Part of the Still & Moving series with Janet M. Taylor and Coni J. Mackey — real conversations about letting go, starting over, and living with intention after 60.
Episode 3 of 5 | Still & Moving
There was a maroon couch. A big, comfortable chair. Coni Mackey loved that furniture. She kept trying to find a way to make it fit in her new 614 square foot apartment. Move it here. Store it in the garage. Keep just the chair.
None of it was going to work. And she knew it.
“Something clicked,” she says in this episode. “It just said, Coni, let it go. And it was at that moment I decided — whatever is going to be, is going to be.”
This third conversation in the Still & Moving series goes deeper than furniture. Coni and Janet M. Taylor talk about the emotional weight of letting things go — objects that hold memories, identities we’ve built around what we own, and the surprising clarity that comes when you finally stop holding on.
For Coni, the real revelation came when she was living in her apartment with almost nothing. A borrowed air mattress. One pan. Plastic cups. No television. Just herself and her thoughts.
“I tied my identity up in my stuff,” she says. “That’s a revelation.”
What she found in that empty space was not loneliness. It was the first time in years she could actually hear herself. She started journaling. She started imagining the next chapter of her life. She started choosing what she wanted around her — not out of habit, but with intention.
If you’ve been holding onto things — objects, roles, relationships, expectations — that stopped serving you a long time ago, this episode is worth watching. Letting go is not a loss. It’s how you find out what was underneath.
Watch the full conversation: Episode 3: Let It All Go
