Everyone needs sacred space, an area where you feel free to simply be. A place you can visit anytime to soothe your mind. A place where imperfections and hopes and sadness can all swim together. Creating this space can often be hard. When there isn’t a physical location, where then do you find the space? For me, I’ve created a healing place in my mind first, before I was lucky enough to find physical places of sacred space.

Back in college, I went on an amazing, life-changing adventure backpacking through Hawaii. On this trip, I challenged myself physically, mentally, and emotionally in ways that I had never done before. The end result was the transformation of myself, from a sad, depressed, confused girl to a young woman with some perspective and a more optimistic outlook on life. After I returned from this trip, I would find that in difficult times, in order to ground myself, I would take myself back to a specific hike and the accomplishment I felt taking each step up the mountain or often times, to a small pool of water with a grand waterfall that stretched beyond my view upward, cascading down over my head. Putting myself back in these moments somehow calmed me. Hawaii was my sacred space. If ever I couldn’t fall asleep at night, I would imagine one of the waterfalls that I swam under. I would transport myself back to that time, in that sacred space, and within minutes I would be asleep.

These sacred spaces, then, do not need to be physical, but can be memories of a time and place that we hold onto in our minds. They can be places we carve out within ourselves that we can go to when we have nowhere else to turn.

More recently in my life, I have been blessed with an extra bedroom in my apartment. I have turned this room into my own sacred space. This is the room I am in right now, as I type. I have two desks in here to hold all of the tools I need for my creative projects: my computer for writing, books, a drawing pad, lots of markers and pens, CDs, piles of colorful paper, journals. There is a bulletin board hanging next to me with bits of inspiration: a card from my sister, one from my mom. I have put up scraps of paper where I have written quotes or things I want to remind myself of each day. I also have up my rewards for meeting certain benchmarks with my weight (soon I’ll be going to an acupuncturist). I have a feng shui map that I created of my apartment with magazine clippings collaged around it. Then there is my “shrine” I created back when I was working through The Artist’s Way. A small table with candles, a butterfly box where I put the names of people I am thinking of and praying for, a little Buddha that one of my students once gave me, and a pendulum. I created a sign that I posted behind the shrine, which reads, “WHAT DO I WANT?” This is where I do yoga each day and what I sit before when I pray or meditate. I am constantly grateful that I have this physical room to come to whenever I need it.

And another physical space that has become sacred for me: Alice’s office. Alice is my holistic health counselor. Whenever I walk into her office, I am immediately transparent. I may have been holding back tears all day and as soon as I walk in and she asks how I am, they spill forth. There is no room to hide here. I can say or do anything and know that it is okay. It is a completely safe place for me. Often I do not allow myself to feel certain feelings or I try to push thoughts out of my mind because I don’t consider them “good” or “right”. But in this place, there is no judgment. I have found that lately, when I cannot fall asleep, Hawaii is no longer working to clear my mind and put me to sleep. Perhaps I have outgrown that space and no longer need it. I am finding that I need a new place to go to and that putting myself in Alice’s office has worked to create that feeling of calm and peace within me.

Finding sacred space is necessary for healing and creation and everything in between. Being able to have places of peace and calm that can be called your own makes such a difference. I am thankful for the sacred spaces that have put me to sleep, helped me to heal, and the ones that continue to hold me as I make my way through life.