Welcoming Reality With Limited Capacity & A Spirit of Unknowing

I’m unplugged and unsteady as I confront closets and accumulation, wanting to shed what no longer fits. What feels slightly different about this declutter is the goal. I’m not making space for more. Maybe it’s a truer letting go. My spirit yearns for space and breathing room to enjoy as…get ready for it…spacious breathing room, not capacity for more junk. I need air. The chrysalis is crowded up in here. Prepare for a stream of consciousness!

Welcoming Reality With Limited Capacity

Piles of dresses, books, decor, jackets, pillows, and linens lay all around. So many soft comforting things that it surprises me. Have I really packed all of this, including multiples of things, time and time again, house to house, just to be forgotten once more?

Many of us judge a home’s storage as critical when shopping for real estate. But who is ultimately served by such capacity for baggage and the old?

I think about my own capacities to hide, hold, metabolize, cope, and grow as a fleshy container of beliefs, feelings, and desire. In a sense, it has been a year of reaching capacities. Of unexpected challenges piled on with disappointment and uncertainty to move through. Symptoms and challenges posed by my autoimmune disease multiplied with other stress.

While I often share bits of my health journey here, I typically make an effort to not identify as a chronically ill person offline. I have been ill since my freshman year of college, and there’s a facade of wellness I have upheld to succeed in the culture.

But when bad days outnumber the good, the efforts to make life seem effortless fall apart. My capacity is stretched with too much suffering; too many cycles of recovery and flare. I keep thinking I need more capacity to deal. This thought leads to others about what I lack.

Thought patterns and belief systems are lovely when they are working well. *somewhere out there, the universe is giggling* We are these soft, wild animals creating stories and meaning to feel connection, belonging, importance, and order.

And as I: declutter, decide on furniture donations, confront excess, and uncover belongings from other chapters, I see bits of life and goals and dreams everywhere. Emotional combustion comes as the past, present, and plans for what’s next collide. So much bittersweetness.

It’s disorienting because I’m extraordinarily, magnificently sensitive. It’s why I tend to put off this sort of excavation. I should also mention I have been writing a book and doing somatic work for emotional overeating. Those activities will reveal self to your mixed-up vulnerable self. That’s why it is called work I guess. *more giggling echoes from the universe*

The thing about excavation is that as I sift through what weighs me down or no longer serves, glimmers of gold emerge. I feel tenderness for who I was when I needed those things.

I find myself in a messy mid-excavation place of sobering smallness and scarcity. I started the journey in pain and continue it with pain plus courage and hope. While the work is my own to do, I no longer think of “enoughness” as very helpful.

Am I enough? Not enough? Too much? At capacity? Balanced with enoughness? Who knows? I’m trying. More stories to make the work look effortless or less gritty are unhelpful. I want to find my joy within a bigger love story that doesn’t require me to cling or stay small.

While I can’t claim to be propelled by supernatural winds or strength arising in my weakness, I remain UP AND TRYING to be brave, honest, loving, and compassionate. Will that be enough?

A Pause for Smiles & Home Tours Before More Reflections

Renovating Couples on HGTV

I love them for so many reasons (Ben reminds me of our eldest son). Erin struggles with physical and mental wellness as I do and has been open about it in a refreshing manner while still preserving privacy. They seem set apart in celebrity-land, and then there’s their beautiful design work! So much talent and goodness between these two!

For No Good Reason

What Can You Do With 484 Square Feet?

Be awed as you hear about the history of a1930s property and who lived here.

British Comedienne Interviews Unsuspecting Experts & Scholars & OMG

How can a comedienne be excruciating to watch and also hilarious?

Katie Rosenfeld’s Home Tour

I love this designer!

Tour My Favorite Nate & Jeremiah Project Home

Do you watch their show or follow their designs? This Paris inspired design could not happen to a sweeter family.

Tour the Very Traditional Townhouse of This STRANGER THINGS Actor

I don’t know what I was expecting…I mean, I know actors aren’t necessarily anything like the characters they play. But this pairing of person and place was unexpected in delightful ways.

Under 500 Square Feet in Paris & a Family of 3?

I’ll never tire of the innovation and commitment to beautiful design architects and designers bring to homes they reimagine. Oh, the wonder of it all!

Could You Live in a 600 sf London Flat?

Let’s travel to Camden and tour a loft with inspiring architecture and history!

Back to Personal Reflections…

The old patterns of feverish seeking? Disrupted. I’m always expecting personal or spiritual growth to expand capacity. The story I tell myself is that a more mature soul will have mansion-size capacity with endless closets and attic space to hold all the mystery.

But stories are always still stories. Still part of coping to protect fragile egos and avoid fears of death. Stories matter. But like thoughts, we aren’t obligated to believe or entertain them forever. We aren’t obligated to carry them around when new data suggests they can evolve. I suppose I am learning in fresh ways how my ego loves its stories to avoid real change.

I’m loosening my grip on attachments, unplugging often from media, and meditating more.

We really do need each other more than we need more apps and podcasts. And maybe all this messy uncertainty I’m feeling belongs at the very heart of faith. I practice mine daily in a spirit of unknowing.

Unsteady, I’m moving with the waves. Can the waves become a prayer? Maybe a mansion of capacity isn’t necessary when you’re an ocean flowing. Are integration and deep satisfaction ahead on the shore? I’m detaching from outcomes. I’m welcoming Grace, reality, and the new. I’m loving my soft and wobbly wild animal self right where I am…splishsplashing with disease not ease, with aliveness, with awe.

Peace to you right where you are.

-michele

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