Red Room
February 8th 2021
The more I live in this body and experience these experiences, the more I understand who I am and what works best for me. I spent the first 30 years of my life figuring out what isn’t right for me, and I am now spending many years going forward figuring out what does. I now understand how to take care of myself in ways I’ve never experienced before. I now understand how to communicate in ways I have never experienced before. I now understand how to set and hold boundaries in ways I have never experienced before. It is incredible what life will teach you if you are willing to listen.
One of the biggest lessons that’s showing itself to me these days is how I spent the first 30 years of my life avoiding communicating when I felt insecure. If I had any emotion that felt like speaking would be bad, painful, or hard I would run from it. I’d hold it all inside and hope and pray that everything would turn out to be okay. These days I never allow my emotions to go unheard or unprocessed. These days I understand that to actually get to the other side of these feelings I have to go THROUGH them.
We have a room in our house that’s painted in red. It has a really comfy chair that I sit in that gives me a view of almost the entire first floor. It’s a corner that is not frequented by the rest of the household much because it doesn’t hold anything of value to anyone else but me. It’s really designed for me specifically. We call it the Red Room. It’s where I do my work, my connection with myself, my responses to everyone else and it has become the meeting space for our family.
We have our family discussions here. Everyone gets to share what they are processing and together we come up with a way to live together where everyone feels included and understands the final decision. When someone is feeling frustrated, upset, unheard, misunderstood you’ll hear the words “Red Room” voiced throughout the house and you’ll see us all gather in here as a group. We talk about a lot of things in here, from cleaning to feelings to celebrations to hard conversations. This is the work I am designed to do and it makes it a great place for me to call home.
Any issue that has come up in our family has been resolved in this room after conversation and that alone has taught me what REALLY works. Communication really really works. Being open, being vulnerable, saying hard things, and communicating with each other is what works for me.
If this post is resonating with you and you feel like some open, vulnerable conversation would be really good for you, I encourage you to check out with an introduction call with me. I’d love to connect with you!