Stories of Kindness from Around the World

For years and years going home for the holidays has been bittersweet. My mom works hard to make me feel loved year around, and the holidays are no exception. She loves to cook and take care of me during my time at home. Of course I’ll never stop cherishing the opportunity to spend quality time with her.

But it’s also painful for me because her house is littered with stuff. Clothes bought but never worn, craft projects started with good intentions but never finished, boxes packed years ago but never open, and plenty of new items in their original packaging carelessly purchased and never used. It’s evident how much seeing the stuff on a daily basis reminds my mom of a time when shopping was her coping mechanism for so much loss. It’s something I’ve tried to see but ignore during my time there; the lingering elephant in the room.

I didn’t fully understand the extent to which my mom was suffering until this week, when I saw piles of clothes on her bed. There was so much stuff that she had only a small sliver of space to sleep every night. “How do you manage to sleep every night with all that stuff, Mom?” I asked. To my horror, she replied “I do it because I know I have to get rid of all this stuff eventually; I am punishing myself by sleeping with them until I do that.”

I can’t describe the feeling I felt in that moment when I knew I had to serve my Mom. I gently explained to her that punishing herself was only going to make things worse, and that everybody deserves a place to sleep in peace, no matter what mistakes they’ve made. I suggested that she move all the piles of stuff in her bedroom to another room to go through at another time, on her terms, leaving her room comfortable to sleep in. I had a haunch that she would get the energy to tackle her stuff problem if she could at least have the most important room in the house be free of clutter.

With patience and her slow but steady guidance, I helped her go through some of the piles and move them upstairs — an accomplishment sufficient in its own right. But for the rest of the week I was there, she was in a better mood and was so excited about going through the rest of the house to finally tackle her stuff — vestiges of mistakes and painful times. The items brought back painful memories as we inspected and moved them, but I kept reminding her that disposing of them would allow her to move on and heal. With some sighs and a few tears, she kept going and going with fantastic results. We ended up selling so many things and taking bag after bag to charity.

For years she was deflated and depressed about the condition of her house. But the stuff was just was a manifestation of the destructive patterns of self-loathing and fixating on past mistakes. Ultimately it was only through the act of just a little bit self-forgiveness that caused a chain reaction of decluttering — both of her house and her heart.