term practice, yields the more sustainable results: some layers of understanding can be learned in the body, others in the mind, and hopefully there’s new practices that include a narrative of why this road is better than that other one you were on. Declutter inside and outside for the best life outcomes!
On optimization:
My goal is to help people create fully-functional, sanctuary spaces that are beautiful and inspirational to be in. Spaces that can support self and household care, that are safe, regenerative and nourishing… this is the sort of deep healing that we CAN take charge of! There’s a lot of crazy out in the world, and it’s easy to be spun about; I’m much less disoriented when my domestic space is holding me in a good way. Organizational systems and hacks help relieve the mental load of functioning, especially when the existential howling winds are acting up! Conscious precision, staging locations, and “putting away” practices are essential. When everything has its place (and is generally put away in a timely manner — at least the things-of-regular-use), it’s easier to keep the train running when the brain fog , exhaustion, or burn out kicks in.
What is fully-functional?
It’s dealing with the backlog, getting real about what will fit (in your space and in your life!), then dialing in the maintenance via storage systems and putting-away practices. Using the space for exactly what you intend it to be, with optimal flow, working creatively with the constraints, not having more items than the space can hold or operate with. Design and installation decisions are delayed until the “users” are able to share what works best for them. There’s always a beta version until you discover what works better. Dialing in a space can happen over the course of a season, several seasons, or even a year or longer. Optimizing is iterative. 12-hour home makeover shows are deeply disingenuous and most certainly have shoddy installation & materials. “Fully-functional” is a longterm commitment that happens as a consistent series of daily micro-choices (do I put the bag away or drop it on the floor). Fully-functional means wadding into the pool with all those skeletons… and you will never like swimming if you don’t deal with those guys.
What about engaging those ghosts?
Seventh Generational thinking is very helpful, to zoom out and give the domestic pathology some context and grace. Consider how your ancestors contributed to the domestic experience you generally have; consider what you might be passing along to your descendants (whether you have children or not). Give yourself time & permission to go slow; you don’t need to meet the whole panoply of skeletons all at once (please don’t!). When anxiety spikes around decluttering and other home improvement projects, those ghosts are rattlin’ your cage! Listen for the message, and plan for a reverent/righteous goodbye (or reinstatement).
As you map your episodes of anxiety, you’ll learn the terrain of your domestic trauma from the very practical angle of the “stuff” in your home. Underneath that ghost is the existential mediation around why you’re hanging on to that thing in the first place. If you have a good reason, by all means, figure out a way to re-integrate it into your life, or at least give it a proper storage for when you do use it in the future. Sometimes (un)conscious beliefs and past practices dictate their retention. Articulating the (last known) origin story of an item, and matching that against current values, in order to decide whether to keep or send downstream… this is a lens worth cultivating. Over time you get clearer about what you have and why, and it becomes less acceptable to hold onto items that don’t have use/purpose. Often times, telling the stories, having witness, and facilitating a good handoff to the next person is what we need to let things go. Start with the low hanging fruit; go for the easy wins at first. You’ll see more about the road ahead once you start clearing your domestic river. It takes time, but better functioning inside the home is possible! You may even experience a complete transformation, as you let yourself and your household come into bloom!
