Home positivity

Home tells who we are, so I have always felt a bit nervous to show my home for new visitors or pictures of it on social media and the things I have made here. For me, it is stepping into vulnerability and visibility, but with age and through showing up I have got more and more comfortable with it. I am an avid reader of interior magazines, mostly I just look for the shapes, patterns, and colors in them for inspiration though. Those are for the eye to enjoy and to train the eye and sometimes to add things to my "want list."  I have often been wondering if it would be nourishing to hear the stories behind the homes and the growth of the inhabitants there perhaps from a bit different point of view than usual. I think I’ve made two journeys simultaneously during the last ten years or so. The other one I made through the real home-making - and the other project with the home inside me. Home is where it all starts and where it all ends anyway or what. When talking about trauma and if and when we encounter one during our lives, smaller or bigger, establishing a safe home or a safe place within ourselves is important. Therefore, too home has been so important, has made me homebound as well. The quote above by William Morris, I once saw on Pinterest years ago, has also been one that speaks to me and has been guiding me forward. 

In general aren’t the interiors we live and work in necessary for our well-being and affect our mood, make the scene for practical everyday life. And it is, of course, a privilege not everyone has, but on the other hand, creating a beautiful home has nothing to do with money either. Our homes can support us to be the best versions of ourselves and nourish and make us feel many positive emotions, safety, harmony, joy, etc. All depending on the feeling we want each space to awake within us and our families.  

Items we gather around can tell stories of our creativity and the creativity of other persons. How for example coffee can taste different when we drink it from a cup someone has made with their hands since there is a human connection. Natural materials like wood and rattan bring warmth if that is the feeling we are looking for since there is a connection with nature. Or perhaps it is the neutral colors and modern lines we feel drawn to. Maybe we have a few design items which tell that this is the group we want to belong to - or things related to our free time and we show them on social media too, perhaps also sometimes to tell that: "Yes, I know things and I follow trends. I am interesting, and I belong". I am only talking about myself. Perhaps we invest our money on the latest technical innovations and gadgets. Maybe we do like Fredde in the opening scene of the Swedish movie Solsidan (a comedy about the lives of the Swedish upper class, a long time success as a TV-series). He uses a snow cannon he has bought to have snow on the yard in Christmas and tells about all the fine qualities of the cannon to his friend. And in his case it is of course not just any cannon, it is the best of the best on the market. There is passion, excitement, and sincerity in his actions though, which make this comedy figure lovable. And this is how we are, we seek love, meaning for life and healing for our wounds in all sorts of ways, we want to measure up. I guess there is the old American saying: "Keeping up with the Joneses" or is it nowadays "Keeping up with the Kardashians" or some other family? And even though we all know that the value beyond any measure is within each and one of us, and it is more than clear that the measure has to be something else than a few family names for the sake of the planet as well. 

Perhaps we, therefore, have tried to think who we want to support when buying or choosing not to buy at all, to think about the environment, sustainability and to purchase items which are locally produced if possible. We are minimalists or maximalists, guided by our hearts and only buy a little of what really makes us happy, or then our heart guides us to buy quite a lot :-). It can be a dear interest of ours too which makes us travel as well. Perhaps we have inherited items from the previous generations which we cherish. Maybe we at some point do a huge decluttering project and donate a lot for charity to release old feelings as a reconciliation with the past and where our own behavior has come from some other emotion than love – from vanity - and it wouldn't feel right to earn any money through selling all the old stuff. Then we hope that those pieces of furniture and other objects find a new good home where they are used and cherished, where they get a new happy story to be a part of.    

So our personalities and identities are of course intertwined with our homes and the lives we live there. And our homes can also be a part of our growth story as human beings when we travel through our lives. Marie Kondo has said that: "The space in which we live should be for the person we are becoming now, not for the person we were in the past." I've tried to keep that in my mind lately although I know that this newish home of mine will only be a temporary one for me – so I guess I am in a hotel traveling, looking for my home if we speak metaphorically.  

In my case, there is also a story behind all the homemade curtains and rugs in my home. There has been something within me I have been working within each home I've lived so far. In the house before the last one, over ten years ago and as a young woman, it was about living according to the belief of trying to become perfect in each area of life in my own style – or the way I thought I should be. I thought that perhaps then I could finally feel worthy since one of my wounds was in the area of homemaking where I was doomed incapable, and I've had to overcome this inner belief. And I healed that wound in that home. And my last apartment was about learning to make more of the interior myself. How I then tackled with the inherited inner belief of fear and failure when it comes to making. How I had an inner belief again that I should never buy any expensive materials in case I fail. And how I thought that everything I make should be perfect the first time I give it a try putting anxiety and pressure on my shoulders. It is, of course, the opposite, failure and daring to fail are the only way into development in any area of life – but first, we need inner security before we can allow ourselves to fail. We need to be at home. It took time to learn this lesson, but I tackled through the uncomfortable feelings, developed some skills and for this new home, I just made the curtains and everything else I thought I need. Next time I may even be so bold that I buy the curtains or will be without. It has been a journey from perfectionism into healthy striving, doing my best and not always that either. And now I am trying to find my way into the beauty of imperfection, into enough. After living a year in this home of mine, I can also say that I have no need to buy anything at the moment or remake either. It is enough to rearrange the order every now and then so that everything old looks fresh for a while.   

I also happen to be the first academic within the larger family, and there were vast generational differences how we see the role of the woman with the previous generation coming from an agrarian and blue-collar background. It has left me somewhere in between trying to tackle both fields, work and home, and in the middle of feelings of inadequacy. I have also so often felt that I don’t know where I belong, not in the world I came from and not in the academic world either being the first student at the university within the larger family. This is a subject which has also been sometimes on media here in Finland but mostly something that has not been talked about. There is equality but in a way not. Katriina Järvinen, a Finnish psychotherapist, who also has made a class journey of this kind says that sometimes it is the inner cleaner that takes over the power, sisäinen laitossiivooja in Finnish, the part still inside us who doesn’t see herself as worthy to be where she is now. Then we just try to work with what we got.

Related to this, one of the Finnish words that I've been fond of lately is home positivity or kotipositiivisuus. Because our lives are so busy nowadays, it is more seldom to ask for friends to come for a visit to our homes, the energy may be lacking when it comes to cleaning and such as well. The meaning of the word is to raise awareness that it is okay to let people come into our homes; despite the clutter, dust bunnies and such. That word too has the word “enough” written inside it, the word I have been following this year and reflecting on the lessons it has given me. I would also like to include the inner home, the emotional home, in the definition of the word home positivity as well. 

This year I have seen many old circles coming to an end in my life – when it comes to healing, when it comes to my creative journey, when it comes to home and work, inherited patterns of living or life traps, life lessons, the plot of the film Groundhog Day. I wonder if it is so that when we have gone through a circle, from the beginning to the end, we build the right kind of fence at the same time around it, and that will give us boundaries? What is important for us and needs to be protected is safely inside the circle. And the rest, all the unnecessary, is released. And from here I get to another story about a home and a child, a journey from a house into a home I wrote down earlier this Fall. That one has been one really big circle.

Ja oikein hyvää itsenäisyyspäivää! Happy Independence Day (we celebrate it today in Finland)!