From Those Who Come From Keepers: A Small Rite For Things That Are Ready To Leave

Fellow Seekers-

Often have I felt the pull to not let something go — items I have loved a long while. I come from a line of collectors, tinkerers, antique dealers, peddlers, refurbishers, DIYers, rebuilders, and — dare I say — hoarders. Growing up with little new things on hand, it is hard to toss something out when you hear “I might need that someday,” or “someone I know might need that someday.” My folks’ house is a dusty museum of curiosities: three sets of crutches, an old yellow leather wheelchair, a variety of rims — some rusted, some chrome — parts for cars fifty years old and older, farm equipment from way, way back, a vintage cast iron and enamel stove, a velvet lavender fainting couch, and a big yellow wood box holding twine and a length of rope so large it looks like it came off a ship, tangled in among so many other tiny things.

I dread when my folks pass away. Not only do I struggle to let go of my own things — I struggle to let go of theirs. I fear losing their stories along with the objects that hold them.

Sometimes I wonder if my OCD caused my autoimmune condition — the tendency for my body to become inflamed a further sign of my whole self unable to release. To some extent, I know the inflammation increases when I am stressed or anxious: tight muscles, a rigid brain- a spinning wheel turning and turning.

And so I have had to make peace with this: that letting go does not mean I loved carelessly, and keeping does not mean I am incapable of release. Both can be true in the same hand. What I have learned, slowly, is that an object does not need me to keep it in order to have mattered. It needed me to notice it.

And noticing, done fully, can be its own kind of completion…

My roses are decimated by beetles. A week ago there were seven deep red blooms popping out of lush green stems. I can’t help but press rose petals against my cheeks, licking raindrops from their blossoms — this close intimacy, I feel connected to Rose. She seems to come whenever grief and loss are present. And I wonder, where is the spirit? What is it? I have asked this question, pondered it, and responded to it almost in equal portions, and I always come back to not knowing. I feel there is a spirit alive in my Rose, and I feel the whole Rose plant has a spirit, and I also feel there is a greater rose spirit that connects all the Rose spirits. I feel my Rose plant houses other spirits, too — sometimes the Land comes through, sometimes the garden spirits, sometimes some tiny little earthy ones, and if I look long enough — a bright yellow shine of someone elusive.

So much of being an animist is akin to being a gardener — sometimes you plant seeds and wait, hoping all lines up, that force-energy-magick bursts forth and thrives. Release, I think, works the same way. You do the rite. You loosen the thread. And then you wait, without controlling what grows next, or in whose hands.

This is the ritual I return to when something is ready to leave my hands — not because I no longer see its story, but because I do, and I want to send it onward with that story intact, rather than let it gather dust as an unspoken debt between us.

A Small Rite of Release

Set the object before you. Light a candle — not to burn anything, but to mark a threshold. Fire has always been good at that: it turns one thing into another without pretending nothing happened.

Sit with the object a moment. Let yourself remember out loud, even briefly, what it gave you. This isn’t optional sentimentality — it’s the thank-you that makes the rest possible. You cannot release well what you have not first acknowledged.

Then, close your eyes. Picture the threads that run between you and the object — however you see them: as roots, as light, as smoke, as old rope like the kind coiled in my father’s yellow box. Feel where they attach to you — low in the belly, the chest, the hands. One by one, or all at once, picture them loosening. Not torn — unwound. Slow enough that neither of you is startled by it. Let the strands fall away from your body and settle back into the object, like they’re returning something that was only ever borrowed.

When you feel the separation — and you will feel it, even if it’s small — speak this, or something like it:

I release you, not because you were unworthy of my keeping, but because you are worthy of what comes next. Go on with the parts of my story you carry, and gather new ones that are not mine to hold. May whoever meets you next need you the way I once did. Go well. Go on.

Blow out the candle, or let it finish on its own if safety allows. The smoke is the last of the thread leaving the room.

Stay wild and true-

Emily

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