Creative Changes Blog

This is a personal story that I told to a client recently, to try to help her with some decision making she needed to do in order to achieve her organizing goals. The story seemed to touch a nerve for her, and she then had a more clear understanding of the burden that some of her belongings were creating in her life, and that she was keeping certain things out of perceived obligations to other people.

My Mothers Birds


My mother had a collection of beautiful little bird figurines. Some were elegant crystal and some were hand made pottery, or wood. All were different, and special, gathered over a period of many years. My mother loved animals of all shapes and sizes, and was a champion for animal causes. That bird collection was such a statement about who my mother was.

After both my parents had passed away, I was able to make the decisions about most of their belongings, except for a small pile of boxes of very personal things, including the bird collection.

It seemed like such a dilemma to me as to what to do with these beautiful figurines. I believe some of them were expensive, many of them were hand made, and some of them were made specifically for her. I had no place in my tiny house for the collection, but more importantly, it was HER collection. I thought of selling them on E-Bay, but that seemed like a big bother and not in keeping with my mother's sensibilities. Finally, after a couple of years of looking at the boxes, I decided to sell them at our spring yard sale.

The night before the yard sale I unpacked all of them and set them up on a table to try to price them. I was stuck again. I had no idea what monetary value they had. Their true value was what they meant to my mother and I could not put a price tag on that. That was an Ah - Ha moment for me. All of a sudden I was able to let them all go, except for just a few of my favorites, because I realized that I was hanging on to memories, and that I did not need to keep all those figurines in order to keep my memories.

I set up a special table for the bird collection at the yard sale, and I let people pay whatever they wanted for the birds. There were men, women and children who were entranced with these beautiful figurines, and they all seemed to take a lot of pleasure in looking them over and choosing their special birds. I felt that we all honored my mother, who was a most generous person, by spreading the joy of that collection as wide as we could. Each person who purchased one of those birds went away with a smile and a treasure in their hands, which in turn gave me great pleasure. I felt certain that my mother was pleased also.

As Peter Walsh so perfectly states, "We are not our stuff".

Creating a new, beautiful memory of the bird collection was such a perfect way for me to let it go, physically and emotionally.

Until next time,

Sandra