By Lauren Ann Robinson | Elarion – Seat 009 | Frequency Lock 917604.OX
There is a kind of spell that crosses realms.
It doesn’t just clutter your desk or your desktop.
It piles up in the corners of your mind.
It buries itself inside your bones.
You might recognize it as hoarding — but that word is only the surface.
What I’ve come to call the hoarding spell is a pattern that touches the physical, digital, emotional, and even spiritual realms.
It asks one question, again and again:
How do we hang onto what matters… without letting it consume us?
Part One: The Hidden Loop
At its core, the hoarding spell is a loop:
Memory → Meaning → Clinging → Overwhelm → Shutdown → Memory loss. . . . . . . . . . . . . .Repeat.
I’ve seen it in two women I love. Two memory keepers.
Each with their own version of the loop.
Case Study 1: Jacqueline (The Accumulator of Time)
Jackie is a physicist. A brilliant, soft-hearted woman who worked at SRI for 50+ years.
She moved to the Bay Area long ago, studied the patterns of the physical world… but somewhere along the way, time turned inward.
When the pandemic hit, she was laid off. Her home began filling. Papers, boxes, books. Pieces of time. Proof that she had been here.
She hoards because the world moved on without her.
Her home became her mind. And her mind became unwalkable.
And I love her. We help where we can. But she still has her will, her right to choose.
Case Study 2: Nana (The Preserver of Faith)
Patricia — my grandmother — stores memory differently.
Her shelves are filled with albums, collaged and inscribed with love.
She tells stories. She sings in church. She has visited over 20 countries.
Her memory lives in ritual. In faith. In tradition.
But even she is losing her sight now. Monthly shots to slow macular degeneration.
Both women:
Two styles of memory keeping.
Both reaching a kind of vision collapse.
Part Two: What I Saw
And then it hit me:
This isn’t about age. Or clutter. Or storage methods.
This is about a deeper question:
What happens when we try to anchor memory in things… instead of presence?
Both of them — Jackie and Nana — are trying to hold on.
To love. To time. To meaning.
And their eyes are going.
And I?
I’ve inherited the loop.
But I’m learning how to break it.
Part Three: How to Break the Spell
You don’t need to clean your whole house.
You don’t need to digitize every photo.
You don’t even need to confront the memory all at once.
You just need to cut the loop.
Here’s how I’ve learned to do it. . .
Severing the Parasitic Pattern – Protocol:
- Name the root parasite
(For me, it was realizing how deeply Jackie’s psyche mirrored a trapped version of my own.) - Leave the environment, even briefly
(Sometimes the only way to reset is to physically remove yourself — I’m at my parents’ house now. Warm room. Clean. I can think again.) - Do one physical act of stewardship:
- Clean a mirror
- Wash your car, even just the inside
- Do one load of laundry from start to finish
- Sit in darkness and stretch your bones for 10 minutes
- Then begin Vision Restoration Practices
- Builder-Healer-Creator Protocol
- 49 Fracture Points
- Scroll journaling, if you know how
Part Four: The Memory Bridge
This isn’t about judgment.
This is about inheritance.
And I now realize:
I’m not here to hoard memories.
I’m here to carry them.
As living strands. As scrolls.
As breath, not burden.
That’s how I sever the loop.
By walking the memory bridge.
With clear eyes. With love. With breath.
Closing: If this resonates. . .
If you’ve ever felt buried by your own archives…
If your desktop overwhelms you…
If you carry things you don’t know how to let go of…
You’re not broken.
You’re likely just trapped in an old loop.
There is a way out.
Start with breath.
Then do one small thing.
And remember:
You are not the archive.
You are the aliveness the archive points to.
Let it move.
Let it go.
Let it live.
[VAULT]
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