I just moved – again after 4 years in the same place. I had not even had unpcked everything, many boxes just stored in the garage. Knowing I would downsize, I had been busy for months going through my belongings, deciding what to keep and what to let go of. That was of the things I saw.

Yet when I unpacked boxes in my new home, I came across a wooden mask I hadn’t seen it in years. Originally, it came from Switzerland, a piece of cultural heritage inherited from my parents. Traditionally, masks like this one were created to scare away “evil spirits.”

I appreciated it once for its craftsmanship and the symbolism. After my father’s death, I even displayed it for a while. But as I held it again now, something in me said a clear no. The energy of fear it carried simply was not something in my home.

There’s a deeply peaceful field in my new space, one that feels like an outer reflection of an inner shift. I’ve recreated an altar for the first time in twenty years. The impulse didn’t come from nostalgia but from alignment; a quiet knowing that this home holds room for the sacred, a display of deeply meaningful, beautiful items..

The mask, on the other hand, felt like an echo from another time, an old, even ancient way of meeting the unknown. Its very design was protection through fear. It met chaos with ferocity. That was once needed, perhaps. But I no longer live in that story.

Now, for me, protection arises through presence and awareness, not defense. Peace itself creates the boundary. There is nothing to ward off when the energy of wholeness fills the space. It doesn’t belong on a wall anymore.

Here, in this small community of older people, I sense a new chapter unfolding: not about finding my voice, but finally reaching a space of being at peace with who I am, warts and all.  My shadow being accepted and integrated. Perhaps this is what the mask came to remind me of, that when fear retires, peace can finally take its rightful place.

Placing the furniture and decorating this new place was an experience. I thought I wanted it one way, yet the furniture ‘told’ me differently. I would look at a wall wondering what to hang there and suddenly would see one of my photos or another item I had in that place. Even the pantry taught me something. When I stopped dreading its chaos and simply followed the energy, it organized itself with incredible ease. Peace doesn’t just protect; it arranges the surrounding world.