In my graduate program, we often spoke of the importance of
“bearing witness” to the experiences of others, most often in the context of
suffering and trauma. We frequently discussed what it means to fully present
with someone as they walk through an experience or even as they recount a past
trauma. This gift of bearing witness, of standing with them, and of being able
to “vouch” for them, in a sense, was one of the most powerful concepts to me,
as I’ve seen it manifest in so many ways in daily life.
As I mentioned in my last post, I’m in the process of moving
to an apartment in the city. I honestly didn’t think I’d be moving for a while,
but I shouldn’t be surprised that life didn’t turn out that way. (When do our
plans ever end the way we think they will?) I’m so excited to be moving in with
a friend from grad school, to be living in the city, and to be significantly
closer to work. Yet over the last month I have had such a mix of emotions I
pack and prepare to leave my current home. When I moved to New Jersey nearly
two years ago, I was in a completely different season in life. Looking back on
it now, it honestly feels like a different lifetime, or not even my life, for
that matter. As life has changed since then, I have learned a lot about
physical space and how it impacts our mental and emotional state, and I’ve
striven to put those lessons into practice.
I’ve come to believe that just as people can bear witness to
the experiences of those around them, so can space bear witness to our lives,
both the good and the bad. And as I pack up my home yet again, I’m reminded
with each box how this apartment has borne witness to so much over the past two
years – to laughter and to tears, to love and to heartache, to joyous
celebrations and to quiet, reflective moments. I have learned that there are
some spaces that, as seasons change, need to be kept sacred. They need to be
left untouched as they hold the all the moments of good, each moment that is
special for that space in life. And then there are spaces that need to be reclaimed,
those spaces that need to change with season and need to be reinfused with
positivity where there was once pain.
