I never wanted to become the woman who had a story about surviving something.

But here I am.

In 2014, two words changed the direction of my life.

Multiple Sclerosis.

There is a particular kind of grief that comes with a diagnosis like that. You’re still here. Still breathing. Still looking like yourself. But suddenly, the future you imagined feels like it belongs to someone else.

I remember wondering what my body would take from me next.

My independence? My ability to work? My energy? The life I had built?

And perhaps the hardest part was realizing that I could do everything right and still not control what happened next.

Fear has a way of making your world very small.

But somewhere in the middle of all that uncertainty, something in me refused to accept that my diagnosis would become my entire identity.

I couldn’t control everything happening inside my body. But I could become fiercely intentional about what I put into it, what I put onto it, and how I chose to live in it.

I began questioning things I had never questioned before.

Ingredients. Food. Skincare. The products we trust. The promises we believe. The things we’ve been conditioned to accept as normal.

And the more I learned, the more I realized how much I wanted to do differently.

Love + Be Well was born from that awakening.

Not from a business plan. Not from a desire to enter the beauty industry. And certainly not because I imagined myself spending the next decade making skincare.

It began because my life had changed, and I could no longer look at caring for myself the same way.

What started as a deeply personal need became something I never could have imagined.

A company. A community. Thousands of women trusting something that began in one of the most frightening chapters of my life.

And here’s what I want you to understand.

I am not a woman who defeated MS and went on to build a skincare company.

I am a woman who still lives with MS.

I still have difficult days. I still face uncertainty. I still have moments when my body reminds me that determination alone cannot change everything.

But I have built a beautiful life alongside it.

And that distinction matters.

Because I don’t want my story to suggest that if you eat the right foods, use natural products, or live intentionally enough, you can somehow outrun disease.

You can’t always.

But you can reclaim parts of yourself that fear convinced you were gone.

You can create something meaningful from something devastating.

You can build a life that is bigger than the thing you never asked to carry.

Twelve years later, I look at what Mitch and I have built, and I know one thing with absolute certainty.

I would never have chosen the diagnosis.

But I am incredibly proud of the woman who emerged from it.

And every jar, every bottle, every recipe that leaves our studio carries a piece of that journey.

This was never just about skincare.

It was about taking my life back.

And somewhere along the way, it became a way to help other women care for theirs.

With love,
Natalie

Founder, Love + Be Well

I have always been a saver of beautiful things.

The good dishes. The linen napkins. A candle that smells too wonderful to burn on an ordinary Tuesday. The expensive olive oil tucked in the back of the pantry. A dress waiting for somewhere worthy enough to wear it.

We save things because they feel special.

And somewhere along the way, we start believing that special things require special occasions.

I’m not so sure anymore.

The older I get, the more I think being here is the occasion.

What Exactly Are We Saving It For?

I remember generations before us having entire cabinets filled with things that were rarely touched.

The china.

The crystal.

The silver.

Beautiful things carefully protected for company, holidays, or some occasion important enough to justify using them.

I understand it. There was care in that. Pride, too.

But I also think about how many of those beautiful things spent most of their lives behind a cabinet door.

And I find myself asking:

What were we waiting for?

Because eventually the linens yellow. The candle loses its scent. The beautiful ingredient expires. Our bodies change and the dress no longer fits.

Sometimes the thing we were protecting never gets to do the very thing it was made to do.

Ordinary Days Are Most of Our Lives

This may be what has changed most for me as I’ve gotten older.

I used to think of life as the big moments with everything else happening in between.

Now I think almost the opposite.

The in-between is the life.

Making dinner with Mitch.

Drinking coffee from a cup I love.

Putting flowers on the table even when no one is coming over.

Cooking something beautiful on a Wednesday simply because we’re hungry.

Lighting the candle at four in the afternoon.

Using the linen napkin instead of reaching for a paper one.

These moments aren’t filler between the important parts.

They are the important parts.

Beautiful Things Should Have a Life

I don’t want to own things I’m afraid to use.

I want scratches on the serving boards.

Stains on the linen.

Recipes splattered across the cookbook.

I want the good dishes to eventually show evidence of hundreds of dinners.

Because that means we used them.

We gathered around them.

We lived with them.

There’s something very different about caring for something and preserving it so carefully that you never actually enjoy it.

I want to take care of the things I have.

But I also want them to participate in my life.

This Goes Beyond Things

I think we save more than dishes.

We save experiences.

The restaurant for an anniversary.

The trip for someday.

The idea we keep talking about.

The afternoon we’d love to take off when things finally settle down.

The gathering we want to host when the house is finished, the garden looks better, or life becomes a little less busy.

There is always a reason to wait.

And increasingly, I’m suspicious of someday.

Not because everything needs to happen now.

But because I know how quickly now becomes then.

Use It

So this is something I’m practicing.

Use the good olive oil.

Burn the candle.

Wear the dress.

Put dinner on the pretty plate.

Open the linen napkins.

Invite people over before everything is perfect.

Order dessert.

Sit outside a little longer.

Use what you have while you’re here to enjoy it.

Maybe The Art of Enough isn’t only about recognizing that we already have enough.

Maybe it’s also about allowing ourselves to fully enjoy what we already have.

The good stuff was never meant for someday.

It was meant for the life we’re living now.

I have things in my house that would mean absolutely nothing to anyone else.

A worn recipe card in handwriting I recognize immediately. A bowl that belonged to someone I loved. A chipped plate I still reach for even though there are perfectly good ones sitting beside it.

None of these things are particularly valuable.

And yet, they are priceless to me.

I think that distinction matters.

We live in a time when we’re constantly encouraged to clear things out. Edit. Organize. Declutter. Get rid of anything we haven’t used in a year. Make room for something newer, prettier, more current.

And while I certainly understand the relief of clearing out what we no longer need, I’ve realized I don’t want a life completely edited of its history.

I want some things to stay.

A Home Should Hold a Little History

I love walking into a home and being able to tell that someone actually lives there.

Not because it’s perfectly styled, but because there are clues.

The cookbook with the broken spine because it always opens to the same recipe. The wooden spoon that has darkened with years of use. The stack of mismatched bowls collected over time. The chair that probably should have been recovered ten years ago but somehow still belongs exactly where it is.

Those things make a home feel like a life has happened there.

I’ve never wanted my home to look as though everything arrived on the same delivery truck.

I want layers.

Things from my childhood beside something Mitch and I found together. Something inexpensive next to something beautiful I saved for. A piece passed down from family sitting beside something one of my children made years ago.

That mixture feels like us.

Keeping Is Different From Collecting

The older I get, the more interested I am in the difference between having things and keeping things.

Having can be about acquiring.

Keeping is about relationship.

We keep something because it carries a story. Because our hands know it. Because seeing it reminds us of a person, a place, a season of our lives.

Sometimes the reason doesn’t even make much sense.

You just know you’re not ready to let it go.

I think we should trust that a little more.

Not everything needs to justify the space it occupies by being useful or valuable. Some things earn their place simply because they connect us to who we have been.

Enough Isn’t Minimalism

When I started thinking about The Art of Enough, I knew I didn’t want this to become a conversation about minimalism.

That isn’t what enough means to me.

I like beautiful things. I like setting a table. I like old dishes and linens and cookbooks and objects with patina. I like a kitchen that looks like someone has been cooking in it.

Enough isn’t an empty shelf.

It’s knowing the difference between something that adds meaning to your life and something that is simply taking up space.

That distinction has become much clearer to me with age.

I’m less interested in having more just because something is new.

I’m much more interested in taking care of what has already earned a place here.

Maybe That’s the Point

One day, someone else may hold the things I’m using now.

Maybe one of my children will reach for one of my bowls and remember Sunday dinners. Maybe a recipe card in my handwriting will end up tucked inside someone else’s kitchen drawer. Maybe something completely ordinary to me today will become meaningful to someone I love.

There’s something beautiful about that.

Our belongings can become little witnesses to our lives.

They were there for the dinners, the birthdays, the ordinary Tuesday mornings, the people gathered around the table.

So yes, clear out what no longer belongs.

Let things go when their season with you is finished.

But keep the things that still tell a story.

Use them. Care for them. Let them show their age.

A meaningful life doesn’t have to be perfectly edited.

Sometimes enough looks like a chipped plate you’ve had for twenty years—and still choosing it from the cupboard.

 

xo,

natalie

Every October, I feel the shift.

The mornings are darker. The air changes. The days get shorter almost without us noticing. We start closing the windows, reaching for sweaters, making soup instead of salads and turning inward a little earlier in the evening.

I love this time of year.

But my body doesn’t always love the transition quite as much as I do.

I didn’t always notice it this way.

For years, we lived in Charleston, where there was more warmth and sunlight throughout the year. I don’t remember experiencing this same seasonal shift in my body there.

We eventually moved back to Virginia to care for our aging parents. And somewhere along the way, as I readjusted to four very distinct seasons, I began noticing a pattern.

Every fall, my body seems to notice the change before my mind does.

And even now, I have to remind myself of it.

It’s October. The light is changing. The temperature is changing. Your body is adjusting, too.

Living with an autoimmune disease has made me incredibly aware of the ways our bodies respond to things we don’t necessarily think about.

We tend to think of seasons as something happening outside of us.

The leaves change.
The temperature drops.
The light disappears earlier.

But we’re changing right along with it.

Our bodies are seasonal, too.

October changes more than the view outside the window.

We get less daylight. Temperatures can swing dramatically from morning to afternoon. We spend more time indoors. Cold and flu season begins creeping in. Our sleep patterns can shift. We may move less, get less sunlight and naturally start craving more rest.

All of those things require the body to adapt.

And when you live with an autoimmune condition, sometimes you feel that adaptation more.

For me, it can show up as fatigue. That familiar feeling that my battery isn’t holding quite the same charge. Sometimes old symptoms become a little louder. My body asks for more rest than my mind thinks I should need.

My first instinct can still be to wonder what’s wrong.

Then I remind myself: I’ve felt this shift before.

Sometimes my body is simply working harder to adjust.

Less light matters.

One of the biggest changes happening in October is something incredibly basic: sunlight.

Morning light helps set our circadian rhythm—the internal clock involved in sleep, hormones, energy and many other processes throughout the body.

As the days shorten, the timing and amount of light we’re exposed to changes. We may also spend considerably less time outdoors.

Vitamin D enters the conversation here too. Sunlight helps our bodies produce vitamin D, which plays an important role in normal immune function. But seasonal changes in how we feel can’t simply be blamed on vitamin D.

The relationship between sunlight, our internal clocks, sleep and the immune system is much more complicated than that.

Having lived somewhere with abundant sunshine and now somewhere with four very distinct seasons, I can’t help but notice the difference in my own body.

Maybe that’s why October catches me off guard.

I can know what’s happening intellectually and still wake up one morning wondering why I suddenly feel so tired.

Then comes everything else.

Fall also means more respiratory viruses circulating.

The air becomes cooler and drier. Indoor heat starts coming on. Our skin and mucous membranes can become drier. Sleep can change. We start spending more time inside.

And then there’s life.

Schedules fill up. The holidays start appearing on the calendar. There are things to do, people to care for, businesses to run, families to tend to.

Meanwhile, nature seems to be doing the exact opposite.

Slow down.
Get darker.
Rest.

There’s something worth noticing in that contradiction.

We expect ourselves to operate at exactly the same speed in July, October and January.

Our bodies may not agree.

A flare isn’t always a flare.

This is something I’ve had to learn through living with MS.

Feeling different doesn’t automatically mean my disease is progressing or that something new is happening.

Things like illness, temperature changes, exhaustion, dehydration, stress and poor sleep can temporarily make old MS symptoms more noticeable. The nervous system can simply have less reserve.

Learning that has changed the way I respond to my body.

I try to pay attention without immediately becoming afraid of what I’m feeling.

Of course, genuinely new or significantly worsening neurological symptoms deserve a conversation with your medical team. Listening to your body doesn’t mean ignoring something important.

It means learning its language.

This is my reminder, too.

I wish I could say that after all these years I immediately recognize what’s happening.

I don’t.

Every fall, I seem to have a moment when I wonder why I’m more tired. Why my body feels different. Why something that felt easy a month ago suddenly requires a little more from me.

And then I remember.

You’ve been here before.

The season changed.

Give your body a minute to catch up.

So I get outside in the morning.

I open the blinds and let the light in.

I walk.

I feed myself warming, nourishing food.

I protect my sleep.

I drink water.

And when my body tells me it needs more rest, I try to listen instead of arguing with it.

There’s something interesting about having moved home to care for our aging parents while, at the same time, learning how to care for myself through another season of my own life.

Maybe that’s part of what aging has taught me.

Pay attention to the patterns.

Know your body.

And don’t assume every difficult day means something is wrong.

The trees aren’t fighting to hold onto summer.

Maybe we don’t have to either.

There is a season for expanding and a season for coming inward. A season for long days and a season for earlier nights.

Our bodies are part of nature, too.

And perhaps one of the kindest things we can do as the season changes is allow ourselves to change with it.

— Natalie

I’ve always liked things with a little life in them.

My cupboards are filled with mismatched dishes. I have chipped plates I won’t part with, old furniture, worn wood, stacks of books and a kitchen that feels a little like your granny might have cooked in it.

I use the good stuff.

I don’t save the beautiful glasses for company or the fancy dishes for Thanksgiving. If I love something enough to have it, I want it to be part of my everyday life.

I also love beautiful things. I enjoy shopping. I’m not a minimalist and I’m not interested in becoming one.

But I’ve never really understood having more simply for the sake of having more.

And lately I’ve been thinking about how much our culture seems to be built around exactly that.

How much is enough?

There is always another thing waiting for us.

Another pair of shoes. Another bag. Another thing for the kitchen. A new sofa because apparently the shape of sofas has changed again. A new wardrobe because the things we bought two years ago aren’t quite right anymore.

We hunt. We find. We buy.

We get that little rush when we finally get the thing we’ve been looking for.

And then something interesting happens.

It becomes ours.

It goes into the closet or onto the shelf. The newness wears off. The little rush disappears.

And we begin looking for the next thing.

Of course I know that feeling. I love finding something beautiful as much as anyone.

But there is a difference between loving something and loving the feeling of getting something.

I think we’ve gotten very good at the second one.

What happened to keeping things?

I think about the furniture people used to keep.

A table stayed in a family long enough to collect scratches and water rings. Children ate at it. Then grandchildren did.

Furniture was refinished.

Shoes were resoled.

Things were mended.

A chipped dish wasn’t necessarily thrown away. Sometimes it simply became the dish you reached for every morning.

Things had time to become ours.

Now entire rooms are replaced because they’re no longer on trend. Furniture is made cheaply enough that sometimes replacing it makes more sense than repairing it. Closets overflow while somehow we still feel like we have nothing to wear.

And I wonder what we lose when everything becomes so easily replaceable.

Because when almost anything can be replaced tomorrow, it’s easy for everything to become a little less meaningful.

Enough isn’t an empty house

I want to be clear about something.

This isn’t minimalism.

You will not find an empty kitchen or perfectly edited closet at my house.

I like my things.

I like opening a cupboard and seeing dishes that don’t match. I like remembering where something came from. I like furniture that’s been around long enough to carry a story.

And when I buy something new that I truly love, I enjoy the hell out of it.

That’s part of enough, too.

Enough isn’t about denying ourselves pleasure.

It’s knowing the difference between something that adds to our life and simply adding another thing.

The less I have, the more creative I am

I’ve always noticed this about myself.

The less I have, the more creative I become.

Give me a refrigerator overflowing with groceries and there are almost too many possibilities.

Give me a few vegetables, good olive oil, a lemon and whatever happens to be in the pantry and I’ll figure something out.

It’s the same with clothes. Setting a table. Decorating a room.

When the answer isn’t automatically go get something else, you start seeing what’s already there differently.

You improvise.

You combine things you wouldn’t normally combine.

You make something work.

You create.

There is a kind of abundance in that which has nothing to do with having more.

More isn’t always more

I don’t believe wanting things is bad.

I don’t think shopping is bad.

And I certainly don’t think beautiful things are frivolous. Beauty matters to me. It always has.

I just think the things we bring into our lives should have the opportunity to become part of them.

Use them.

Wear them.

Repair them.

Take care of them.

Let the table get scratched. Let the linen soften from a hundred washings. Let the plate get chipped. Let something stay around long enough that one day your child says, I remember that.

Because perhaps the question isn’t really how little we can live with.

Maybe it’s whether we’re actually living with what we already have.

I’ve lived this way for as long as I can remember.

But in a world that seems increasingly determined to convince us that the next thing will be better than the thing we already have, it feels worth talking about.

So that’s what this next Journal series will be about.

Not having less for the sake of less.

Not minimalism.

Not rules about how many shoes we should own.

The Art of Enough is about allowing what we have to mean more.

 

Love + Be Well,
Natalie

I’m beginning to think that some of the best parts of our lives are the parts we barely notice.

The first sip of coffee while the house is still quiet.
The way the light moves across the kitchen floor.
A conversation with Mitch that starts out about nothing and somehow lasts twenty minutes.
Something simmering on the stove.
Walking into the garden and noticing something bloomed.
A familiar song coming on at exactly the right moment.

Nothing remarkable.

And yet, maybe everything.

We spend so much of our lives anticipating what comes next.

What needs to get done. Where we need to be. What we’re making for dinner. What we’re working toward. The next weekend, the next trip, the next season of our lives.

Even in a beautiful moment, our minds can already be somewhere else.

I catch myself doing it.

Drinking the coffee while thinking about work. Walking through the garden while making a list in my head. Sitting with someone I love while part of me is already thinking about what I need to do when I get up.

And lately I’ve been wondering:

What am I rushing toward?

Because this is it.

Not someday when everything is finished and the list is finally crossed off.

This ordinary Thursday.

The coffee.
The conversation.
The dinner we’ve made a hundred times.
The walk to the shop.
The sound of someone I love laughing from another room.

This is the life.

I don’t think being present means moving through life at some impossibly slow pace. We have businesses to run, people who need us, appointments to make and laundry that somehow keeps appearing.

Maybe presence is simply noticing while we’re here.

Looking at the person talking to us instead of reaching for our phone.

Sitting at the table for another five minutes.

Actually tasting what we cooked.

Opening the window because the air feels good.

Using the beautiful cup on an ordinary morning.

Letting a good moment be enough without needing to turn it into anything else.

There is so much emphasis on creating a beautiful life.

Maybe we already have one.

Maybe we just keep missing pieces of it because we’re looking ahead.

I want to get better at staying.

Staying in the conversation.
Staying at the table.
Staying in the garden a little longer.
Staying with the ordinary moment before reaching for the next one.

Because one day, I imagine, these will be the things we miss.

Not the things we rushed toward.

The little things we almost rushed past.

So today, I’m paying attention.

To what is already here.

Because perhaps a beautiful life isn’t made only from the big moments we remember.

It’s made from all the small ones we were present enough to notice.

 

-Natalie

I am tired of being told that aging is something we should be trying to outrun. Reverse it. Erase it. Correct it. Tighten it. Lift it. Prevent anyone from knowing it happened. At some point, can we just let women age?

I’m not talking about giving up on ourselves. Quite the opposite. Take care of your skin. Feed it well. Moisturize it. Protect it from the sun. Move your body. Eat beautiful food. Get your sleep. Wear the lipstick. Use the face oil. Do the things that make you feel good when you look in the mirror. But maybe we could stop asking all of those things to make us look younger.

There is a difference between caring for ourselves and trying to erase ourselves. And I think we’ve blurred that line.

I love skincare. Obviously. I’ve spent years creating it. But I don’t believe the purpose of skincare is to keep your face frozen at 35. Skin changes. It gets drier. It gets thinner. It loses some of its bounce. Lines settle in places they didn’t used to. The face looking back at you changes because you have changed. That isn’t a skincare failure. That is being alive.

And yet we are surrounded by an industry—and increasingly a culture—that keeps pointing us backward. Look how you used to look. Look at this old photograph. Look at your jawline then. Look at your eyes then. Look at your body then. It feels like spending an awful lot of our lives looking in the rearview mirror.

And I keep wondering: What are we missing right in front of us?

Because this version of me is here now. This face. This body. This life. And she deserves my attention too.

I don’t want to spend my 50s wishing for my 30s, only to arrive in my 70s and realize how young 54 actually was. I want to be here for it.

There is something freeing about deciding that youth is no longer the prize. Health is. Vitality is. Curiosity is. Feeling comfortable in your own skin is. Being surrounded by people you love is. Still wanting to learn and make things and cook dinner and sit in the garden and laugh until your stomach hurts is. A face cannot tell you whether a woman has those things.

Maybe graceful aging isn’t about preserving what was. Maybe it’s about caring beautifully for what is.

So yes, take care of your skin. Love the skin you’re in enough to care for it well—not because you’re desperately trying to make it look like the skin you had twenty years ago, but because this skin belongs to you now.

And perhaps instead of constantly asking how we can look younger, we could start asking a much more interesting question: How do I want to live as I grow older?

That feels like a future worth looking toward.

Just let us age. I think we might actually be quite beautiful at it.

 

- Natalie

I love being alone.

I genuinely do. I love a quiet house. A morning to myself. Working in the studio with music playing. Walking through the garden without needing to talk to anyone. I’ve always believed there is something important about being comfortable in your own company.

And I still believe that.

But lately I’ve been thinking about the other side of being well: each other.

Our brains are wired for connection. Long before wellness became something we practiced individually—with routines and rituals and all the things we do to take care of ourselves—human beings survived by belonging to one another.

We gathered. We shared food. We cared for each other’s children. We told stories. We worked beside one another. We sat together through births and deaths and celebrations and ordinary afternoons.

We needed each other.

And we still do.

There is something that happens when we are with people who make us feel safe and seen. We settle. We laugh. We exchange ideas. We tell a story and realize someone else has lived it too.

We nourish each other.

We inspire each other.

We comfort each other.

Sometimes another person reminds us of something we have forgotten about ourselves.

I think our culture has made independence such a virtue that we can forget there are things we simply cannot give ourselves. You can learn to enjoy your own company. You can create beautiful rituals. You can take care of your body, feed yourself well, go for the walk, put down the phone, tend the garden.

All of that matters.

But none of it replaces belonging.

Maybe that is why I have watched our little shop become something I never really planned for it to become.

When we opened our doors in Warrenton, I thought of the shop primarily as a physical expression of Love + Be Well—a place where you could experience what we had created online in real life.

But people came in.

And they stayed.

They talked to us. They talked to each other. They shared pieces of their lives. We began gathering in the garden. We shared food and music and conversations. And somewhere along the way I realized that what was happening between people mattered every bit as much as what was sitting on the shelves.

It has made me think differently about what it means to be well.

Skincare can nourish the skin. Food can nourish the body. Solitude can nourish the soul.

And people nourish us too.

Maybe wellness was never supposed to be entirely solitary.

Perhaps we need both.

The quiet morning alone and the long conversation across the table.

The walk by ourselves and the chair pulled into the circle.

The ability to come home to ourselves and a place where we know we belong.

I don’t want a life filled with constant activity or endless socializing. I still need plenty of quiet. Probably always will.

But I understand connection differently now.

It isn’t something extra we fit into our lives when we have time.

It is part of being human.

And perhaps part of being well is remembering that we were never meant to get everything we need from ourselves.

Come home to yourself.

And sometimes, come sit with us.

 

- Natalie

Lately, I’ve found myself looking at old things differently. The glass candy dish that belonged to someone before me. The mismatched plates. Old music playing in the kitchen. Movies I’ve seen so many times I already know what comes next. Things I’ve had for years suddenly seem to carry more weight. More meaning.

And I caught myself wondering recently: Is this just age? Have I officially entered my nostalgia era?

Maybe. But I think there’s something more to it.

Because I don’t actually want to go backward. I don’t believe everything was better then. It wasn’t. Every generation has a tendency to polish its memories around the edges and forget the harder parts. What I miss—or perhaps what I’m appreciating more—is the feeling that things lasted.

You had things long enough for them to become part of the family. A candy dish wasn’t replaced because another one appeared in your feed. The dishes got chipped and stayed in the cupboard. Furniture collected scratches. Recipes were made so many times nobody needed to look at the recipe anymore.

And music belonged to particular chapters of your life. There are songs I can hear today and immediately remember a room I haven’t stood in for decades. I can remember the people. Sometimes I can almost remember the way the air felt. That’s the strange thing about nostalgia. It can collapse forty years into about four seconds.

When you’re younger, I don’t think you always understand why people hold onto things. It’s just a bowl. Just a photograph. Just some old dishes. Then one day, it isn’t.

The glass candy dish becomes the house it sat in. The sound the lid made when someone lifted it. What was usually inside. The hands that reached into it. An ordinary object somehow became a witness.

And maybe that’s why I’m increasingly drawn to the imperfect things in my own home. The chipped plate. The old serving bowl. The pieces that don’t match. The things that show evidence of having had a life. I don’t want a home—or a life—that looks like everything arrived yesterday. I want some history in the room.

I also wonder if this feeling has something to do with the world we’re living in now. Everything moves incredibly fast. We’re shown something new before we’ve even had time to appreciate what we already have. New clothes. New kitchens. New beauty. New restaurants. New trends. New things we’re apparently supposed to want.

Buy it. Use it. Replace it. Move on.

And somewhere in the middle of all that newness, I’ve become increasingly interested in the opposite. Things that have stayed. Things that have been repaired. Recipes passed around a family. Music someone loved before I did. A table that has hosted hundreds of meals. A dish that somehow survived three generations. There is something reassuring about an object that existed before today’s algorithm and will probably exist after it.

And then there is age.

At some point, you realize you’re standing somewhere in the middle of your family’s story. There are people behind you whose voices you can still hear if you think about them long enough. And now there are people coming after you.

That changes things.

You begin to understand that you’re not simply the recipient of your family’s history anymore. You’re one of its keepers. You decide which recipes continue. Which stories get told. Which traditions survive. Which ridiculous old dish gets handed down with the very important instruction: Don’t you dare get rid of this.

And perhaps that’s what I’m feeling. Not a desire to live in the past. A desire for continuity.

I’ve always believed in using the good things. Drink from the beautiful glass. Light the candle. Put dinner on the old plates. Wear the jewelry. Use the linen napkins on a Tuesday. I don’t want the things I love preserved so carefully that nobody actually gets to love them.

Maybe that’s part of preservation too. Not putting something away. Keeping it alive. Making another meal with it. Playing the record again. Watching the old movie. Telling the story one more time. Adding another scratch to the table.

And one day, perhaps someone will hold one of the ordinary things from my life and discover that somewhere along the way, it stopped being ordinary to them too.

So yes. Maybe I’ve entered my nostalgia era.

But I’m beginning to think it’s something else.

Maybe I’ve entered my preservation era.

Not wanting to go backward. Just wanting to make sure the good stuff comes with us.

— Natalie

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