Hideehi, lovely readers! 💞

Thank you for being with me on this journey of life.

I start every day with gratitude, so I thought I’d begin my blog the same way. I’m truly grateful for all of you who take the time to read these epistles and especially for those who share feedback. 🙏🏻

Shedding weight in more ways than one!

Since October, we’ve been busy clearing the house and getting it ready for open homes – probably in January while we’re away. I had a stager come through and told her to be brutal – and she was! It was awesome. Getting outside eyes to tell you what to clear, what to move, and what to add is such a great experience. I highly recommend Brenda from The Joneses!!

As I’ve cleared stuff (two skips full!), I’ve been reminded of why we collect things. My sister and her hubby became minimalists at one stage, and I couldn’t for the life of me imagine how you could just throw or give away stuff that was sentimental – but she did, and her place was all the better for it, and still is!

I’m now 13kgs down, so not just shifting weight at home but physically too! Letting go is truly freeing. 🙌🏼

As Sarah Ban Breathnach talks about in Simple Abundance – when you look around your haven, you should love everything in it. I realised that there were a lot of things I’d collected over the years, inherited, or been given that I didn’t actually love. They weren’t ‘me’. So why did I hang onto them? 🤔

Recognising when it’s time to let go.

I had an old pine dining table that I shipped to NZ when I left England. That table had been with me for years – we’d been through a lot together, me and that table. Mick had the cheek to suggest it was time to let it go… I really struggled. When I finally agreed, I grieved over the table!! Why? Because things can feel safer than people. That table had borne witness to some terrible times in my life, and some great, and it had been dependable. Letting it go meant saying goodbye to all we’d been through together… so I clung.

Yet – once I started throwing things out, I couldn’t stop, and I actually find it very cathartic nowadays.

I think this is similar in our lives and relationships. We hang on to things, jobs, situations, and people that aren’t ‘us’. Shedding unwanted weight in our lives can be very freeing. Even friendships.

Shasta Nelson discusses her Frientimacy model in her TED talk. It’s a great one for understanding how to build true friendships:

Positivity (making us feel satisfied), Consistency (making us feel safe), and Vulnerability (making us feel seen).

I love to apply this model to my friendships and reflect on how I can be a better friend by being positive, consistent, and vulnerable. I’ve even left some friendships behind because they lacked all three. It’s not that they were bad friends – they just weren’t for ‘me’. One of my school mates and I were friends for years into my 30s. I realised that all of our times together were engineered by me, and all of our conversations were based around her. So I dropped a card into her letterbox, sharing how I’d been feeling, and said that if she wanted to continue to invest in our friendship, I’d wait to hear from her. I never heard from her again! It was hard but truthful. We weren’t for each other.

So… my two challenges to you today are:

1. Do you have weight that needs to shift? In your home, job, friendships/relationships, or body? Maybe now’s the time.
2. Are you being the best friend you can be? If not, maybe it’s time to start.

Such a healthy way to approach Christmas – shedding things rather than collecting. (We’re not doing any pressies this year – sorry clients and friends!) Instead, we’re focusing on building stronger connections with people. 💞

One Christmas, instead of giving gifts, we gave the gift of love. We went around the table said what we loved about each person there. Not a dry eye in the house! That year, my dad and sister were at a funeral where people were sharing about how much they loved the person, and my dad said to my sis how glad he was that we’d done our gift of love. ♥️ He died later that year…

Have a brilliant Christmas. ✨ Give the gift of love instead of things this year, and don’t be afraid to shed what no longer serves you.