Layer by Layer
On journaling, stillness and the soul of home
There’s a quiet kind of magic that reveals itself when I step away from home. Not just in the delight of a new place or the comfort of a bed that isn’t ours, but in something deeper. A hush. A softening. A slow, almost imperceptible loosening of the grip routine has on our thoughts. It's in that rare silence—when the hum of everyday life quiets—that the mind begins to stretch. Drift. Dream. For the first time in months, I’m not thinking in bullet points. I’m not checking boxes. I’m not racing the clock. I’m dreaming. Wandering. Letting ideas arrive not with urgency, but with ease—like old friends showing up without needing an invitation.
I came here to rest, to do less. To be still. And yet the moment things quieted, my imagination rushed in—wide awake and eager. So here I am, wine glass in hand, scribbling in the margins of old receipts and the back pages of my little orange notebooks. Not with a to-do list of repairs (those always wait), but with dreams. With textures of memory. With flickers of feeling.
It’s often in the unstructured moments that clarity quietly arrives. When we give ourselves even twenty uninterrupted minutes—no pressure, no polish—just space to let the mind drift. That’s when the real insights show up. Not brand new, but long-circling thoughts that finally have room to land. They’re not passing ideas. They’re the kind that hold weight. That anchor. That shape the way we move through life. This week, in my journaling, I keep returning to one word: layer. At first, I questioned it. Layer? Really? But it keeps showing up, again and again—insistent, unresolved. And now I understand why. Of course it’s that word. Because everything I’m thinking about, everything I’m drawn to—it all comes back to layering. In home. In memory. In meaning.
To me, home is more than a structure. It’s a vessel for memory. A space that evolves alongside us, layer by layer. Even in my professional work, that’s what I’m after. The soul of a space. The feeling that catches in your chest when you walk into a room and something unnameable just feels right. It’s never about perfection. It’s always about the layers—the stories, the quiet details, the subtle evidence of life well lived. That, to me, is the real magic.
This space I’m creating—online, in my work, in my own home—it isn’t about pristine portfolios. It’s something slower. More honest. More felt. Because the work I care about most isn’t just in the glossy “after” shots. It’s in the way a room holds us during ordinary days, through seasons of change, in the midst of both beauty and mess. It’s in the sacred, ongoing act of tending to our homes—not as projects to finish, but as stories to live inside of. The objects we choose. The corners we soften. The rituals we return to. These are not trivial things. They become the rhythm of our days, the background of our memories. What could possibly matter more than that?
I’ve come to believe that the true beauty of a home doesn’t live in its finishes or square footage—it lives in its layers. In the heirlooms passed down and the ones we choose with care. In the mismatched pottery and chipped vases. In the flea market frames and the forgotten silver tray etched with someone else’s memory. These aren’t just objects. They’re scaffolding. They hold time. They hold meaning. They shape the way we move through our spaces. The way we remember them.
These things don’t just happen.
They’re chosen.
Nurtured into place with quiet attention and the willingness to see a space not as a checklist, but as a life unfolding.
What if the beauty lives in the unfinished?
What if the layering is the living?
And so yes, I’m far from home right now—but in a strange way, I’ve never felt closer to it. Because stepping away has helped me see it not as a list of tasks, but as an unfinished story. One I get to keep writing.
Over the past few days, I’ve started a different kind of list. Not of things to fix, but of things to layer. A bench for the upstairs corner that’s been waiting patiently. Hanging the majolica plates that have waited patiently in a cabinet. Freshly printed black-and-white photos from this summer to hang in the hallway—a living scrapbook in progress. A wallpaper made from an old textile, adding a wink of charm to a quiet space. More shelves in the laundry room for the ever-growing vase collection. And yes, monogrammed linens from French brocantes that feel like they already belong to us.
And always: more story. More soul. More softness.
A home not built all at once, but collected—layer by layer, memory by memory.
These aren’t decorative gestures. They’re deeply human ones.
They’re how we make meaning visible. How we honor the everyday.
It’s so easy to overlook these things. To wait for “done.” But the joy, the magic, the meaning—it’s not in the renovation. It’s in the reverence.
In the thoughtful accumulation of soul.
In the spaces that hold us, reflect us, and quietly whisper: this is who you are.
And maybe that’s the whole point.
A Guided Reflection
So, here’s a place to begin. A few gentle questions that may help you get started...
love.