Brave Enough To Be Bliss

because I want my home to be an open concept with the ability to change all the finishes as I continue to learn and grow.

So, while there were mixed feelings for a few weeks about the thought of leaving this house, today there is only the deeply rooted feeling that no matter where I end up living, I will always be at home.

“The truth is that all of the ‘stuff’ here on earth we work so hard to buy and accumulate, does not mean a thing. At the end of the day, people will be cleaning out our ‘stuff’, going through our ‘stuff’, figuring out what to do with all of our ‘stuff’ we’ve accumulated in our life. The only thing of value that remains are the memories and what we deposit into others. May we all learn to spend less time accumulating ‘stuff’ and spend way more time making memories.” Power of Words

I was OK with getting rid of virtually everything I owned, but the oil lamp in the photo became a puzzle that had to be solved. We had received the large fruit oil candle at my former husband's work holiday party more than 20 years ago. It was unique and quite lovely, and I enjoyed it in six different kitchens throughout the years. It wasn't easy to move because it had to be hand-held in order for the oil not to spill out. This was one item I hadn’t even considered giving up until the last day in the house. Logically it made no sense to keep it, so right after I left to donate a last carload of kitchen items to the Healing House, I sent a text to my daughter asking her to put it with

everything else that was being taken away the next morning. I then proceeded to ugly cry the whole way there not even caring who saw me at stop lights. I regained my composure in the Healing House parking lot and sat there for a bit, giving my face time to look normal again before I took everything inside. On the way back home, I really started trying to figure out why letting it go had been so upsetting to me. I reflected on carefully holding it on the way home from the party and where we placed it in the little kitchen of the first home we owned. Then I thought about planning and building our next house where the oil candle sat on a ledge above the sink in front of the window of that kitchen. Then it hit me. The oil candle represented our little family of three. While I had been divorced for nearly a dozen years, this was the one tangible item I had left that represented that period of my life. I had assigned meaning to it so that's why I carried it so gently through each of the next four moves I made after we divorced. But now, it was time to let it go, and that required some grieving. After I felt the sadness and figured out why it was painful, I was at peace knowing I still have all the memories and my daughter is the most real representation of our family of three. If I hadn't figured all that out, though, I later could have ended up questioning myself or regretting the decision to let the oil candle go. But now I knew I no longer needed the "thing" I had been carrying around all those years because I have Kylee and I have memories to carry with me and they don't spill oil anywhere. In my experience, the thing we think we're upset about usually isn't the real answer...the real one lies beneath the easy ones and although sometimes difficult and painful to uncover, the real answer is the only one that brings freedom. I firmly believe it's worth pushing through the fear to get to the answers we have within ourselves. We just have to be brave enough to look.

“Scared is what you're feeling. Brave is what you're doing.” Emma Donoghue

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