When I was younger, I thought memories lived inside the things we owned. The baby clothes. The wedding photos. The furniture. The decorations. The boxes tucked away in attics and storage units because one day we might want them again. We tell ourselves we’re preserving our history. But lately, I’ve begun to wonder if sometimes we’re preserving versions of ourselves that no longer exist.
Chapters, not one continuous story
Over the past several years, my life hasn’t unfolded in one continuous story. It has been a series of chapters.
A little girl whose world was whole. A daughter learning how to survive after losing her mother. A young woman who walked away from the only home she had left. A wife. A mother. The sole provider. An emergency nurse. A woman whose children grew up and built lives of their own. A survivor rebuilding after an assault changed everything she thought she knew.
Each chapter required a different version of me. Not because I wanted to become someone new, but because life demanded it.
The weight of what we kept
For a long time, I carried pieces of every chapter with me. Not just emotionally. Physically.
Boxes. Furniture. Things. Objects that quietly belonged to lives that had already ended.
Recently, I started emptying my storage unit. At first, I thought I was just getting rid of stuff. Then something unexpected happened.
I realised I wasn’t making decisions based on what things were worth. I wasn’t even making decisions based on sentiment.
I was asking a different question. Was this something I chose… or something I simply carried?
I wasn’t keeping those things because I loved them. I was keeping them because they had survived the transitions, even when the life they belonged to had not.
What surprised me
Most of the furniture had stories attached to it. A marriage. A home. A version of my family. A season of life.
The things I decided to keep surprised me. A bed frame I found on Facebook Marketplace. Outdoor furniture I thrifted because I liked it.
Nothing expensive. Nothing particularly meaningful to anyone else. But they had one thing in common.
They were mine. Not because I owned them. Because I chose them.
There were no memories attached. No grief. No expectations. No version of myself that I felt obligated to preserve.
Just a quiet reminder that somewhere along the way, I had started making choices based on who I was becoming instead of who I had been.
Healing is learning the difference between honouring your past and carrying it everywhere you go.
Making room
I think we often assume healing means learning to let go of the past. I’m not sure that’s true.
The people who shaped us will always be part of us. The chapters that broke us will always matter. The versions of ourselves that survived impossible things deserve compassion.
But not every object has to come with us into the next chapter.
Sometimes letting go isn’t about forgetting. It’s about making room.
Making room for the life you’re intentionally building. Making room for choices that belong to the person you are today.
What growth looks like
Maybe that’s what growth looks like. Not erasing the chapters behind us. Not pretending they never happened.
But realising we don’t have to keep every artifact from every version of ourselves to prove those versions existed.
They did. They changed us. They brought us here. And maybe that’s enough.
So as I closed another storage bin and loaded another donation into the truck, I realised I wasn’t throwing away my past. I was carrying forward only what belonged in my future.
Maybe the things we keep say less about where we’ve been… and more about who we’re finally becoming.