Gradients // Part One: Asleep in a Bed.
how our spirit shifts our spaces
Welcome to part one of a three part series called Gradients: how our spirit shifts our spaces. Gradients explores the way our inner evolution unfolds outwardly and manifests within our most intimate spaces, in this case our homes and habits. I will share some of my story, as well as reflections on the concept as a whole.
The three editions of Gradients will be released one by one as follows:
Part One: Asleep in a Bed.
Part Two: Eras + Rituals.
Part Three: The Color of a Warm Hug.
I invite you to kick back, grab a warm beverage, dive in, and enjoy.
Falling Asleep
“Don’t you sleep in there sometimes?” my sister asked. We were talking about how I recently started to redecorate this room.
“Only when we’re at odds, or if I’m restless,” I replied through the phone, snuggled up with a second blanket on the daybed.
The black iron daybed in here is adorned with crisp sheets, a colorful handmade quilt that was gifted to me, and a wall of firm yet fluffy grey textured pillows. This is the small home studio that I create in, and it’s almost too cozy. Like a little sanctuary, really. While I do sleep in here on occasion, I prefer to sleep in our bedroom nestled close to the warmth of my husband.
I’ll share more about the transformation of my creative space in Part Three: The Color of a Warm Hug. For now, let’s move to the bedroom.
When we go to bed, I’m usually the big spoon. Mostly because B (my husband) is spoiled and wants his back rubbed. Also because I like to spoil him. It wasn’t like that when we first got married and bought this house three years ago, though. I had the most difficult time adjusting to sleeping in a real bed again, then soon after I became a ripe empty-nester.
About three months after moving into the new house, my son, K, started living with his girlfriend. The move was unofficial, though; he just stopped coming home most nights. Then, for stretches of a few weeks. I couldn’t fall asleep without my mind racing in every direction. It helped to fall asleep with a fan, but B wasn’t a fan of the fan — the Wind Tunnel. He said it was too loud. I compromised for a smaller, quieter fan, but still couldn’t fall asleep.
I never had a problem sleeping before K moved out. Fall asleep in a chair? No problem. The floor? Sure. A car? More times than I could count. I once curled up and fell asleep on a picnic table, then later moved to the ground in my sleeping bag while camping on Silver Lake in Michigan. Even though I woke up chilly a couple of times, I slept fairly well until dawn.
Flash forward to the eerie silence of the house at night. No hum from his room during one of his late night songwriting sessions, no sound of leftovers being heated up in the microwave at 3 a.m, no outbursts of laughter in the middle of the night while he gamed with friends. Somehow hearing those things actually helped me sleep better, just by sending a signal to my brain. Your child is home. Your child is safe.
Now it was just too damn quiet.
I couldn’t get comfortable, and the ringing in my ears seemed louder and more piercing than anything I’d ever heard in my entire life. Louder than the music barreling through speakers in the front row at heavy metal shows in my twenties. Louder than an ambulance passing by. Louder than a grand finale of fireworks. I never really noticed the ringing in my ears before. Or the sound of my own breathing. My left nostril whistles sometimes, I’d forgotten that. So does my sister J’s. We used to laugh ourselves sick about it growing up.
Had my only child really grown up and moved out? I couldn’t process it. I didn’t process it. In fact I didn’t handle it so well for a little while, the whole empty nest thing. For about a year, I grieved it and forced myself to adjust to it and pretended I was fine. But some days I completely broke down and wondered who in the world I was going to be. Again.
We do that a lot in this life: figure out who we’ll be next.
Shifting Spaces
We moved a lot when my son was young, and with each move I gave away more, and more, and more of our things. In 2010, we moved into a fully furnished townhouse a block from my second photography studio. Instead of putting things in storage, I gave nearly half of our belongings away just before the move — including a very expensive memory foam mattress that a friend had given to when she moved to North Carolina. The master bedroom in the townhouse had a king sized bed, so I didn’t need to bring a bed for myself. Giving stuff away felt so freeing.
My portrait business was thriving at the time. To keep up with everything and still be a mom, I’d often stay up working until the wee hours of morning, then crash during the day for a few hours in that glorious king sized bed while K was at school. The place quickly felt like home, and I assumed we would live there for a long time, but less than two years later we moved again to a small apartment in Columbus, Ohio. My ex — K’s father — had suggested we all try out city life, which came as a huge surprise. He was in a shiny new relationship at the time with his now-wife, someone he had known for a long time, and I adored her. So did K. We had a shared parenting arrangement, so it was important to make the move as a complete parenting squad. I envisioned my business growing even more in the city, and agreed to the move. At the end of K’s fourth grade school year, we crammed everything we had into a small U-Haul and went for it.
The North Suburbs
After our first year of settling into the city, I decided to move (yes, again) into a gorgeous historic apartment in the north suburbs. The rent was more affordable. The location was walkable to restaurants, a movie theater, local shops, and the library. The rooms were grand and dripped with natural light that poured in through tall arched windows. I gave more stuff away. K settled into the master bedroom, since I decided not to use a dedicated bedroom for myself anymore. Most nights, though, I slept on the couch in the living room.
We stayed for three years.
With our son getting older, K’s father and I shifted our shared parenting schedule from every few days to every other week. During the weeks when my son was gone, I scheduled travel sessions, booked Airbnb’s to work from, took road trips, or went out for extended hike days. The apartment was only a twenty minute drive north of his Dad’s place, but when K was gone for a week at a time it felt like he was in a whole other country. Still, we made some of our best memories there. We rode bikes around town and wandered in hidden-gem nature spots nearby. We walked to restaurants for breakfast and dinner. We went to little art festivals, the popular skate park, and the soccer fields. K became a teenager and started writing music more seriously there. Then, he slowly started to spend more time with friends and a little less time with me. That corner of our lives was both grey and colorful. It was quiet, yet filled with music. It was turbulent, transformative.
During our time there I donated more than 2/3 of my clothing and shoes, using only a small coat closet to house my entire wardrobe. It was unexpectedly easy and surprisingly freeing to live this way. There was next-to-nothing in the room I used as a creative workspace (pictured above); a mattress on the floor with a single pillow, a butterfly wall tapestry, a pink armchair, the work computer, twigs from the yard, a small leather-tufted storage trunk as a table, some candles. Our lifestyle was light and breezy, which made the heavy weight of my responsibilities more apparent. I wasn’t as connected to my portrait work anymore. The long hours spent editing, keeping enough work coming in to make ends meet, showing up online, and running on sheer adrenaline to support us had all become too much.
I remember standing in the arched doorway of the living room one evening, staring at the desk chair’s damask pattern, the shredded strings of fabric dangling from the bottom left corner. Our cats used the chair as a plaything, but I saw it as a prison. The mere thought of sitting in that chair made my stomach churn. I needed a change.
Out of nowhere, I received an email from a Korean marketing company who offered me a year-long contract position to write blogs for Samsung and promote their NX20 camera. One article with photos per week. Surely it was a sign, for what I wasn’t yet sure. I accepted the position. That same year, I took on several freelance food photography commissions to supplement my income, returned to college as a philosophy major, and announced that it was time to reel back photography sessions.
The Cottage
A whole world of even more change occurred. We moved back to the country, into a small cottage where we remained through K’s high-school years. In the cottage, my focus was on mothering a teenager, finishing my bachelor’s degree, and expressing myself in new ways: an oracle deck, my first children’s book—The Boy Who Sings to Trees, a garden full of vegetables and flowers.
There were two living spaces downstairs; I used the second living room as a creative space. K’s bedroom was directly above. No designated bedroom or even a bed for me, although I wanted it this way. I slept on the futon, or the couch, or occasionally the camping air-mattress. I decided beds were a luxury item, not a necessity, and was convinced that owning too much “stuff” weighed you down. It didn’t matter which room I slept in or what piece of furniture I fell asleep on. Interestingly, my circadian rhythm reset. I experienced flow in my work.
As a little girl, I frequently fell asleep on the white leather recliner in the living room. Whenever this happened, (paternal) grandma Carole would wake me and try to move me into my room. I usually told her I was fine and slept there until morning. Eventually she stopped trying to move me.
Right Now. Full Circle.
From our time in the city until the day I got married, I spent more than 7 years of my adult life sleeping unconventionally. My heart and spirit and lifestyle have shifted so much since then, and the surrounding spaces shifted alongside me. Unlike the years which compelled me to empty out our belongings, right now I’m filling spaces.
A few weeks ago I noticed that the colors in our bedroom are similar to grandma Carole’s, and I’ve unintentionally arranged and decorated the room similarly. Just as sweetly, the windows in our bedroom are in the same position as the windows in my late grandma Margaret’s bedroom. There is a pine tree outside one of our windows — and on the same side of the bed — as a family of pines outside her window. When I’d lay with her at night asking all the questions of the Universe, (maternal) grandma Margaret would answer them so patiently and thoroughly. As she talked, I’d watch the shadows of the pine trees dancing on the walls.
Tonight, my son is a few small towns away in his own bed. B is in our bedroom sound asleep. It’s 11:33 p.m. I’m not usually up this late, but I’ve felt a burst of creativity in this room tonight. I very much look forward to falling asleep in a real bed later. In our bed. The cold sheets. The array of pillows in varied firmness to choose from. The mattress that seems to have molded itself perfectly to the curves of my body. I’ve developed a sentimental fondness towards our bed, the bed where I lay next to my husband every night — unless we’re at odds or if I’m restless. Then I’ll sleep in here on the daybed with the trusty old Wind Tunnel roaring away. I’ve laid in our bedroom every night for the last three years now, contemplating my life. The memories of our many moves. Bouncing and singing my son to sleep as a baby. Then to saying his bedtime prayers, and the way he twirled my hair to fall asleep as a boy. Now, texting or talking with him a few golden moments every week. Having slept mostly alone with simplified sleeping preferences throughout the bulk of single motherhood, to getting remarried and sleeping next to another body every night. In a real bed, in an actual bedroom again. The way our bedroom feels as safe as my grandmothers’.
I don’t want to move again. At least not for a long time. It has come full circle, in gradients and rainbow-glimmers of the woman inside me who is only just beginning to emerge into wholeness.
Reflection
In countries such as Japan and India, it’s actually common to sleep with mattresses on the floor. If you think about it, the support of a floor can be as good or better than that of traditional western bed frames. That said, individual bedrooms are more of a western concept, whereas shared sleeping areas and multi-purpose rooms are traditional in other cultures.
More recently, the tiny living movement has helped normalize unconventional sleeping standards to maximize living spaces in smaller rooms, using solutions such as hammocks, fold-up wall beds, and sofa beds.
Bedrooms and privacy are not a necessity for everyone, even for me in the past. Nowadays, a room with a door to close behind me feels like a true luxury. I’ve grown to appreciate and even prefer smaller spaces that feel quaint and cozy to larger ones.
I had the option of a bigger room with two windows to use as my creative space in our current home, yet something about the smallest room felt right for me. Something magical happens when we release our desire for the material. Even though I’m filling spaces again, and growing my wardrobe, the experience of moving around and living with so little has given me such a deep appreciation for the things we have.
Most of the pieces in our home are thrifted, gifted, or passed down. That’s what feels right for us. Still, I purge and donate on a regular basis, as it’s still very much a part of my lifestyle to practice non-attachment.
Thank you for coming along on this intimate series with me. Next week, I’ll be back with Part Two: Eras & Rituals, where we’ll explore the changing landscape of our habits and patterns.
See you soon,
Bella
Nice to find you on here! I switched to here from Medium a little while back.
Thank you for sharing your bed- and moving story, I really enjoyed it. :) I'm one of those people that has always, since childhood, been a very light sleeper. So I ponder and reflect on bedroom spaces a lot as well. <3