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← CHAPTER OVERVIEW

How can we fill our Homes with Love? 💕

Dear Creatrix,

How did you enjoy the last week?

What changes did you make? If you like, you can post about it and tag me, or share it with us in the Facebook group.

This week, after we’ve taken everything apart, looked at it closely and in the process learned a whole lot about what we need and what makes us unique – who we are and what we can be more of if we follow our inner voice – it’s time to invite more love into our homes and to fill it with the intentions and energies that we want to have around us.

But how do we do that?

Again, I’ll share a part of my own story:

Growing up, I did not see much of what I perceived as beauty or style around me, so my life seemed complete without it. For me, it was enough to have A bed and A couch. I picked from what was available and that was it.

Maybe I would get a cool one from the new factory outlet store. But never one that was picked with intention by me for me. It always felt a bit like having something to show to other people: Look at me, I have this.

I suppose my identity was very much attached to things and having them, as if that would somehow make a difference for me as a person.

In those times, my ego was definitely attached to things, and I was working more on my image than on me as a person. And I think I’m not the only one had that approach.

(Looking at this now, two years after I first wrote this, I know a lot more than I did when I wrote this down – because I wrote it down, and continued to be honest and open and try to make sense of it all.

What I see now is that at that time, as a teenager, I was already so detached from my needs and wishes and because they had never been taken seriously or honoured that I just tried to do what I would get approval from others for as I was trained for that and that was the best I could get.)

The problem is, that if we have this connection in our heads that owning certain things, having them or not having them, has a relationship to our value or who we are, then we are in a state of addiction, basically.

We feel like we need these outside markers for our identity, and losing them becomes connected to losing our identity or our worth.

It doesn’t have to be this extreme, but there is an undercurrent of this kind of connection in many of us. This happens when we’re raised with punishment and approval instead of learning to check in for soul satisfaction.

I recently saw this quote: “Shaming someone into action creates acting. Inspiring someone into action creates change.” – Neil Strauss

And so many of us, I think, were shamed when they talked about their true desires and wishes, and so we distanced ourselves from that and looked for the things that were safe.

Adler, a contemporary of Freud, talks about this, and it’s also in the wonderful book: “The Courage to be Disliked” Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga.

But we can turn things around and get back in touch with our soul’s yearnings, and we will look at how to turn this around today.

So, where I grew up, I was raised to follow the latest trends, not personal fulfilment. If you wanted something other than what was easily available, people would ask if you thought you were special or better than others, or why you needed something else and yes, as an answer, would not have found much appreciation.

Not that I thought of myself as better, I just liked different things, yet that was somehow wrongly equated, and it made me feel like I was wrong for wanting the things I felt a natural attraction to.

I felt like I was supposed to stick to want what everyone else wnated and had. And so I too tried to silence that part of myself that longed for something else.

At a certain point, I started to do my own thing anyway, and when I wasn’t allowed to buy the furniture I wanted, I started to build some of it myself. But what I had access to and saw around me would still set the limits to my imagination.

Then, some years ago, I fell in love with someone whose parents were artists, musicians.

I learned a lot from her in the time we spent together. It felt like a door opening to a world I had been longing for from the day I was born that I was always told I was not allowed to enter.

Looking back, I can see that I kept these limitations up myself, after they had been imposed on me in my childhood, by thinking to myself, that I had no right to access these spaces because they had been denied to me in my past.

And because of that, I didn’t feel at ease there, which made me insecure, and that insecurity made me feel like I didn’t belong.

But to my partner, at the time, design and style mattered in a way I had not known before and to go about picking the things for one’s home with deep intention, time and taste was something I found fascinating and immediately knew I wanted more of in my life.

Do you know this feeling when you always had the regular version of something and think it’s the best thing, but once you’ve tasted the extra fine version, regular just seems bland?

That’s how I felt and so a whole new world of deep feelings, pleasure and joy opened up.

Even though before I thought I didn’t need much to feel at peace and happy and thought I felt really happy (because I was so good at suppressing my needs, desires and wishes, that I forgot I had them all together and arranged myself with what was).

But over time, seeing the way she interacted with things and spaces, I had to admit to myself that I also did not know a deeper form of peace and happiness because I had never had the chance to experience it before – and that that only comes with intention and truly knowing yourself and allowing yourself to experience your desires.

So, today, I would like to invite you on a journey to go deeper into those desires than you might have ever gone before, or like you might not go all the time.