my architecture of sanctuary

I used to think that home was a place I could find in someone else’s arms: my immediate family, in a relationship that promised safety, but never delivered it. I thought I could decorate my way into belonging, filling empty rooms with candles and gentle music, hoping something outside of me would soften the ache within. But over time, I’ve discovered the truth: I am my home.

My mother’s stability taught me the language of earth, though it often came wrapped in misunderstandings and unhealthy conflict. My father’s devotion to family taught me love, but not always emotional safety in its fullness. The places I grew up in were lessons in survival, not sanctuaries. So I learned to cultivate my own over time, slowly and intentionally.

When I made my first body butter, it was just for me: a ritual of care and a reclamation of softness. Yet, woven deeper through my hands was something ancestral: the scent I culivated turned out to be the same one my paternal grandmother wore as her body splash decades ago. I had no idea until my father smelled my body butter and told me. It was a moment I will never forget. A moment of ancestral remembrance, the kind that doesn’t require logic, only recognition. It reminded me that healing isn’t about becoming new. It’s about returning to what has always been sacred.

My life has become an altar to the truth that returning comes through devotion. This is what makes every jar of Sweet Bloom a prayer. Every word I write (whether in my journal or blogs) is a small architecture of sanctuary. Every decision, a brick laid for the life I’m building. I no longer strive to create safety. My space already holds it. Here, I don’t strive to belong. I just am. And that, to me, is wealth and success. Therefore, everything in my life must feel like a sanctuary, not because I’m chasing comfort, but because peace is my birthright. My business must feel like a sanctuary, even through uncertainty. My art must feel like a sanctuary, even through evolution. My relationships must feel like a sanctuary, even through conflict. My home must feel like a sanctuary, especially through change. And the architecture of my sanctuary is not a place; it’s a vibration. It’s the energy of existing authentically and aligned.

So, I don’t know if Georgia will be my forever home. But for now, it’s where I’m planting the seeds of my new life: the slow, intentional life I prayed for. The one that allows me to rest and rise, to refine and receive. The one where my business, my music, and my memories coexist as sacred extensions of who I am. It’s where my body butter unveiled as a scent of remembrance and the softness of devotion. It’s proof that healing can be fragrant, that creation is sacred, that the mundane can be holy.

And maybe that’s all sanctuary ever was: a quiet place within the soul that whispers, “You are safe here. You belong to your own becoming.”