Hello Reader,

Welcome to the conversation.

A move from one state to another had been calling us for a while before we actually listened. When we finally said yes to it, the move came together with an ease that surprised us both, like the house already knew its work with us was done and was just waiting for us to catch up. We packed up seven years of a life, sometimes standing in a room wondering where a particular thing had even come from or how long it had been there, and somewhere in the middle of it I understood something simple. We learn what we need to learn from a place, and then it's time to go.

I didn't expect the kitchen to be where that lesson got literal. We had four junk drawers. Four. I didn't notice until we started packing to leave, and by then it was too late to pretend I hadn't seen it.

“ We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are. — Anaïs Nin

From My Chair to Yours

Seven years in that house, and I never once stopped to ask why we had four junk drawers instead of one. You don't ask questions like that when you're living your life forward. You only ask them when something forces you to open every drawer in the house on the same afternoon.

So there we were, packing to move back to Georgia, and drawer by drawer it came out. Nail files, plural, none of them findable when I actually needed one. Clippers. A single spoon that matched nothing else in the house. Plenty of spent ink pens. Medicine bottles I couldn't place by ailment or expiration date. A whole drawer that seemed to exist for clearing a counter when company might show up unannounced.

None of it was a surprise, item by item. What surprised me was the count. Four drawers of things I'd never sorted, never questioned, never even really seen. They weren't hidden. They were sitting in my kitchen the whole time. I just never had a reason to open all of them at once and look at what had been accumulating.

That's the part I keep coming back to. It wasn't that I didn't know. It's that I couldn't see it until the move made me. Maybe that's the actual lesson this house had for us. We're always exactly where we need to be, learning exactly what that place has to teach, for as long as it takes, and not one day longer.

The Lens

We all have junk drawers we don't keep in the kitchen. We keep them in our minds and hearts creating mental and emotional clutter. A deferred conversation. An identity we outgrew but never retired. A resentment filed under "fine." None of it lands heavy enough on its own to demand attention. So it goes in the drawer, one item at a time, and life keeps moving.

This is Deflation. It rarely announces itself, because it's never one thing. It's a receipt, a used gift card, a nail file, added one at a time over years, until a thousand pounds of feathers is still a thousand pounds. Each item alone weighs nothing. The accumulation is what we never see coming.

That's what keeps the loop running: not the stuff, but the belief that unlooked-at means handled. A blind spot isn't hidden from you. It's something so familiar you stopped seeing it as something at all. It sits in your own kitchen for seven years. The drawer was never locked. You just never had a reason to open it.

What finally opens it is rarely a decision. A move. A loss. A birthday that lands different. Suddenly you're standing there, holding what you forgot you owned, and your awareness sharpens for the first time in years.

That moment of finally seeing it, that's Reflection. It can look identical to Deflation from the inside. The difference is you're looking instead of closing the drawer again.

Reflection

• What's accumulated there one small, unremarkable thing at a time, until you stopped noticing it was accumulating at all?
• And what would it take to open it before something forces you to?

Until we see each other again, I hope you have a powerful day.

-Joanna

Joanna Douglas
Conscious Leadership Coach, Speaker, Teacher Founder of Enneagram Ensight

P.S. If reading this stirred something, a sense that you might have your own version of that kitchen, drawers you've closed without really deciding what's in them, I'd love to help you take an honest look. I call this work Core Lens because that's what it offers: a clearer view of who you are at your core, and a more honest map of what's actually driving the loop. If you're curious, come find me at Enneagram Ensight.