Dear Karen,

I received Creating Sacred Space with Feng Shui for Christmas and read it right away and, like so many of your readers, was excited and energized instantly, it all made such good sense. I started at our weekend home, cleaning out and cleaning the kitchen which was one of many rooms in need of a good cleaning. It felt great and we also dumped a lot of old appliances, pasta makers, ice cream makers, etc, that had sat in the attic for years. When we returned to New York I started with my desk, clearing drawers of papers and labels and old calculators.

While part of it has felt very good - I've known for a long time that it was crazy keeping a lot of this stuff - I notice now that I am full of some kind of grief over many of these things that I have tossed, many I had even forgotten that I had in the first place and some I even now have forgotten what they were that were thrown away. There's just a shallow, dull ache. There is much left to address and clear and toss and I intend to. As of now, a week later, there have been no small 'miracles' that have appeared yet, though I find I continue to be hopeful about 2002. Is this grieving something you are familiar with? Any thoughts on processing and coping with it?

- R.B, USA

Karen's reply:

My response to this type of reaction is always to tell the person to go back and re-read my book to reconnect with the original spark that inspired them to clutter clear. As you have only read the short chapter in my first book about this topic, I definitely recommend you read my second book, Clear Your Clutter with Feng Shui, which goes into much more detail about the emotional side of dealing with clutter.

Following on from this, it's necessary to realize that clutter clearing is the process of clearing a space for something new to happen and you have to do the work to determine what that will be. The dull ache you describe is indicative of spiritual emptiness. The Space Clearing ceremony shows you how to consecrate your home to higher frequencies and can help get you spiritually reconnected. You'll find other recommended books and suggestions on the Links page of this website.