Letting go…Part 1

When I was in Middle and High School I started collecting stamps. My dad worked for the Sewer Commission and he would bring me all the stamps that came in with the bills each month.

Most of them were just normal stamps, the kind you used to get in the 100 count roll. But of course I lived in Berea, so when it got out that I was collecting stamps, a lot of the customers started buying the commemorative stamps to put on their payments. I collected a whole box full of stamps.

The box sits over in my bedroom on the floor. I sometimes look at it and think about what to do with it, but mostly I haven’t touched any of the stamps in it since something like 1995. At least that is what the envelopes are postmarked.

My stamps are worthless. They don’t have any monetary value and I didn’t even have the patience to put them in books. I didn’t love the stamps, though I did think the commemorative stamps were cool, I still buy them myself. What was fun, was having my dad collect them with me and help to pick out the nicest looking ones.

Sometimes we would see what kinds of things people would try to do when mailing their payments, like this one that used all 1 cent stamps.

I keep them because I keep telling myself I will use them for an art project some day. I keep them because it is a fun memory I had with my father.

The truth is, I will never really use them in a project. I don’t really want them any longer. I have no real use for them. I am going to go through them and pick out some that really move me, ones I find interesting and/or pretty. The rest…it is time to let them go.

James has a friend who says that when things are hard to release, the best thing to do is bury them in the back yard. I am not sure I can do that. My yard is enough junk and fill, but I do love ritual, and I especially love a ritual with fire.

After I pick a few I really love, I am going to put the rest in my fire pit and send good, healing, peaceful energy to all the people who helped me develop that collection.