Letting Go of the Letters (and the Stemware)
From the Sunday Self-Care Chronicles | 10/25/26
Hello sweet friend!
This weekend I had a garage sale.
It's been on my mind for literal years – a total clean-out of our garage and house, finally doing the thing I kept putting off.
I'm a collector by nature and nurture (the cool kids call it being a "maximalist"): pottery, servingware, vases, new hobbies, little mementos from travel, you name it. My grandmother and mother brought me up with an appreciation for beautiful things and a love of decorating (and shopping).
A Saturday afternoon at TJ Maxx, HomeGoods, and Marshalls, a Sunday wandering antique malls, an intentional trip to a favorite artisan shop, I know how to find good stuff.
I've probably given away more than I've kept, but somehow the old things never turned over at the rate I brought new ones in. Holding onto things because they might be needed one day just meant more stuff, tucked away and boxed up in the garage.
And sometimes it wasn't about whether it would ever be needed. It was sentimentality.
How do you sell the little fancy shoes my mom said she liked one time, which somehow became THE gift every birthday and Christmas until she finally had to ask my dad to stop having us buy them for her?
How do you release the delicate cut-glass stemware that belonged to your great-grandma but never gets used because it isn't functional, and never gets displayed because there's no home for it?
What's the point of keeping them if they're just hiding in a chest where nobody ever sees them or uses them?
That question is what finally tipped me over the edge into action. And it wasn't just about the garage sale.
A couple of months ago, renewal reminders started arriving for my professional national “board” certification.
I've held it since 2012, because it was required at the first practice I worked at, and at the time it was the primary exam for massage therapy licensure in the U.S.
As a newer exam emerged around that same time (and yes, I took that one too because I'm an overachiever), the National Certification Exam evolved into the national Board Certification for Therapeutic Massage and Bodywork, with the goal of "elevating" our profession beyond the spa and into true healthcare.
Renewal every two years, plus a couple of continuing education credits that, honestly, lined up with what I already do for my state license, so it was never a heavy lift to maintain.
Besides, I believed in the idea. I hoped it would prove to mean something more than just the letters someday.
And if I'm really honest, those letters helped me feel a little more confident, and maybe even a little self-important, hanging out there behind my name. That was the point, after all: to show that I cared more and did more when it comes to my work as an LMT.
But after more than a dozen years of renewals, I finally had to admit it to myself: the only meaning those letters ever had was the meaning I gave them.
Plenty of my mentors and peers let theirs go years ago, calling it a money grab.
There's no actual benefit unless a particular employer requires it (which very few do) and no real understanding from the public other than “board certification” sounds impressive.
And in the end, it was the organization itself that sealed their own fate.
They sent a survey asking how we used our certification, what the perceived benefits were, and how the value of maintaining those fancy letters was holding up.
I answered honestly and realized that they weren't doing anything for me except maybe making people who don't know any better think I'm fancier than I am.
Because here's the thing: those particular letters never asked more of me than everything I already do, simply because I love my work and believe in being the best I can be.
For my state license, I overshoot my required continuing education hours almost every time.
For my professional membership in the Society for Oncology Massage, I am fully immersed in cancer education and hands-on experience.
And for my Certification in Manual Lymphatic Drainage Therapy, I meet those hours too and am constantly learning and practicing the actual work.
What expires on October 31st is the renewal fee for letters nobody in my treatment room has ever asked about. They’re just an expensive form of alphabet soup.
And then last week, with the expiration date closing in, they started emailing me about something new: marketing kits. Officially sanctioned materials to help certification-holders show the world that these letters matter.
I laughed because while it’s a great move on their part, helping members prove the certification has value is not the same as the certification having value.
If the proof has to be sold to you, it was never proof.
I made this decision weeks ago, with a clear head, and it still feels scary coming up to the end.
Those letters have been part of how I proved I belong – and if you've had cancer, you already know that feeling: a piece of your identity expires, and nobody hands you a replacement.
Bodies change. Roles change. The person you were before sometimes ends up in a box in your mind, and some of us keep that box covered in dust for years.
So what does this have to do with the garage sale?
Everything.
It's all one question: is this serving my life now, or am I just storing it?
Keeping something costs something even when you never use it – the space, the dusting, the low hum of "I should deal with that."
The thing that made letting go of this certification feel safe is that it doesn't fundamentally change anything about who I am, my work, my practice, my education and skills, or my integrity.
And the thing that made the garage sale goodbyes possible? Knowing where every dollar was headed.
All of the money earned from these items – some long overdue to find a new home and some so hard to pass on – goes into my Pay It Forward fund for my As You Are Now program.
This is the fund that makes enrollment possible for a survivor who couldn't otherwise afford to learn to care for her own body.
Not everything went without hesitation – the stemware still stung. But once I knew what the money was for, letting go got a whole lot easier, because the result is going to be so worth it.
And that's the worth-it list I asked you about a few weeks ago, in action.
A worth-it list isn't only about what you add. It's also about what you finally take off.
So here's my question for you this week: what are you still holding that isn't really serving you anymore?
Or maybe you aren't even sure, and it's time for a little "worth it" audit to figure that out? (If it's that second one - keep reading. I have something to show you.)
It might be stuff in a closet.
It might be a habit or a commitment that is weighing you down.
Or it might be a way of describing yourself that expired a while ago, and you're still paying storage on it.
Hit reply and tell me one thing. It's just me here – I read and answer every reply myself – and one sentence from you counts as the whole assignment.
I have a few more thoughts rattling around on this that are relevant to anyone living with a breast cancer experience, so I may pop in later this week and share them.
Until then, thanks for letting me share these stories with you.
P.S. If part of you perked up at "worth it audit" – because doing that kind of honest sorting for your whole self-care life, not just a garage, sounds like exactly what you need – I’ve been working on that. Next month I'm launching a free workshop called The Self-Care Compass™: a guided experience for walking through the six fundamentals of active healing, so you can see where you are already well-supported and where you might need a little tending. Because what gets your attention, gets better.