The Forbidden Room: The Space We Both Needed

Kathy Mattoon
Jul 23, 2025
3 min read

Some places in life are more than just spaces – they are sanctuaries for the unseen parts of us, the pieces we hid even from ourselves.

As a child, my world was built on contradictions: laughter, woven through unspoken pain, beauty standing beside brokenness. Our home was a place of celebration and silent storms.

And in the midst of it all, there was one room – a forbidden room – where peace lived quietly behind closed doors. A room that held a tenderness I didn't yet understand, a place where both my young, or too weary to name.

One of the vivid memories I carry from my childhood is the deep pride my father had in the home he and my mother built together. They designed it themselves, a beautiful brick house nestled on a piece of land they could call their own. It was more than a house; it was supposed to be a haven. And in many ways, it was. Yet, woven into the beauty of it all were moments of pain, tangled with memories of laughter and love.

My mother had a gift for bringing people together. She was magnetic, the kind of woman who could light up a room just way walking into it. Our house was often full: Sunday dinners after church, holiday celebrations bursting with fireworks and laughter, nights of chasing each other across the yard playing flashlight tag, and the simple joy of catching fireflies in jars under the stars.

My father worked tirelessly to provide that home, that life. It should have been the safest place in the world for me – sacred, somehow. A place of quiet, of warmth, of peace. It was the room we rarely were allowed to enter: the formal sitting room, the one with the fireplace, where my mother kept her prized glassware and hosted her Bible studies. It was the one space that was truly hers, and she guarded it carefully.

It's a little ironic. The one room we were forbidden to go into was the one place I longed for the most. Maybe it was the way the sunlight filtered through the windows, or the heavy, comforting warmth of the fire in the winter. Maybe it was simply that in a house full of unspoken tensions, that room held a rare kind of stillness.

I would sneak into it when I could, curling up in the recliner with a book, feeling for a little while I belonged in a different world, a quieter one. Occasionally, my mother would allow it, and in those moments, it felt like I was touching something tender and untouchable all at once.

In the cold months, the rules softened. I was allowed around the fire, to read, to nap, to exist in that rare, sacred peace. Those moments – fleeting as they were – are ones I still hold close.

Sometimes, the places we're told we can't go are the very places our soul is yearning for. Sometimes, the forbidden places are the ones we need the most.

I'll never forget the way that room made me feel, a different kind of peace, tucked away in the middle of so much unseen chaos. Maybe that room wasn't just sacred to me; maybe it was sacred to my other too. Perhaps that's why she guarded it so fiercely, why she kepts it just out of reach. We were both fighting battles we couldn't yet see in each other. It's strangely beautiful, and a little heartbreaking, that the same room offered a refuge to us both – even if we didn't realize it at the time.

Reflection:

What "forbidden room" still exists in your own heart – spaces you've been told not to enter, emotions you've learned to suppress, dreams you've put away?

Maybe today, it's time to turn the knob, open the door, and step into the peace that's been waiting for you all along.

Sometimes the bravest thing we can do is return to the places we once tiptoed around – and find that they are not as frightening as we thought, but full of strength and hope we were always meant to find.