Release the Ghosts of Your Past
The wedding portrait from my second marriage hung in the hallway like a three-foot specter. After the divorce, I had shoved it to the back of my closet and left it there for eighteen years. I suppose I thought it would ripen into a bittersweet fruit that would nourish me through my golden years.
I don’t know what I imagined — that I would someday have a bigger house with a huge fireplace or grand staircase where this forlorn bride could gaze into eternity. My great-great-great-grandchildren would gaze at it, longing to know this mysterious woman. Never would they fathom the trials she endured married to a former Vietnam veteran who served at Parris Island as a Marine drill instructor. Never would they suspect the scandalous affair she indulged in, producing their great-great-grandfather.
I’m not sure what I thought, but I remembered that it cost me around $450 in 1990 to purchase it. I didn’t want to spend money on a portrait at all, but my mother bullied me into buying it saying, “Karen Renee, you’ve got to get that big one! You’re so beautiful!” What I imagined she meant was, “You’ve finally completed my picture of what my daughter should look like as a bride. You didn’t do it right the first time.”
When my only child (whom I delivered after my divorce and raised by myself) went to college, I followed him. I didn’t move into the dorm with him (I didn’t ask, but I suspected he would have said, “No.”) I moved to a small town about forty minutes away. And I dragged all my stuff — physical and emotional — with me.
Determined to begin my new chapter in life as an empty-nester, I hoisted this portrait of myself onto the sturdy hanger I had pounded into the wall with conviction. I was going to be happy in my new life. I was going to embrace this sad twenty-six-year-old and take care of her. I wanted to see her every day and admire her beauty. I wanted to celebrate her fortitude in enduring so much hardship from her bad choices.
But that’s not what happened.
I had begun the process of letting go of my role as caregiver to my dying parents and mother to my now-fully-grown-and-capable son. I had quit a thirty-year teaching career to begin a full-time Reiki business. For two years, I sailed past Forlorn Karen with a sideways glance, feeling as if she was judging me. She seemed to whisper, “You don’t deserve this new life. You’ll probably mess it up like everything else in your life. You always put on a good front, just like in this portrait. You are an imposter, and no one is ever going to love you.” I just tried to ignore her.
Then Covid-19 forced me to close my office in town, and I began teaching Reiki online from home. My business survived, but I was suffocating.
Not only was Forlorn Karen looming over me constantly every day, but I had also hung a portrait of my abusive grandfather whom I blamed for my father’s abusive behavior. At first, I just stared him down, glaring at him over the dining room table. I slowly began to feel more powerful. Sometimes, I would talk to him out loud: “You sorry S.O.B.” Gradually, the anger dissipated, and I began to wonder why he drank so much and why he was so mean. I remembered stories about my great-grandfather who burned to death in an auto accident (also drunk I imagine). I began to think about generational trauma and feel empathy and pity for him.
But there he was — staring at me every day from under his WWII hat.
Luckily, my dear friend Shanley Ten Eyck is a professional organizer. She was completing her certification with Marie Kondo as a KonMari Consultant and offered to help me.
When we began working together, we did clothes first, and when we moved to books, I kept talking about the portraits, telling Shanley the horror stories behind them. I explained that I had come to forgive my grandfather and my ex-husband — even myself for my bad life decisions. I related how I was beginning to understand that we all do the best we can with the tools we have in any given circumstance. I told her why I had hung them in the first place and all the processing I had done since looking at them every day. I told her . . .
“Take them down,” Shanley said.
“What?” I felt as if she had slapped me.
“Right now. Take them off the wall.” Her voice was calm and soothing but firm.
I went to Forlorn Karen first. “What do I do with her?”
As a professional who is trained to deal with the psychological effects of clutter, Shanley knew I wasn’t just asking about the portrait. She intuited that I needed her help through this huge release and transition and that it wasn’t going to be easy.
“Just turn it around facing the wall and leave it in the hallway for now.” And so I did.
“Now, go take down the other one,” Shanley encouraged.
“It’s an antique,” I protested.
“Uh huh. Put it somewhere safe where you don’t see it for now,” she replied.
I did as instructed. I eventually boxed up the grandfather portrait I had inherited from my dad and sent it to my uncle in Oregon who really wanted it.
Forlorn Karen was a harder task. She sat in the hallway facing the wall for three weeks. I asked my son if he wanted it. It didn’t go well. One of my former writing students, Megan Bernhardt Williams summed it up:
“Hey son, I have this large framed emotional baggage. I’ve been dragging it around for like twenty something years. You interested?”
“Yeah, mom, uh, maybe a wallet sized? But uh. I’ll pass on the regency style portrait of you looking very forlorn.”
People walk into his apartment and this thing is bigger than the tv. He’s like “oh yeah, that came with the place. They say it’s haunted.” Shrugs and offers his guests a drink.
I‘m so grateful to have such an honest son with my sense of humor. And I’m doubly grateful for my former student who keeps me in stitches while I stretch and grow.
Ultimately, I wrestled Forlorn Karen into my tiny Hyundai Accent and drove her to Goodwill with some other donations. I thought maybe someone would want the huge, expensive frame.
I dragged it from the back seat and asked the attendant, “Do y’all take things like this?”
“Yes, ma’am,” she replied looking at Forlorn Karen and then at me with squinty eyes.
“It’s me!” I called out as she carried the portrait away. “I mean, in the picture. It is me.” She nodded, turned back around, and then disappeared with Forlorn Karen into the donation center.
I got in the car. I cried. I laughed. I cried again. I gave myself Reiki. As the tears rolled down my face, I breathed a sigh of relief. I felt as if I had just buried my old self. And I was so happy to let her go.
Transitions aren’t just physical; they are an opportunity to live more intentionally. Decluttering does more than make space. It clears your house and your mental, emotional, and spiritual energy fields. It moves you closer to your goals. In the year since I released the portraits and ghosts of my past, my business has expanded internationally. I have room in my life for joy. I have the capacity for change and growth.
Anyone who feels stuck in life can reach out to someone like Shanley. Letting go of the past in order to embrace the life you imagine for yourself can seem overwhelming. But the reward is immeasurable.
