The Altar I Return To

Altars have always intrigued me. That curiosity began long before I understood that altars aren’t only for religious icons or the veneration of gods and ancestors. It began with found objects.

Actually, let’s back up a little further.

I once read an article in a magazine, probably in a waiting room somewhere, because where else do people read magazine articles? It argued that clutter is a luxury. To own an excess of objects that take up space without serving a clear utilitarian purpose is a privilege. Wealth affords accumulation.

I didn’t grow up with that privilege. We moved often, every year or so, depending on which relationship my mother was newly disentangling herself from, or how much the rent had gone up. Staying put allows collections to form. I didn’t stay put. I remember a few beloved objects, but nothing that reliably traveled with me. Each new home felt like a clean slate. And while clean slates are often romanticized, they aren’t always kind. Sometimes you want the messy slate. Sometimes you need evidence that you were here before.

As an adult, I began to collect.

First it was crosses. Then bottle caps, wine corks, houseplants. Mirrors. Letters of the alphabet. Rain boots. Cameras. Vintage suitcases. Stickers. Books. Singing bowls. Tarot cards. The categories mattered less than the act itself, the choosing, the keeping.

I started looking for tiny objects when I was out in public. A miniature Thor’s hammer once. Action figures of all kinds. Matchbox cars. Dice. Keys. I would bring them home one by one and arrange them, diorama style, on whatever eye-level shelf was available. My kids would sometimes rearrange them too, always from a place of playful reverence. Nothing was untouchable. It was sacred, but accessible.

After my divorce, I moved into a place of my own. That’s when I created my first altar. I filled it with stones and trinkets gifted to me over the years, along with postcards and handwritten notes from friends, small paper reminders that I was loved, seen, and worth believing in, especially when I struggled to believe that myself.

I would kneel in front of that altar. I’d light a candle, play music, and slowly handle each stone, each totem, each postcard.
This made me think of you.
This reminded me of you.
I think this crystal can help.

At that altar, I learned how to meditate. I learned how to use fire to release what needed releasing. My youngest daughter, who was six years old at the time, would sometimes join me, carefully rearranging rocks and talismans with complete seriousness. The altar welcomed interaction. It invited touch.

Over time, the altar grew. Singing bowls appeared. More stones. Tarot cards. More incense. More candles. The space evolved as I did.

When a partner moved in, the altar changed again. What had once been an intentional, ritualized space softened into a shelf. The objects remained, but the meaning dispersed into shared domestic life. The altar didn’t disappear, it paused.

Another relationship ending brought me back to it. And then another. This cycle repeated more times than I would like to admit. Each time, the altar returned not as a symbol of loss, but as a response to it, a way of re-centering, of calling myself back home.

Right now, from where I sit, my altar is unto myself. It isn’t filled with objects given to me by others. It’s filled with objects that remind me of me, of who I am, who I’ve been, and who I am becoming.

It is no longer a place where I ask to be saved.
It is a place where I remember that I already am.