When I was younger, I thought memories lived inside the things we owned. Baby clothes. Wedding photos. Furniture. Decorations. 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.

This month’s essay was not written to be read as a policy on how to live. It was written from the middle of a storage unit, on the afternoon a woman realized she wasn’t asking what things were worth, and wasn’t asking whether they were sentimental — she was asking whether she had chosen them, or simply carried them. That is the whole issue in a sentence. The people who shaped us will always be part of us. The chapters that broke us will always matter. But not every artifact of every version of ourselves has to travel with us into the chapter we are writing now.

“This issue is about the difference between what we keep and what we carry. About storage units, and marriages, and versions of ourselves that survived what they were not built to survive. About the quiet moment when we realize we have started making choices based on who we are becoming instead of who we used to be.”

Within these pages you will find the lead essay, The Things We Carry Forward, and a small reading list drawn from the library for anyone standing in front of a box they haven’t opened in years.

With reverence,

Editor · Nirva Life Magazine