The Hallway Pile Wasn't the Point

There's a pile of winter scarves on the chair in my hallway. This is about what happened when I finally stopped and looked.

The Hallway Pile Wasn’t the Point

What I saw, what I released, and what it made space for

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There’s a chair in my hallway. Right by my antique washstand. ( It was mom’s)

And on that chair, for the past six weeks, sits a pile of scarves.

Winter hats. Gloves. Those puffy little handwarmers that clip to your jacket. The kind of things you pull out when the seasons shift and the air gets sharp.

They’ve been sitting there. Waiting.

Waiting for me to carry them the ten feet to the coat closet and put them on the shelf where they belong.

But I keep walking past them.

Not out of laziness. Not because I’m too busy.

Because every time I look at them, I feel something I can’t quite name.

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Six weeks. That’s a long time to leave something undone when it would take sixty seconds to finish.

But this morning, I stopped. I stood there in the hallway and actually looked at them.

The deep purple and yellow scarf with the fringe. The chunky cream one I wore when Miss Lumi ( small dog) and I walked four times a day, no matter the weather. The soft grey one that smelled like cold air and purpose.

And I realized: I don’t wear these anymore.

Not because they’re worn out. Not because I don’t like them.

Because I’m not that woman now.

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Those scarves belonged to a version of me who dressed by necessity. Who layered up because a dog needed walking and the cold didn’t care if I was tired. Who moved her body every day not because she wanted to, but because ritual demanded it.

And truth be told? That woman kind of liked it. The structure. The duty. The rhythm of weather and movement and being needed. The structure was comforting.

But I don’t live like that anymore. The dog is gone and so is my desire to be a dog walker!

I walk when I want to. I stay in when I want to. I don’t dress for duty—I dress for choice.

And those scarves have been sitting on that chair for six weeks because some part of me knew:

Putting them away means letting her go. And letting her go COULD be uncomfortable.

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I carried those scarves to the coat closet. Put them on the shelf. Closed the door.

And I didn’t feel lighter.

I felt different.

Like I’d been holding my breath for six weeks and finally let it go. Like I’d been in conversation with a ghost version of myself and finally hung up the phone.

Letting her go didn’t feel like freedom. It felt like truth.

And truth doesn’t always feel good. It just feels right.

But here’s what I noticed in the hours after:

I had more room.

Not physical room. Internal room. The kind of space that lets you hear a signal from your body and actually respond to it instead of override it.

That space is the whole point.

Because transformation doesn’t end when you put the scarves away.

It shows up in what you do with the room you just made.

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This is why I track joy instead of gratitude.

The Joy Ledger isn’t about cataloging blessings. It’s about noticing what actually lands in your body—what creates that internal room, that softening, that signal you can hear.

When I wrote “Soft. Quiet. Mine.” after putting those scarves away, I wasn’t being grateful for decluttering.

I was tracking the frequency of letting go.

And when your body learns to recognize that frequency, it knows how to find it again when you need it.

Four hours later, when the fog rolled in? My body remembered: This feels tight. You know how to make room.

That’s what the practice builds. Not positivity. Precision.

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Four hours later, I hit a wall.

Foggy. Fatigued. Brain like static. No energy to write. The kind of heavy that settles into your bones and whispers maybe tomorrow.

I thought maybe it was the moon. Or bad sleep. Or just one of those days.

But then something deeper clicked.

Not a thought. A body-knowing.

The air felt thick. The room felt small. My skin felt tight.

The woman I used to be would’ve ignored it. Powered through. Blamed herself for not being stronger.

But the woman I am now?

She listened.

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I turned off the space heater. Turned on the ceiling fan. Cracked the door and let the air move.

I stood in the middle of my living room and breathed.

Four counts in. Four counts hold. Six counts out.

And something shifted.

Not dramatically. Not like a lightning bolt. Just... a softening.

And from that softening came a nudge: Move the furniture.

So I did.

I rearranged my entire living room and dining room in less than 40 minutes. Not because I had a plan. Because my body wanted space and my soul wanted flow and I finally know how to listen when they speak.

Clarity surged in. Energy returned. My entire field shifted.

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Because the new me has coherence.

The new me doesn’t guess—she feels.

She doesn’t spiral—she adjusts.

And I want to tell you what happened next, but I’m careful about this part.

Because I don’t want it to sound like some “align your energy and money will flow” promise. That’s guru talk. That’s not what this is.

But within an hour of making that shift, things moved. Readers engaged. Someone bought something. Energy that had been stuck suddenly wasn’t.

I’m not saying it’ll happen for you the same way. I’m saying when you stop fighting yourself, things stop fighting you back.

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That’s the point of this work.

The Joy Ledger. The breath. The meditation. The noticing.

Not so I can brag about alignment. Not so I can say I threw out a box of scarves.

But so when life hands me static, I don’t collapse—I respond.

And because I’m no longer the woman who ignores her own signals… I recognized the shift. I made a move. And life responded right back.

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If you’ve been wondering what all this inner work is for—

Let me tell you:

It’s not for peace. It’s for power.

It’s for knowing exactly what to do when the energy dips, the body sags, the fog rolls in.

This is what rewiring looks like.

Not retirement. Not coasting. Not sitting quietly in the back row waiting for life to wind down.

Rewiring is the active practice of becoming someone new—over and over again.

The woman who needed those scarves? She was real. She mattered. She got me here.

But she’s not who I’m becoming.

And at 70, I’m still becoming.

That’s the whole philosophy: We don’t retire. We rewire.

We notice what no longer fits. We make room. We listen to the signals. We adjust.

And we keep becoming the version of ourselves that knows how to get herself back.

That woman is no longer me.

And the woman I am now? She’s just getting started

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