Sorting Through the Past, Making Room for What’s Next

We’re not moving this week. Or next month. In fact, we’re not moving for a year. The boxes are still tucked away, the rooms are still full of life, and this home is still very much ours. But we’ve bought a new house, and we’ve started planting roots there. We’re slowly building a future while still living in the present.

That’s what stirred something in me. Not just the logistics of moving, but the quiet emotional shift that begins long before you pack a single box. The awareness that change is coming. And that, ready or not, some kind of sorting will have to begin.

It started with a conversation. A simple suggestion from my husband. Maybe we should start going through The Hole, just to see what’s there. We haven’t done it yet, not really. But even mentioning it seemed to shift something. I can feel the weight of what’s waiting there.

The Hole is just a little unfinished space off the back corner of our basement. Not an attic. Not a proper storage room. Just a tucked-away place where the things we weren’t quite ready to let go of ended up. Baby toys. Holiday decorations. School projects. Bins from my mother’s house after she died. A jumble of decisions postponed and memories packed away.

It’s not just our things either. Some of those boxes hold pieces of my own childhood, carried with me from a previous home. Packed years ago with care and confusion and everything in between. I haven’t seen some of it since before our children were born.

We all have a version of The Hole. Maybe it’s a closet, a drawer, a spare room. Maybe it’s not even a space, but a part of ourselves. A place where we store the regrets we’re not ready to unpack, the grief we’ve postponed, the identities we quietly outgrew. We put things there when we’re too busy, too tired, or too heartbroken to decide what to do with them. We promise ourselves we’ll come back later. Sometimes we do. Sometimes we forget.

But when life shifts, when we’re faced with transition or loss or deep emotional work, we often find ourselves returning to those places. Not all at once, and not always willingly. But something calls us back.

That’s where I am now. Not inside The Hole, but just outside of it. Listening. Remembering. Beginning to imagine what it might mean to go through what’s there. Even though we won’t be leaving this house for quite some time, the inner process has already started. It’s not just about what we’ll bring to the new home. It’s also about what we’ve carried in this one, and beyond.

I’m remembering a toy I saved, thinking we might have another baby. A preschool art project with stick figures and crooked hearts. A box filled with things from my mother’s home. Keepsakes I couldn’t bear to part with when the grief was still too fresh. So I didn’t. I just sealed them away and tucked them into the dark.

And that’s the thing. When we put something in The Hole, it doesn’t disappear. It just waits. Sometimes for years. Sometimes until we’re finally ready to open the box.

This process, this slow and gentle and deeply personal return, reminds me so much of recovery. Of what happens when we begin to really look at what we’ve stored inside. The emotions we packed away because they were too painful. The choices we didn’t know how to forgive ourselves for. The versions of ourselves we outgrew but never mourned.

It’s not about dumping it all out at once. It’s not a dramatic cleanse or a weekend overhaul. One day we’ll open a box. We’ll sit with it. We’ll decide what still matters and what no longer fits. We’ll let go of what we can. We’ll hold onto what’s still meaningful, sometimes in a new way. And sometimes we’ll simply acknowledge something before placing it back with more care and less fear.

That’s the work I’m moving toward. Not every day. Not all at once. But little by little, as I step into this in-between season, I’m honoring what has been and making space for what’s coming. I’m remembering how much life has been lived in this house. How many changes we’ve walked through. How much love and ache and growth are layered into the fabric of these rooms and these boxes.

There’s a tenderness to it. A kind of reverence. Because even the things I no longer need tell a part of the story. Even the parts I thought I wanted to forget shaped the person I am now.

We’re not rushing. We’re doing this slowly, with intention. And maybe that’s what makes it feel so emotional. It mirrors what happens in real healing. Not everything is meant to come with us. But the sorting itself becomes sacred. The pause. The remembering. The quiet decision to carry forward only what truly belongs in the life we’re building next.

And so, I stand here. Just outside The Hole. Not just preparing to clear out a room, but preparing to clear space inside. For the next version of home. For what’s yet to come. For the peace that follows when we no longer carry what we were never meant to hold alone.