What repair actually looks like

I was doing a lot of housework the other day, cleaning and fixing things, and it struck me how much that seems like a metaphor for emotional healing. The stains, scratches, and skid marks are evidence of life. And even when you paint over them, you know they were still on the wall. 

Sometimes we forget that things have to get messier before they get cleaner. Even something as small as cleaning out the fridge - you take everything out first. For a while, the mess isn't in the fridge anymore. It's spread across your counter, your table, your floor. It looks worse before it looks better. That's not a failure of the process. That is the process.

I think healing works the same way. You have to take everything out to make room for it. Sometimes that means sitting with a feeling instead of pushing it back down. Sometimes it means a good scream; something physical, something that forces out what's been sitting there quietly, bottled, taking up space you didn't know was occupied. Sometimes it just means talking. Saying the thing out loud to someone, which is its own kind of taking-everything-out. Its own kind of making room.

None of it feels productive in the moment. It just feels like a mess. Like chaose. But the mess is what clears the way back to clean.

I don't know exactly what this looks like as a design yet. But I know it's true, and I know it belongs in this collection somewhere, because the thing about repair is, it's not a straight line. It never looks finished from the inside. It just eventually is.