Picture this.
A few reminders from navigating floodwaters to reviewing old photographs.
For those of you outside of Ontario or Canada, several parts of Ontario had a few days of torrential rain this week that led to tons of flooding in many areas. Our sump pump malfunctioned during this time. Ugh. (And, as luck would have it, this happened while my husband was in the office over an hour away.) The sump pump issues were terrifying but, luckily, I was home and heard it all happening so could act quickly. Then, a wonderful neighbour and friend was able to fix the issue quite easily. So, we had no major flooding or damage here… just a mess to clean up. (We’re much luckier than so many others. My heart goes out to those whose homes were completely flooded. ❤️🙏🏼)
Before the issue with the sump pump could be addressed, I had to quickly pluck items from the closet that houses the pump so I could more easily contain the water and prevent damage. Once the source of the issue was addressed, a silver lining emerged: I’d been wanting to reorganize our basement storage for quite some time. So, I looked at all that stuff strewn about the basement and said, “Nope. I’m not just putting this %$#! back.”
Thus ensued a massive reorganizing and purging exercise.
So, yet again, I find myself writing to you about spending part of my week doing something unplanned but long overdue. (If you don’t know what I’m talking about, you can check out my last newsletter here where I talk about my website updating debacle.)
Moving boxes around and sorting things into keep/donate/trash piles is the physically hard part of reorganizing. (This was made all the more challenging by the fact that I was carrying stuff up and down between floors… many, many, many times. My quads are singing today, folks.)
But there are mental and emotional aspects to this kind of work that we should not overlook.
For starters, with any reorganizing job like this, things always look much, much worse before they start to look better. When you’re in the messy middle, it can feel very overwhelming, to the point that you might say, “Okay, I changed my mind. I don’t want to do this anymore.” Of course, by then, you’ve passed the point of no return.
Then there’s the mental toll of keeping track of everything. For me, I decided to reorganize not only the basement but also the cold cellar AND the garage. (No, I’m clearly not well. 🥴) So there was a lot of “Okay. I could put this here but then that will need to move to this area instead and then that other thing will have to come here to be with its sister thing.” Doing that for hours on end is mentally draining.
The most difficult part, though? Some things are harder to part with than others. I aimed to be ruthless with donating or chucking things… and I was.
But then I came upon the boxes of photo albums.
There are five.
Five BOXES of albums. Not just five albums.
Starting in high school (or even slightly before), I became an avid photographer. Through high school, undergrad, MBA, and beyond, there were few events or casual gatherings I went to where I didn’t have a camera with me. I loved this. My friends and family loved this. We always had photos of everything.
Of course, this pre-dates digital cameras and certainly phone cameras. I’m talking about 35-mm point-and-shoot cameras.
Hence the boxes.
These boxes of photos have travelled and moved with me several times. Staring at them yesterday I knew I had to deal with them. It’s so easy to shove them on a shelf and forget about them… but they aren’t doing anyone any favours tucked away in the shadows, taking up valuable storage space!
What I’ve been wanting to do for a long time is go through them and again be kind of ruthless with what I get rid of. I want to chuck boring landscape photos (that I was very much UNskilled at taking), blurry photos of people (of which there are so many… WHY and HOW did those even end up in albums?), variations of essentially the same photo (apparently, teenagers have no discernment when it comes to which photos to include… just include them all!), etc.
My original commitment earlier this week was to go through one album every day to review and filter photos. As of the publication date of this newsletter, I’ve done a couple of albums but I think I might have to stretch this exercise to one album every two days (or more) instead of one every day.
Because it’s hard.
Yeah, it’s fun and I’m so glad I have these photos but it’s hard, too, because going through old photographs brings up a flurry of emotions: happiness, wistfulness, fondness, sadness, longing, regret, etc.
This is all normal… but it’s still hard.
So, let me share with you a few things I’ve had to remind myself of as I go through these photos.
You can feel more than one thing at a time.
You can even feel contradictory emotions at exactly the same time. You can be happy with where your life is now but still long for the way things were 25 years ago. You can be grateful for the relationships you have now but still miss friends you had in high school.
All emotions are okay. We tend to categorize some feelings as being okay and others as being not okay. But the reality is that all feelings are valid and allowed. So, if you feel like crying (for whatever reason) when you look at old photos, do it. Don’t chastise yourself for feeling sad. Don’t judge yourself for being silly. You are far better off shedding a few tears and releasing that emotion than fighting to hold it in.
Bodies are meant to change. We aren’t meant to look the way we did 25 years ago. As we go through life and have experiences that challenge us and help us grow, our bodies are meant to stretch and change and grow with us. It’s okay that you don’t look now the way you did in those photos.
There are seasons to everything... including friendships. I am fortunate to still be very close with several of the same friends I had not only in high school but even in elementary school. I’ve known some of my closest friends today for 30 to 35 years! I know that is rare and that I am very lucky. But I still find it hard to see pictures of other people I used to talk to every day back then that I now talk to once a year, if at all. At the time, we thought things would never change. Of course, as we all know, they do. It’s inevitable. So, while it’s okay to feel regretful or melancholic, once we let those feelings out, we need to choose how to see the situation. Some people come into our lives for a moment or a season. We learn from them, even if we can’t say exactly what we learn, and then, when we’ve helped each other grow, we part ways. That’s also normal and okay.
I hope none of you has to go through old photo albums as a result of having to clean up after a flood… but I do hope you have old photos you can look at and, when you do, keep the above in mind. These things allow us to maintain our compassionate confidence. Not familiar with this concept? I talk about it in several other posts, including these:
You might be wondering what I plan on doing with the photos that remain once I’m done the purge. My goal is to get the five boxes down to one. We’ll see if I succeed or not! But, once I see what I’m left with, I plan on putting them all into a couple of photobooks, which I can actually keep out and look at from time to time, instead of letting the photos wither in the scary dark corners of my home.
As always, I cherish all feedback I get from you, either via email response, comment below, or even just a “like”.
With gratitude,
Stephanie
LORA Concepts Inc.
Helping corporate leaders and their people balance high achievement with well-being.
The information, insight, and advice I share through my work is meant to exist alongside whatever else you may be doing to bolster your mental health, manage stress, or improve your well-being. Nothing I share is meant to replace directives or treatment plans provided by your doctor, therapist, or other healthcare professional.