The binbags went first. Ten of them, maybe more. Dragged out of a bedroom that couldn’t breathe, piled into the hallway, and suddenly, suddenly two girls could see their floor again. Could see what they actually had. Could move. And they loved it. Not reluctantly, the way teenagers and young adults sometimes tolerate tidying, but with that particular relief that arrives when something heavy has been lifted and you hadn’t quite realised how heavy it was until it was gone.
I went to Birmingham last week to spend a few days with my friend. I ended up spending one of those days going through my entire digital world: phone, Kindle, laptop. Every app that didn’t add value, gone. Every PDF I’d downloaded and never read, deleted. My Kindle is calm now. My phone is calm. My laptop opens to exactly what I need and nothing else.
Then I helped declutter my friend’s daughters’ room; 10 black binbags went out. Then my friend’s office; four, five bags of books, journals, paperwork, straight out.
Once back home, I styled my bureau. It’s been my office for a while now, that vintage bureau in the corner, but I’d never quite made it mine. Now it is. A Bluetooth keyboard my friend gave me, smaller, quieter, sits on the surface. My laptop flips into a tablet and leans back, freeing up space I didn’t know I was missing. It’s cosy. It’s calm. It’s the kind of place you actually want to sit down and think.
And then I ordered a stand mixer and a small oven because I used to bake. Properly, beautifully, with that particular kind of attention that cooking asks of you, the kind that pulls you fully into the present tense and asks nothing else. I’m known for it, actually; my food, my cakes, my homemaking. And somewhere in the years of building, creating, launching and writing, I put it down. Not dramatically, just quietly, the way you put things down when you’re too busy to notice you’ve stopped carrying them.
I’m picking it back up.
I’ve been in autumn mode for about six weeks now, long before the season has officially arrived. Slowing down. Going inward. Reading old journal entries and sitting with how far I’ve come. Noticing what I’ve accumulated; in rooms, on screens, in my content, in the version of myself I’ve been performing, and asking quietly: Does this still fit? Does this still feel like me?
And here is what I keep coming back to.
I am not an expert. I mean, I am, technically. Six books. Two organisations. Fifteen-plus awards. Years of showing up, writing, building and holding space for other women. The credentials exist.
But that is not why women connect with me. They connect with me when I tell them about staying awake at 2 AM, having a CEO meeting with myself. The bags of donations I keep compiling. When I write about going to Birmingham and spending three hours in someone else’s bedroom so two girls can breathe again. When I admit I haven’t been creating content for six weeks because I’ve been decluttering my phone, buying a stand mixer, sitting with my own autumn and figuring out who I am in this season of my life.
The ordinary woman. That’s who they want. That’s who I am.
I’ve spent a lot of time trying to show up as the inspiring, expert, authoritative version of myself. And I’m not saying she doesn’t exist; she does. But she’s not the whole of me. And I think, quietly, I’ve known for a long time that the most powerful thing I can offer isn’t expertise.
It’s company.
The company of a woman who is also figuring it out. Who is also in the middle of her own autumn. Who is also slowly learning that midlife is not about reinventing yourself - but it’s about coming home.
To the baking. To the bureau. To the calm phone, the decluttered Kindle and the room that can finally breathe.
To yourself.
Kiran x
Kiransinghuk.com | The Sattva Collective
