Anami Grace | Made Up Life

I felt the bottom fall out of my butt first. But as the shelf holding all of the dishes collapsed as I’d attempted to grab a bowl, I felt the trouble I was about to be in, in my face second. Filling with heat and shame. My mother came running down the stairs, and the priceless dishes she’d inherited from my step-grandma were shattered around me.

I definitely wasn’t more valuable than these dishes. As my mother sobbed like I’d murdered her favorite child (which, is not me. It’s my oldest sister).

As I grew, my values around the things I have has shifted, but I’ve tried incredibly hard to make sure that my kids know that their value is much more than whatever I own.

This morning, I found one of my very favorite things – a little clay dish I was given by my neighbor, broken in half. I used it to hold my vitamins in the morning, and loved the imprint of lilac on it. I loved that it was heart shaped, I loved the imprint was the only part that had color, and now it was broken. A casualty of use, being delicate, and being on the kitchen counter.

And as I created ridiculous flavor for breakfast this morning. Because if you’re not all in to feeding yourself, what are you doing? 😉 I had that memory come up of one of the many times I was shown that stuff was more important than I was.

So, I swirled that around my biofield as I considered the balance it takes of caring for the things that support you, using them, and then letting them go when they are no longer useful.

I remembered the look of physical pain on my mother’s face, and even though it wasn’t particularly my fault, I was just the one who opened the cupboard when it broke, I was still the one who opened it.

I felt the tragedy of that blame.

And then, I danced with it. I moved that feeling through my body. I acknowledged that my mother has a broken relationship with things, and she’s not here find this balance with me. So it was entirely up to me to create a new neuropathway to heal that experience and create a new threshold for my relationship with my things.

My mother’s broken relationship with things is that she had a lot of beautiful things that she felt like she worked really hard for, but kept them all in a locked glass hutch. All to be seen, and never touched.

There’s the rub, right. Things are intended to be used. And sometimes the cost of that use is brokenness. And everything is a balance between care for the objects that support us, and letting go of it when it’s not longer useful.

Sometimes that means gifting it into a new life, sometimes that means up-cycling it, sometimes that means repairing it – and all of that is loaded into our values and how we operate in this world.

And here is where I get woo-woo about my things. Starla, my house, is an extension of my consciousness. I have loved and cared for her so much. I have invested money, time, emotion, care, creation, and hope into these four walls that hold my family. Because I hold her in imagination, she is alive to me.

The other day, I was mid evolution and halfway in the void and I put my head on Starla’s walls, and a sense of fierce love washed over me. Her soul held me as I once again allowed the common wave of collapse to wash over my life – taking all that wasn’t meant for me with it, and she showed me all of the ways we’ve supported each other in this existence.

The value and the rapport created in this symbiotic relationship with things is not lost on me. But it also has to hold balance instead of holding distortion. When things are only there to be used and thrown away, that is where we have full landfills and the sheer waste of capitalism. But when things are over loved and never used because we fear their monetary value to be irreplaceable, that’s also distorted. Right?

And so finding the balance of moving with things, treating them with respect, love and care. Holding them as tools that co-create our lives with us, is the way that I’ve been able to hold that balance.

This morning, I imagined 16-year-old me, invited her to dance in my kitchen with me, as we thanked my little ceramic treasure, and moved it outside to its next life – being a bird feeder. I thanked it for the joy it brought me, and then let it go.

But in the scheme of my life, I’m always most proud of the times where I was given a distortion in my childhood, and found my way to the balance in my adulthood.

And, I was once again grateful to be rich in experience. Even if it was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to work through.

Anyway. Love and Light to you all. Take care! Bye!