Via Pinterest

Beautiful Child.

There’s something surprising and cathartic about sifting through all my old papers, photos, diaries, and books.

At this point, I have much less attachment to them, so I view them through a lens of ‘do I need this?’ or ‘do I love this?’

As I’ve started a big cull, anticipating a move to a different house or a different place soon, the question seems more and more urgent.

I used to need to root, to anchor myself to the person I used to be. I refused to step out of one skin and into another. I carried those earlier incarnations of myself and those possessions from place to place, as though they held the power to hold me to the surface of the earth, to keep me from figuratively floating away.

Now, I realize that my essence is the soul that inhabits this ephemeral body, not those outer…