The House
It's the metaphor of living.
The Foundation
Life is the foundation. It's what we have been given, the thing from which everything else comes. The gift of life is the miracle. It's our DNA. Given by our creator with no accounting by us. This is just us, in our original, perfect design.
The Air
Love is the air, the breath of the house. We can't see it, and yet it informs everything. The temperature. Is it warm, cool, stagnant, humid, dry? We feel it. If it isn't comfortable, it becomes an immediate consideration.
We have all walked into a grandma's house that is too hot and too stifling. Why am I so hot? Can we open a window? Does the AC work? How is this a livable condition? It may be for her. And yet, is it? Or maybe it's a cold house, so devoid of a snuggle or a hug. Can we make a fire or turn up the heat, please. When it's comfortable and just right, it allows us to move freely and simply be ourselves. Thriving in our environments, our homes.
Love informs how we abide in our house. Assuming we want to grow and live fully means we embrace love as a value. The breath of life.
What has been your experience of love, giving and receiving? What is your relationship to love, of people, things or experiences?
The Light
Clarity is the light. This is where truth lives. Sometimes bright and fully illuminating. Other times dim and soft. Sometimes too dark to see. It changes with the day, the season. Sometimes we need shades because it's too much. Other times we need a flashlight or a lamp. Too much or too little light can create the same problem of blindness. The right amount and we can see clearly.
Without clarity, we are limited. Tripping over the same worn paths of regret, isolation or toxicity. The same unhealthy patterns.
And yet clarity also reveals beauty that was always there. The colors of maple leaves in fall. The scent of roses carried on sunlight. Highlights in our hair. The lines on our foreheads that tell the story of a life actually lived. Light shows us where the dirt has collected and where we need a fresh coat of paint. It illuminates all of it, the beautiful and the undone, without judgment.
Clarity gives us perspective, which lends to choice, and ultimately freedom.
The good news is this. The light is never gone. The sun still exists behind the clouds, it just may be eclipsed, waiting to shine. A peek over the horizon or blinding bright at noon. It's just waiting for a window, or for a shade to be lifted. It's our relationship to it that matters. Sometimes we can take in more. Other times, pull the shade already. Do you need your sunnies?
Clarity doesn't remove our pain. It doesn't walk us out of the stuck places. It doesn't manifest love, the perfect career or our dreams. Sometimes the truth hurts like hell. And other times it lends itself to our happiest moments. But we have to orient to it. Let it in fully to experience its warmth and all it may offer.
It illuminates.
It shows us the low ceiling and the dark hallway and the windows we've kept shut. The light shifts through the seasons and shows us where we have changed and evolved. It reveals what was always there, but hard to see. It can highlight where we need to go, but doesn't go there for us. Clarity lights the path we must walk.
Where have you allowed the light in to face hard truths in your life? What kind of freedom has that created? Or where have you allowed shadows to remain?
The Kitchen
Pain is the kitchen. Well-integrated pain is part of living a healthy life. We don't escape pain. We can avoid it, which has its own set of costs. When we allow it, its refinement can beautifully shape us. Ask any athlete.
The kitchen houses fire, cold, cut, mix, blend, wash, wipe, scrub, scrape, fry, scald, burn, bake, chop, store, freeze, heat, cool. You get my point. These things shape us. Where the fights happen. Where hugs happen. Where we eat vegetables and treats. Where there is cooking and boiling, and where the knives cut deep. The food that nourishes our bodies is held in the kitchen. We don't experience life without the nourishment and the pain as a central part. It's the paradox. Pain is integral to the joy of life. We don't get one without the other. No house is complete without a kitchen of some sort. We must go there, and yet we can't dwell there.
What wounds or pain have gone unaddressed for you? How do you relate to the pain in your life? What adjustments can you make to help process and let go, to allow for healing?
The Hallways
Change is the hallways. Isn't there a cliché that says the only constant in life is change? Another paradox of sorts. The hallways are these necessary transitions that lead us from one room to the next. One point in life to the next. Where the job or the relationship ends and we find ourselves single or unemployed. Critical points of growth. Thresholds we didn't choose.
Dark hallways are scary places. And unknowingly we can hide there, or get lost. In those unlit, uncomfortable, cramped spaces with no direction. Alone. Despair as a companion. These places aren't meant for sustained living.
Sometimes those hallways have mirrors. Old photos. Glimpses of a former self, a former life. Reminders of old pain or happy milestones of life shared. And sometimes we pass by them without really seeing, unconsciously dragging what was into what is. Carrying more than we know.
The hallway is meant for transition. Not residence. Maybe some decor, but not camp. And yet we have all done it, dragged our furniture and lamps in, hung some pictures, told ourselves this is fine. This is enough. It is not. The hallway is not your home. It's a stepping stone.
Where are you in transition? Have you ever been in this place and thought it was the end of the road rather than a means to an end?
The Great Room
Play and community are the great room. This is the room that breathes. Love abiding. The one that holds more people than it was probably designed for. The one that gets loud and stays lit and hums long after the dishes are done. The great room isn't about perfection, it's about presence. Bodies on couches. Laughter that catches you off guard. The kind of conversation that starts at dinner and ends hours later when no one wants to go home.
We were not meant to live alone in the small rooms. We were meant for the great room. For community. For the friend who shows up without being asked. For the table that adds another chair without a second thought. For the inside joke that sends someone to the floor. For the gathering that costs nothing and means everything.
Play is underrated at every age. Especially ours. We stopped playing somewhere along the way and called it maturity. I don't think that's right. Play is how we stay curious. How we stay young inside an aging body. How we metabolize the hard things and remember that life is also absurd and delightful and genuinely hilarious, if we let it be.
The great room is where we put down the weight for a while. Where we stop performing and start being. Where we remember we are known and liked and wanted here. This is not a luxury. This is a necessity. Luxuries are necessities, remember?
Who have you had in your great room lately? And when did you last really play?
The Bedrooms
Rest is the bedrooms.
I saved this one for last on purpose. Because rest is the room we skip. The room we feel guilty about. The room we have told ourselves we will get to eventually, after the list, after the launch, after the kids are raised, after we've earned it.
We have not earned rest. Rest is not a reward. Rest is a room.
It is sanctuary. It is the place the body returns to when it has given what it has to give. The place the mind quiets. Where we are not producing or performing or solving or helping. Where we are simply being. Held by something larger. Restored.
A bedroom is intimate. It is where we are most ourselves, undone, soft, without the armor. It is where dreams happen. Not the aspirational kind we talk about at dinner. The real kind. The ones that process what the day didn't finish. Restoration and integration happen here. The ones that tell us something we weren't ready to hear in waking hours.
Rest is not passive. It is one of the most active and courageous things we can choose. Especially when the hallways are full and the kitchen is still on and the world is loud. To say: I am stopping. I am receiving. I am allowing myself to be restored.
This is not weakness. This is wisdom.
How is your bedroom? Is it a place you return to, or a place you avoid? Is rest something you receive, or something you postpone?
Come Sit at the Table
So what do we do with all of this? We start where we are. We tend what we have. We move toward the love and the light.
So here is what I know. Imperfectly.
So what do we have in our house of Jen Knows? We have life, love, clarity, pain, change, laughter and community, and rest. A life fully lived. Not without pain.
The foundation is life. The air is love. The light is already there, it just needs a window. The kitchen will shape you, but it isn't where you rest. The hallways are the landing points, not the destination. The great room is full of community and laughter and connection and conversations that go long into the night. And the bedrooms are a sanctuary. Not earned. Given.
Come sit at the table. Let's talk more and discover what matters now, in your house.
