I have a confession to make. I watch Hoarders.
I feel I have to now defend myself. I don’t watch every day, only when I’m feeling overwhelmed. It’s somehow comforting to know I’m not as buried, figuratively or literally, as the people on the show. I had never expected to find wisdom in an episode. But there it was, the psychologist saying,
“It can be difficult to accept the loss of things that could be, but will never be.”
There it was, loss summed up in one little sentence.
I remember the smell of pipe tobacco, Herb Alpert’s Whipped Cream playing on the hi-fi, freshly-baked cookies delivered to us… I loved Denise Meisel’s house when I was a girl.
It was 1968 in Detroit. The riots had shaken us up literally the summer before, helicopters flying low over our neighborhood. The teachers’ strike was over. Things were back to normal.
Except they weren’t. My friends started moving away. Nori, Julie, Tracy, Jimmy, Lisa, Denise. Each loss hurt a little. But I was young and resilient. Until we were the ones who moved. To Wisconsin. From Motown to Moo-Town.
I would always be someone who spent the first ten years of her life in Detroit, but it would never be my Who I Was. All these years later, it still stings a little bit. I identify with the city, not some Podunk town. Under the microscope it seems irrational.
Can we make sense out of our feelings of loss?
Where is your clutter, be it physical or emotional? Do you hang onto two different sizes of clothes, hoping you’ll someday fit back into the thinner one? Does throwing out that size 8 pair of pants mean having to accept you may never be that thin again? Of course not. Stores are full of clothes, size 8 and even smaller.
Is your basement full of stuff from your parents’ house because you can’t bear to get rid of it? The memories live in your head, not in the things. But donating them can feel like we’re letting them go, not just their possessions, before we’re fully ready.
How about the clutter we carry around in our heads? “I should have bought that house overlooking the lake when I could have gotten it for less than $300,000,” we think, having no intention of moving, only of regretting.
“Why didn’t I have a serious conversation with him about marriage when I had the chance? My life would be so much different.” Sure, but would it be better?
“How did I let myself gain this much weight?”
“Why didn’t I keep up with those friends?”
Loss can shatter us. It can crack us right open.
But if we release things when it is time, we open the space, both literal and figurative, for new beginnings. Clearing out our clutter, our stuff and our outdated thought patterns, tells the Universe that we’re ready for something fresh, something even better.
What one thing can you throw away, give away, let go of this week in order to make room for the new?