The Clothes We Shed

When it comes to healing, we bravely dive inwards. Starting with introspection, we are led to places and spaces that call for compassion and release. The process can unfold in layers that take us right to the core, or it can be a winding road which brings us back to the places where we first began. A different us in a known space. In all its forms, there is no doubt that this work is deeply sacred and blessed.

But as much as healing is about our inner environment, it is also about our outer one. The masks, the layers, the identities that have been placed upon us begin to shift as our perspective changes.

I thought about this as I cleared out my wardrobe the other day. I’m having some work done in my house and, because the downstairs was out of bounds, I found myself with a whole day in my room. Unable to concentrate on anything because of the drilling noise, I felt the need to do something.

I could only think about the final weeks of the Year of the Snake – the shedding of old skin. My clothes crammed in my wardrobe looked like layers of my old self waiting to be shed. There was an intense need to remove anything that wasn’t me.

I took on the task like a piece of deep healing work, peeling away layers of clothes I had worn to cover insecurities, expectations, old jobs I’d outgrown. Anything that made me uncomfortable went. In the depth of my own thoughts (and my wardrobe), I was reminded of clients who, at some point, brought ‘clothes’ into our sessions.

One person, confident and beautiful, shared that before visiting her mother, she would leave a small mountain of discarded clothes on her bed – items she had worn and rejected.  Her gaze in the mirror was no longer her own, but filtered through the critical eyes of her mother, and with each item she put on and then took off, would transform further into that child again. The final agreed outfit would reduce her to the preconditioned role as she closed the bedroom door behind her and made the journey to her parental home.

Her releases eventually led her to her mother wound. In her final session, she arrived wearing a beautiful, flowing orange dress. Neither of us needed to mention it, but her outfit was the acknowledgement. She had arrived in the first session as someone else, and she was leaving as herself.

Clothes.

The moment that shifted something in me was the realisation that clothes were never meant to punish – and yet, in some ways, they became small instruments that tugged at my  subconscious. Neither toppling me into despair nor securing approval, they were simply remnants of a past I no longer needed to wear.

The strength to part with these parts of ourselves, maybe through a simple wardrobe clear-out or through deeper releases. But the next time you get dressed, you might want to ask yourself: Has there been a shift in how this feels? And if that shift sits below your place of peace, perhaps it’s time to discard another layer.