Powerlessness.  I am powerless over people, places, and things.  Yes.  All I can control is how I respond.  Yes.  I am powerless to the will of the universe, and when I try to control everything, I become too hard, too stiff.  The world around me becomes too small.  

Somewhere along the way I misdirected my own power.  I became so intent on always doing the right thing.  To listening to some outside force.  What does the universe want for me?  Where am I supposed to be?  How is it supposed to be? In doing so, I stifled myself from making any forward movement in my life.  Big decisions became seemingly impossible, and indecision lead to inaction.  I was suffocating in my own idealist righteousness.  

But what about me?  What about what I want?  I forgot to trust my own desire.  I recently had a thought, a deep knowing, that I am conscious enough to follow that desire.   To do what I want.  To trust that I will be held regardless of what decisions I make.  That I can only do my best.  That indecision is more detrimental than making a “wrong decision” because without decision, there are no lessons.  No growth.  Taking risks - when the risk involves acting from our truth - allows us to know ourselves better.

Just like our decisions, our objects can either take us further away from ourselves or they can bring us closer to who we truly are.  They either create separation or connection.  We can give away our power to our objects by purchasing them or using them for the wrong reasons - to look cool, to fill a void, to complete us in some way, etc.  When we misdirect our power, we can veer from our truth in small ways or in big ways.  Are you holding onto something that's no longer serving you?  Perhaps something an ex gave you?  Or a gift from a friend that you really don't like?  Why are you keeping it?  Maybe you don't want to let go of the past, or you don't want to offend a loved one.  Your power (in the examples here) is directed at longing for a different time in your life or at people pleasing.  When you get clarity on these questions, you can start to clear out things that are simply taking up space in your life - physically and energetically.  

You can make simple, small steps to start directing yourself on a clearer path of truth.  Choose items that connect you to your center rather than items that create distance between yourself and your authenticity.  If you're acquiring something new - how will this object serve you?  Will it be apart of a daily ritual (mug for morning tea, incense holder for meditation practice, dish for hand soap)?  Is it to fill an empty shelf?  If so, did you see an picture on Pinterest and hunt for something online in order to re-create the image, or did you happen to stumble upon something unique at a flea market that you felt drawn to?  

With the holiday season here, we are urged to consume through Black Friday sales and through pressure to buy multiple gifts for friends and family members.  Purchasing in a frenzy in order to make quick decisions or to score items on sale is not a mindful practice.  The key is to slow down.  To quiet the needing, so that we can collect, rather than consume.  

I am available for one-on-one sessions to help guide you on this journey.  Learn to strengthen your connection to your objects, and in turn, to yourself.  I have a limited amount of open spots for the remainder of the year.  Book your session here.   Feel free to contact me with any questions you may have.  

Photograph by Lauren Moore

Free of makeup

heat or product to my hair

this is me

naked.

 

The marks on my legs show the millions of miles I have walked in this lifetime

the crevices of my hands allude to the many objects and many skins I have touched

all of those miles and those things and those people have not changed me, or altered me, or created me.

 

They have stripped me

to bring me to me.

 

Before acquiring objects, it is important to first come home to ourselves.  Objects are inanimate without us.  We give them purpose, significance, and life.  We bring them home.  Give them the truest home they can have.  Give them you.  Read more about this in Our Philosophy.

Right now my life is messy.   Sometimes sharing is the last thing I feel compelled to do when life is well…messy.   At the start of this year, I vowed to lean-in more, and holy shit - I have been thrown so much to lean-in to.  It’s causing me to explore the depths within (greater depths than I previously knew I would touch).  I am still without a home.  It’s been eight months.  Eight months of displacement.  Of physical suffering.  Of emotional pain.  Of beautiful self-exploration.  Of spiritual growth.

In December 2016 I moved into a new home.  It was “completely gutted and renovated,” so when I started to get sick two days after moving in, I assumed I had a seasonal cold.  As my sickness progressed, my Dr. urged me that my apartment was the culprit.  Even though I believed her and intuitively felt that she was right, I ignored her.  I had just moved, and I did not want to face the possibility of moving again.  Until I started shaking, wheezing, and coughing up blood in the mornings.  After multiple back-and-forth emails with the property manager and owner of the building, I was told I most likely had an allergy to a tree outside.  Oh, because it’s very normal to all of the sudden start coughing up blood when living next to a certain kind of tree?  I decided to have a company come out to test the apartment for mold.  Surely enough, the levels of Aspergillus (a kind of mold) were four times higher inside than outside.  I immediately started to sleep at friend’s places, while my partner and our dog stayed in the apartment (thankfully, they were not sick).  This went on for two months with no luck of finding a new home.  In May, we had the belongings we were able to salvage cleaned and put away into a storage unit, and we had to throw away the rest of our things.  Without a new home lined up, we started our adventure of living “here and there” - with friends, family, strangers, etc. - with only a couple of suitcases and a handful of other items in tow.  I had no idea that I would still be doing this, three quarters of a year later.  What’s made the process of living this way and finding a new home so tremendously excruciating, is that I’ve developed an autoimmune issue/allergy to most buildings.  So I wake up coughing up blood and/or with rashes in 75 percent of the places I stay.  I feel like I could continue writing for days - about basically living out of my car, about often being separated from my partner and dog, about hustling and working while sick - but the little details are less telling than the big picture, the growth.  This experience been incredibly exhausting, yet it has also paved the way for the birth of Object & Us. 

I am not ignorant to the irony of this process - that I design spaces and homes for a living and explore the home/lifestyle sphere in everything I do.  Yet in that irony, there comes a lot of clarity and healing.  I have been exploring what it truly means to live inside of my inner home - how my needs can be met and nourished when everything on the outside is insanely chaotic.  This journey has not been an easy one, and I would even say seemingly insufferable at times.  But there’s so much spaciousness inside.  Inside of everyone.  Spaciousness that we neglect, that we ignore.  I urge you to go there, to explore it.  You may even find your way home.  

Photos by Lauren Moore.