I’ve been thinking a lot about saying goodbye to things. Now, full disclosure, I’m not overly sentimental about things. I know I hold the memory in my heart. But yet, sometimes things are so tied with those memories. Our emotions are held in our bodies, and sometimes feeling those tangible things is so connected to those emotions.
My mom passed away this spring, and my siblings and I had to clean out her house and get it ready to sell. So many memories there - it’s the home I grew up in, the lawn I chased my sibling on, the table we had so many family dinners at. It’s hard to say goodbye. So many of those objects are sentimental, but realistically, I can’t keep any of them. My sister shared something that Marie Kondo suggested. I'll be honest, I haven’t read the book, but I know she’s about only keeping the things that spark joy. But what do you do when you can’t keep all the things?
She suggests that we thank the object for what it has given us, for the memories, before we let it go. I have found that so powerful.
At the same time, I am preparing to sell our family home, which means going through so many drawers and cupboards, and SO much stuff. Each of those items has a memory, and while, like I said, I am not overly sentimental about things, I am very sentimental about the memories. So I’ve been remembering A LOT. Every wall in this house holds memories. It’s the house my husband and I built together, the house that our family grew up in. It was going to be our forever home, the place our grandchildren would come to for Thanksgiving and Christmas. But things change. My husband passed away almost 10 years ago. And now, the life I thought I would live is not the life that I am living, or the life I want to live. The final step in this transition is selling this house. Acknowledging the emotional value of this place allows me to fully grieve it and then truly let go. I can’t describe it, but for me taking the time to thank the object and remember all the memories gives me peace. It honors the object and the memory it is attached to. It gives me a refresher of the memory itself.
Try that today. What objects are you hanging on to long after they have any value or use to you, because of the memories they hold? Can you lean into that? Can you take a moment to remember and thank the object, and then let it go?