Learn character from trees
Values from roots
Change from leaves
- Tasneem Hameed
There is a lot of hustling going on in the house right now.
Alot of wanting to change things, move furniture, clean out closets, get stuff to the thrift store.
Every time I move something or change something, I am reminded of what happened in that space beforehand. I want to honor it and remember it and savor it before sweeping on. Maybe burn something or burn all the things as my friend’s husband says after watching his wife burn sage and palo santo for several years now.
Maybe you have friends over and you tell stories about what happened in that space, how you’re moving on and need to move on or you won’t be able to create anything new. You want to keep going back to that beauty just one more time and it’s changed and it needs to be a closed story with some pull-through to today.
There will always be callbacks, but callbacks don’t make an entire routine. What’s new, what’s solid? What were the values that built that space and those feelings that will emerge with a fresh face this year?
I think about this as I look at my daughter’s room. Three years ago, we combined their bedrooms back down again into one room. We bought new bunkbeds and even a new comforter for the grown up girl. We started using the other room for storage and a giant closet I guess for Jay.
KT then went and got herself married in 2018 so they always take the queen bed downstairs. El is upstairs sleeping on a bottom bunk which feels like she’s still in high school.
I’d love a place to spread out my art and get serious about getting things on the walls. I’d like her to feel like it’s more a room for an adult when she visits and not just kidland.
The walls are covered with papers and license plates and photos and cards. This room is a giant collage space that KT put together over the course of her time in the room. It’s a work of art and hard to think about having come down.
So yeah, I think I need to have some friends over to talk about our times together. Maybe do FT w/ my buds that don’t live here and process it and then get on with it. I’d love to make some collages out of what’s on the walls then hopefully let her decide what to do with the rest. We could make them together.
But I can feel it’s time and El needs a better place to stay now that she wants to come home more.
These feel like good things and good changes and wise words as I ponder life’s changes that are coming.
I’m 53 and nothing is still more important to me than being connected to myself, to my people, nature and animals, one of them mine, my community, nature and doing good work, enjoying the process along the way.
Stopped my daily journal with collecting cards and ephemera after 15 years.
Stopped the fear
Less anxious
Less hypervigilant. We’ve been vigilant in our own relationship and also our business for decades. Could this be the year we truly change and turn the corner? We just celebrated our 30th wedding anniversary.
More than ever believe in power of commitment to change each other. Be it marriage, a community, a friendship, a family… whatever it is… a long-term relationship and engagement that doesn’t check out.
Less details and OCD about too many thoughts and feelings.
Distilling down the thoughts and feelings to what can realistically be communicated in words. Get it down to the nubbings and then publish that.