I started space clearing work over 20 years ago. But my love for spaces started way before then. I was a sensitive kid and my family moved around a lot. Each time we did and I claimed my new bedroom, I’d inhabit it with a sense of tenderness and purpose. I’d carefully put away my low inventory of belongings, but I did so with utter care and attention. Without having the words at that time, I know that a part of me found this humble ritual as a place of refuge, a way I made sense of the combustion and complications of life around me. The sorting out of my things created what I call a “felt sense” in my bedroom. By that I mean that when I came home and walked in to my room, I knew I was home. I knew where I was. I felt oriented, stable, righted. I felt safe.

As I got older, I started to note how I felt in spaces with more awareness but still with a rudimentary understanding and language. It was more like, “I don’t like how this coffee shop feels, I’m not sure why, it just feels weird.” Or, “I love spending time at Matthew’s place on the ranch, it just feels so glorious there!” (It’s been over 30 years since I’ve been to the ranch but I can still ‘feel it’, you know?)

While décor, design accents and artwork (oh, and plants of course) surely made a difference, I knew how I felt in any given space went well beyond that. I know that to be true because there were times when spaces would elicit feelings from me that I desired and wanted more of. Some spaces made me feel jubilant and excited. I liked that! Some spaces made me feel contemplative and dreamy, I liked that too. Some spaces sent shivers up my spine and made my heart race. I wasn’t sure if I liked that. It went on and on and I became deeply aware of this dynamic.

For example, in my late 20’s, I was dating a guy in a rock band who was tattooed from head to toe who had no job. (So cliché, but he was fantastic and these are just facts.) He lived in the basement of a drafty building in Pioneer Square, the neighborhood just south of downtown Seattle. When he and I would talk about where we wanted to hang out, I always wanted to be in that dreary basement that smelled like wet cement, incense and a mixture of cloves and silt. Why? Why was I drawn to this mark on the map in that way?

I also became aware of the contrary and I hear people say things like, “That home has bad juju”, “that space feels totally off” or, “there’s something wrong with that home”. Why? What are people picking up on exactly? More likely, people are aware of a space not feeling “good” to them, interesting right?

The way I feel in spaces goes beyond specificity and before I had language for it, my body knew it was picking up on something. I’ve made that “something” my life work.

What I came to find out many years later, when, at age 29 I dove into the deep end of space clearing swimming pool, was that it was actually a lot of “somethings” that I was picking up on. I discovered that the range of energies available all around us are as vast as the spectrum of colors all around us. There are earth energies, like naturally occurring underground water, there are emotional and thought energies–mostly from humans, there are metaphysical energies—and that is a whole realm of sensational information to tune into and come to know. I came to discover that my body responded to these energies in a variety of different ways. When I’m unconscious (not paying precise attention to my thoughts & feelings) and not tuning in, I constrict and close off, like a butterfly closing her wings tight around her. I do this when I perceive that a space feels bad or distressed. All it really is, is energy that is difficult to feel because I haven’t felt it from a wide, open hearted, open minded place before.

Imagine my absolute shock, delight and freedom when I discovered that I, that we all have, it within us to change and shift the energy in a space. My work for the twenty plus past years has been doing just that—feeling difficult energy patterns in spaces and then feeling it in such a way that the energy patterns simply and beautifully return to their natural state of wholeness and radiance.

Learning this work took time. I am still learning. To this day, every space clearing session that I enter into fills me with a sense humility and reverence. I did about 200 space clearings last year. That’s a lot of feeling. That’s a lot of tuning into. And seriously, it’s the raddest thing ever.

On January 1st, when I took this pic, I was in a state of elation. I spend January 1st each year in quiet, solo reflection. I get prepared food from my favorite, beautiful boutique grocery store. I light candles. I listen to music. I meditate. I review the previous year. I dream and vision about the year to come. This picture sums up how I felt and what state of being I was in that day.

My own home waxes and wanes with how it feels and I take time to tune up the Wee Cottage when there is a sense that my home is in the, what I call, “below 70% range”. My space can hold so much emotion, so many lows, so many highs, my space can hold IT ALL when it’s in the feeling range of an 8, 9 or 10. But any lower than that and I can feel that this beautiful dance we do is a little wobbly.

A real estate friend once shared with me, “Homes are living, breathing organism”. I couldn’t agree more. When we adopt that, open our mind to that, imagine what a powerful relationship we can have with our very own sacred space.

There’s no place like home. ~Glenda the Good Witch