Make A Container For Your Joy
Or for anything else, really.
Hello Friends!
It’s a New Moon 🌚in Cancer ♋️🦀 and, from the ✨astrology✨ perspective, there’s a ton of good things happening with Jupiter aiding in abundance, expansion, and yadda yadda yadda…so it’s the right time to plant seeds 🌱and set intentions. Even if you’re not looking to the stars 🌟 for their forecast, it’s the end of Q2 📈which means that everyone can benefit from taking stock on the first part of 2025 and preparing for the second half of the year.
Today I want to talk about two ways to make a container of support for yourself:
Make a physical vessel to keep track of progress or store information you need to externalize…pulling it out of yourself and giving it a place to live.
Hold conceptual space where you give yourself permission to express and experience the good, bad, and ugly things that influence your life.
On Bottling Happiness And Grief
On the last day of 2024, I came across this video from phasecraftmagic in IG about making a jar of the year to keep memories, goals, intentions, etc. Other creators have similar jars (for the witchy and the non-witchy) as my algorithm quickly showed me, so if this video doesn’t speak to you, consider looking for other videos about “memory jars.”
I’ve done something similar since around 2012, where I keep a “bad days” box. It previously contained thank you notes or anything from students or coworkers that were good, motivating reminders (mostly positive, some negative) that helped me stay grounded and keep perspective when things were challenging. When I no longer worked in education, it turned into a digital folder on my work computer of screenshots of shoutouts from coworkers or messages from customers that I just wanted to be reminded of. (And sometimes those shoutouts were helpful to strategically reference in my annual performance reviews!)
When I saw this jar-of-the-year video, I loved the idea so much that I started my own version that wasn’t related to my professional life. The jar sat empty for many months and I even took it down for a while until the end of April, when I started ice skating again after many, many years. Every single week since I got back on the ice, I’ve ruthlessly held space for myself to go to ANY open rink to skate and just vibe, no matter how much I suck at it, and it’s brought me so much joy. When I get home, I cut the wristband off and date it with any notes I want to remember from that day. I’ve also written down memories I want to look back on at the end of the year and put little mementos in I’ve collected from events in this jar. Whenever I see the jar on my desk, I instantly smile and can’t wait to add to it.
The memory jar video reminded me of Lisa Marie Basile’s interview on the podcast New World Witchery from January 2019, when she shared a practice from her book Light Magic for Dark Times. I’ve shared this book, this episode, and this practice with several people and have seen other variations on this from before and after her book’s publication. She gives an exercise anyone can do where you make a jar and put your negative feelings into stones and then store them in the jar. There’s more complexity to it than that and while the whole episode is worth listening to, I’ve included the relevant time stamps:
31:50 - 36:34 / Making a space for your darkness (Conversation with the author)
45:48 - 47:37 / Making a place for your own personal underworld (Description of the jar activity)
On Intangible Containers
It’s not just the jar though. No matter what is happening in the world, in my life, or in my mind, I make a metaphorical container within the 1-3+ hours I’ve carved out weekly to just enjoy the fun and pleasure of skating for me. Sometimes I let myself ponder real-world stressors, when they’re top-of-mind, but mostly I just empty my head and fill my ears with the sounds family-friendly pop songs blasting through the loudspeaker and…I just exist. There is NO pressure to get anything specific out of that time other than to soak in the fun of doing one of my favorite activities just because I can.
Making a time-and-space container isn’t just for my sacred skating/secret-cardio getaway. It’s also a tool I employ when I need to deal with the unpleasant and the difficult. Like many people, I get fatigued from the news and it can set my anxiety to full-blast. But instead of avoiding the news and pretending everything is fine, I have found during times of low-bandwith, I can make a container for the news. The car and my commute become the space where I let myself listen to and learn about the world events I want to bear witness to. I engage, with boundaries, and then permit myself to literally and figuratively close the container (my car door) and move into another space. This creates a feeling of separation which allows me to not stay in a despair-hole and, for me, has built up my tolerance against news fatigue.
Another favorite of mine is the complaint-container. Literally setting a timer for, like, 5 minutes to allow myself to complain (aloud to myself, on a piece of paper, or to a willing friend victim) about whatever totally-valid-but-sometimes-stupid gripe I want to yammer on about really helps get it out of me so I don’t have to carry it around as much. (Pro-tip: If you can genuinely let go of the complaint afterwards, all the better!
Constructing a time-and-space container doesn’t have to be limited to the negative parts of our emotions or experiences. It’s really great for enjoying the things in life our human bodies need but that we often feel guilty about or deprioritize for a litany of reasons. Need rest? Set a timer and stay in a place where you can close your eyes and just relax. But Alyssa, isn’t that just a nap? Well, yes and no. It’s a nap if you sleep but sometimes you just need to have a lie-down and not put pressure on yourself to snooze. Hate exercising but know you need to move around? Set a period of time, maybe to the duration of a podcast or a video you play in the background, and let yourself do ANYTHING you want to as long as you’re in motion in your house. Is it a total-body workout? Absolutely not. But is doing something more than doing nothing? It sure is.
Setting an intentional container started with letting myself have a night every-other week I unoriginally called “Throw Your Night Away to TikTok.” I made a deal with myself that I wouldn’t watch TikTok (or similar) every day but instead, I could have one night every-other week where I wouldn’t judge myself for rotting and watching literal hours of short-form nonsense on my phone. Give yourself a container to rot in. Grant yourself persmission to hang out in there without shame. Then when it’s time to close the container, get up and do the next thing. (Admittedly, on these nights, the “next thing” is to roll over on the couch and fall asleep.)
Like most worthy pursuits, holding space for yourself is a practice, and what makes this practice different and meaningful is the setting of the intention. Being deliberate about how you use the space makes all the difference. When done with purpose, these kinds of psychological compartmentalization techniques can be helpful tools when they are used as a means to engage not deflect. They’re a practice of engagement to be cultivated when useful.
As a fan of personal rituals, I find it helpful to have some kind of closing acknowledgement to distinguish the transition out of a space I’ve made for myself– whether it’s changing rooms or turning on a playlist or whispering “Thank you, TikTok,” to my phone, like a weirdo.
In closing this space, I hope that for whatever containers you make for yourself, consciously or unconsciously, you find them to be supportive and give you whatever it is that you need in that moment.
Be well!
Love,
Alyssa