And what about the things that bring your whole past rushing back?
Read And Then I Opened My Box of the Past, about rediscovering forty years of memories and deciding what actually needs to come along.
Your friend who will tell you the story of the room she sublet in “The Cover Girl House” in another email,
Vivian
If you’re moving abroad in the next year, you’re exactly who I created this workshop for.
Astoria, Queens. New York City. August 2007.
I’m bent over my suitcase with piles of stuff radiating out around me like I am the rock that got tossed into the river and all my belongings are rippling all over the room.
Elle is sitting on the sofa helping me pack.
Because I am moving to Italy in 14 hours.
She keeps putting things in. I keep taking things out.
“But you don’t have anything to wear.”
“It’s too much. I have to be able to carry this.”
She’s looking at me like I’ve lost my mind.
And like anyone standing on the edge of something new and unknown, I thought she might be right.
I’d invited strangers from Craigslist into my home to cart away the dresser and the kitchen table my mom bought for me when I moved into my first apartment for the first time.
I’d slept on a hardwood floor after the movers came to put everything that was moving with me into a storage unit, ready to join me once I figured out exactly where I would be setting up this new house.
I’d moved into (and out of) a room in a different apartment that I sublet when my lease was up, but my flight wasn’t taking off for a couple of months.
And now, I’m spending my last night on Elle’s sofa, drinking wine while staring at what remains of my stuff. Clothing, mostly. Just what I think I need to get me through the first couple of months while I’m getting my bearings.
I’ve already done a hundred hard things.
And now, here we are. Stressing out over skirts.
Elle thinks I’m packing for Italy.
I know I’m packing for a whole new life.
We are not packing the same suitcase.
It’s easy to think that packing for a move abroad is just like packing for a trip.
But with more stuff.
Except that’s not really what you’re doing.
You’re not just deciding what belongs in your suitcase.
You’re deciding what belongs in the next part of your life.
And what doesn’t.
Every major life transition asks us to edit one life before we can build another.
Whether you’re getting married or divorced, switching careers or retiring from one, starting fresh or starting over.
The work is always the same.
You edit one life. So you can build the next one.
Because moving abroad isn’t the same as moving across town.
And downsizing before a move abroad isn’t really about packing.
It’s about sorting through everything you’ve accumulated over a lifetime in your current home.
It’s about choosing what you will bring with you into your new life, in your new home, in your new country.
On Thursday, I’ll walk you through four questions that don’t make downsizing easy.
But they make it easy-er.
Because each question gives you another filter for deciding what comes with you into your next life. And what doesn’t.