Bearing Witness

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.

As I sit here in half-packed living room – with it’s nearly empty walls and boxes stacked in corner – I’m amazed at how much this little piece of space has changed with the seasons. Looking back at old photos I took shortly after I moved in, you almost wouldn’t know this is the same space. And as difficult as it is to leave this apartment, I look at this space and see how it now reflects me and the changes that have happened within me as I’ve lived here. This living room, this apartment, this space, has borne witness to both the most defeating times and the most victorious triumphs of my short twenty-something years. With this new season of life, I’m looking forward t