It’s probably a consequence of living an untypical life, of being an artist living and working in Europe. But I’ve heard, many times over, “You’re living my dream.”

It might be spoken with kindness, with astonishment, or sometimes envy. My answer is consistent. And because I’ve never had a bucket list, or even come close to mapping out anything that’s actually happened to me in advance, I try not to get annoyed or put off by the statement.

There are no dreams. Let me tell you why.

In the hubris of the pernicious global situation that’s scorching our earth and destabilizing everything we hold dear, we’re led by the global marketing machine down the path of manufactured dreams. Dreams that can get us out of the rat race, the insidious boredom; dreams that get us to part with our money in return for the intoxicating promise of emotional fulfillment. We need to believe that Stevie and Bruce are right: it’s about the dream and dancing in the dark, and we can have it all and do anything we can dream of.

Meanwhile, we’re collectively trying to make sense of the catastrophic chaos that we face head-on as soon as we turn on any device. The chaos that’s telling us it’s the hottest summer in the history of summers, and there won’t be enough crops this year to feed the industrial meat industry’s billions of sickly animals, much less ourselves. The chaos that’s changing the price at the gas tank and the airport and the grocery store every time we blink. The complete lack of control we feel is terrifying, because it upends the long-standing paradigm that we ever really had control at all.

A life that’s consciously led thousands of miles from the epicenter of late-stage capitalism, in places that seem so damn good and that ride the line between business and creativity (as we’ve been doing for over twenty years now), really does look like a dream.

I totally get that.

The truth of the situation is much more pragmatic. We were offered choices that enabled us to make large moves to different places, and we took them. What we didn’t do was shy away. I will never regret moving from Philadelphia to Washington to southern California, back to Philadelphia and then to Europe. But I’m not going to sit here and say any of that was a dream, either. Each move required the acceptance of a more than healthy dose of risk and an abundant willingness to adapt, change, and grow—whether we wanted to or not.

We make choices. And choices always carry consequences—some of them positive and some of them not so much. The more we explore, become curious, and stick our necks out of the safety of our own blinders, opportunities present themselves. With opportunities come decisions, some that will bring you down a slightly different path, some that can turn your entire world upside down and have you learning a new language while on your back heels, trying to understand public transportation links in a foreign country.

There’s so much I’ve learned by making the choices I have. Choices on new jobs, on love, on big moves. I can whip up a set of curtains for a new house in a day if I have to. There’s no issue with getting the lay of the land in a new place, fresh off the plane, with or without GPS. My own brain power tripled by learning languages. There’s no way in hell I would have learned a foreign language, let alone two, had I not fallen in love with a German and moved to Europe. I would still be one of those Americans that says, “Well, I took Spanish in high school….”

Cringe.

But none of that—not one single iota—was a dream.

Life on this side of the ocean, doing massive historic renovation projects and being a ceramic artist with a long list of clients, might sound terribly romantic. The reality is there are many boring everyday moments that are filled with dirty dishes, broken pottery out of the kiln and a garden parched beyond belief. There’s anxiety about where the world is heading and about health issues and how my family in the States will cope and all the other things that every other person in this crazy world obsesses about.

There have been so many magical moments thatt’s easy to forget how isolated and humiliating it felt to understand only a handful of German words and turn involuntarily into an insecure shadow of myself after having been a glib, expressive marketing executive in the USA. The lessons have been huge. There has been plenty of trauma to get past. But there was always a path forward—the next step, a crack of light, a new grasp of grammar, friends at language school, incredibly people along the way.

It’s easy to forget the panic that hit the day we bought our first Italian property. The day we signed the papers on our first property in Italy—a literal pile of stones—I didn’t eat for three weeks. The fear was so intense it landed me in the hospital. That was a clear and unmistakable consequence of choice. But I got better, because I had help and love in my life. I leaned into that heavily when I needed to.

Running the bed and breakfast on a hill in Italy seems terribly romantic but there was no heady dream that could make it less work. We made breakfast for strangers all spring, summer, and fall, then spent the winter chipping plaster off walls. Guests there, no renovation. Guests gone, renovation. It was hard work. But it built something in me that no corporate job ever did: a stubborn trust in my own capacity to do what was necessary to survive and make every attempt at thriving against what sometimes felt like insurmountable odds.

Struggling to live with the consequences of one’s own choices builds character and endless ways to express creativity in real, authentic ways.

I have never felt that I’m living a dream. I’ve chosen for this life, again and again. There’s beauty in that.

Dreams are passive. They happen to you; actually, they’re often sold to you. Choices are active. They require you to show up, to weigh consequences, to decide how to move forward. And even though you never can know what the exact consequences will be, you will be sure to learn things you never could have dreamed of—ever.

By understanding that life choices are not dreams, I won agency and backbone. I started asking, “What choice is in front of me? What am I willing to take on?” That shift didn’t make my life one bit easier, but it made it more authentic. And because of that, in my opinion, more beautiful.

I talk about this—creative breadcrumbs, burnout, feeling damaged, and why I hate the word “hobby”—in a recent conversation with Andrea Maurer on her podcast, Flying Under the Radar. If any of this resonates, I’d love for you to listen.

Spotify:

YouTube:

And if you’re standing at your own crossroads—renovation, move, new love, creative leap, book project—I’d love to hear: what choice are you making right now, and what consequences are you willing to live with?

There is no dream.
There are only choices—and that’s just so beautiful.

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The lifestyle we’ve grown up believing in and validating through passive agreement and an unwillingness to change is having an absolutely devastating effect on the planet and on our own health.

When I was in my mid-twenties, I had already been through enough emotional turmoil to know that I wouldn’t be fitting into anyone’s neat box, probably ever. It was a very lonely place to be. I had already expelled myself from the suburban life I had squeezed into and seemed perfectly destined for, with my business degree, nice husband and navy blue suit. But I realized, almost immediately, and with a great deal of panic, fear and guilt I would never be able to make it work for myself. It was on a sweaty, hot, fully packed Philadelphia SEPTA train to my job as an insurance administrator on 17th and Market that I had my first clear download:

If this is all there is, you’ll never survive.

I knew that was my fundamental truth at that very moment. I had positively no idea who I was, but had made big life decisions, decisions impacting other people, based upon the myth that I did.

That was a wake-up call like no other.

I had to face the hard consequences of my decisions and struck out to find something, anything, that felt right. I got a studio apartment and a bike, worked at a health food store, became a hard-body vegetarian, lived deep in the countryside, picked my own vegetables at mennonite farms, made my own yogurt and took out my anger and grief at the karate dojo.

I was completely broke.

But there was nothing about any of that, even the brokeness, that didn’t feel exactly right.

I was just dipping my toes in the water, to be honest. I got a new job, fell in love, and my career took off (this time in a creative field). We moved to LA for five years and then back to the east coast. I tried things on, so many things, so many different threads of my tapestry. Jobs took me to Honolulu and San Francisco, Beale Street in Memphis and Buckhead in Atlanta, Salt Lake City and Chicago, Soho and Spartanburg, the flats in Cleveland and the strip in Las Vegas. It was all so interesting and exciting, but was it all me?

What happened to the girl who picked her own vegetables and made almost every recipe in the Laurel’s Kitchen cookbook? Where had she gone? What did she know back then? How could I find her again? Trying on so many different things, but not knowing, not being sure, what was it actually that I was meant to do?

And that was all before moving to Germany and Italy, learning languages, understanding new cultures and building businesses in foreign countries.

Here I am more than forty years later, deep in the countryside, making my own yogurt, growing vegetables, and making pottery that celebrates handcraft. And damn if it all doesn’t feel exactly right again this time around.

It’s funny. We know, don’t we? We know so much about when things are right and when they aren’t. But we can’t always get there - to the “right” place - without affecting massive change to our own lives and often those around us. That’s scary shit. And all that disruption that we inevitably cause when we do the hard work of alignment - it causes other people’s lives to shift, too. We have to own that knowledge.

It takes years to decode the things that make life feel right, and in my world, almost all of them have to do with committing to nature and living by its rules. When I am in touch with nature, my creative energy flows. When I cut myself off from nature, I feel isolated and blocked, sad and flat.

There are a billion ways to live, and ultimately, we get to choose. Or not. The thing about staying in unaligned situations is that it does not require our approval. We can be passive, indecisive and stay chronically unhappy, physically sick, mentally drained and deeply exhausted, never understanding exactly why. There’s enough chronic illness in western countries that can be traced back to a hard disconnect between people and their own souls.

How we live determines how happy | healthy | creative | empathetic we are.

How we live determines how miserable | sick | angry | depressed | anxious | egocentric we are.

In order to propel ourselves forward in this vastly complex economic and social system, we leave large chunks of ourselves and the natural world behind. This is built into the engine. It’s impossible to climb the slippery, craggy cliffs of financial and social success and at the same time live in harmony with nature and feed the needs of the entire planet. Something has to give - and one of those things is our sense of well being.

Every single part of our well-healed Western lives requires more resources than the earth can give us. We live outside of real community, isolated yet determined that this is the best way forward, or the only way.

It’s all we know. And/ But we know it’s not working. This planet cannot support the way we live.

We, the only self reflecting species, have built a system (actively and passively) that creates insane wealth for the very few by retailing out war, weapons, waste, hunger and misery to millions and millions of human beings.

How can we live a life of meaning and beauty with the odds so deeply stacked against us?

We have to realize, in a deep and honest way, that we possess agency over our own lives and beliefs. Most people understand misalignment, but often can’t name it, because naming it means it becomes real, and unmistakable, and in need of action. And action means change. And change, real meaningful change, is scary as hell. But that change means we’re using our agency for good. For correcting mistakes. For making our world (and hence the world at large) a better place.

We know in our bodies when we are in alignment. We sense the energy. I’ve developed something of an inner barometer - with people and situations - to make sure I’m sitting comfortably in my own energy. This was learned; I sure as hell wasn’t born with it. But through many struggles and difficulties I’ve come to understand that my first obligation is to my own personal alignment. And that my small world remains curated within a framework nature and love. This is the only way I can stay healthy, and essentially, myself.

If our own small worlds feel right to us, if we’re giving and taking in good measure and we’re respecting the planet and each other, if we’re listening more than we talk and we’re planting ideas of love and respect into the next generation, we’re going a long way to healing what is wrong everywhere.

We can’t take on the whole system.

But we can take on our small worlds and make them aligned not just for ourselves, but for the good of everyone and everything.

So I’m curious: what’s one small way you could show up in your own life, today or this week, that feels like a breadcrumb on the path toward your own alignment?

It doesn’t have to be big or dramatic. It might be a few quiet minutes in a garden or on a balcony, cooking something from scratch, saying no to something that drains you, or saying yes to something that makes your body feel awake.

What would that breadcrumb look like for you?

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Weeks have flown by, the heat building day by day, until almost all of nature comes to a standstill. The grapes stop swelling; the hazelnuts remain minuscule and white. The countryside is parched and insulted, a look that belongs to the slow relinquishment of August, but has no rightful place in the middle of June. People are resigned—there’s nothing we can do. Curtains are pulled closed at nine in the morning and remain that way until nine at night, unless a thunderstorm mercifully passes through, hopefully not carrying the fatal grandine, hail, which can wipe out a season’s worth of toil in mere seconds.

If the evening is calm, a piece of watermelon or a scoop of lemon gelato graces the table after a small dinner.

Our B&B summers in Italy were just like this, balanced on the edge of heat and storms. To be in Italy now, a decade later, is to remember making dozens of jars of apricot and peach jam, bread baking at six in the morning, watermelon juice mixed with strawberries and ice, peaches roasting in lavender with the neighbour’s honey, goat cheese served on fig leaves, early swims in the pool, guests meandering down to breakfast.

But memory edits out the weight of it all.

Back then, the heat belonged to a story. Now it presses on my chest while I try to think, to plan, to move anything forward. The simplest decisions stretch and warp in the afternoon hours, when the air thickens and the body refuses.

And then there is the work—the slow, relentless work of undoing and remaking. Walls opened, floors jackhammered, dust settling into every fold of skin. Progress measured not in finished rooms, but in what has been stripped back: exposed pipes, raw beams, problems no one anticipated.

It is a particular kind of exhaustion, the kind that comes not from completion but from a thousand small interruptions and snap decisions. From living inside the in-between.

There are moments when everything feels broken at once—the house, the timeline, my capacity. The days blur into heat and noise and waiting. Waiting for permits, for decisions, for the air to shift, for some small relief that never quite arrives.

And yet, this is the only way anything ever becomes whole.

Nothing is restored without first being taken apart. I know this from nearly every life lesson I’ve learned, though I seem to resist it each time as if it might somehow be different. There is no wholeness without the shattering and the gathering back together.

But in the middle of it, we cannot see it. We see only the scattered stones, the concrete dust, the broken heart. We cannot make sense of it right then, in that moment. We are tempted to walk away, to leave it all as it is, to stop mid-process and call it finished simply because we cannot bear to continue.

But we don’t do that, do we?

Because there’s something in us insisting we return to the work, to the pieces, to the quiet act of trying again—however impossible it feels, regardless of fear, pain or desperation.

Little by little, things begin to right themselves. Not necessarily in the way we imagined, but maybe in another way entirely. Beneath the dust and the strain and the heartbreak, there is a shift—a wall that aligns, an unexpectedly beautiful piece of wood that gets exposed, a friend that gathers us up - proof that something is moving forward, even when our feelings betray us.

Fracture is not a failure of the process; it is the process.

Perhaps this is what this summer is—less the sweetness of jam and lavender, and more the discipline of staying with what is unfinished. Of accepting that the heat will stall me, the work will overwhelm me, my heart will ache, and yet still, piece by piece, something meaningful is being built.

Not despite the breaking, but because of it.

It’s a wide plank, cut from a local tree, its grain the colour of dark honey. We chose chestnut because it matches — not perfectly, not artificially, but the way old things match: at soul level. We discussed it — Renato and I — with the practiced shorthand of two people who’ve been looking at the same house for long enough to know what it wants: to be experienced, held, respected. Loved.

The ceilings in our house in Murazzano are original chestnut and pine beams and planks, sandblasted back to their raw, honest state. Decades of paint and plaster have been stripped away to reveal what was always there — the warmth, the texture, the way the grain catches afternoon light.

The moment I saw them, I knew every new element we brought into this house would have to speak the same language. Not imitate. Just speak the same language.

The window sills and the plank for the bathroom sink will be chestnut. It was never really a question.

On working with a falegname (and why it matters)

One of the things I go on about in Old Walls New Lives — and will continue to go on about, because it bears repeating — is the value of working with Italian artisan tradespeople rather than simply ordering what’s cheapest and fastest. A falegname is a master woodworker, a craftsman, and in villages like ours, Renato is a keeper of local knowledge. He was born here. He knows what wood grows, how it ages, how it is best handled to produce the most beautiful result.

When I described what I needed — window sills and a plank for the bathroom connecting the new joinery to the old bones of the house — Renato knew exactly what I meant. He’s been doing this his whole life - understanding wood and its place in the home.

I don’t want wood that has real finish (no polyurethane—sweet baby Jesus no). Renato referred to the treatment I want as spazzolato (brushed). The wood is gone over carefully with a wire brush, bringing the grain to the forefront. It will then be lightly stained to echo the beams pictured above.

There is a profound satisfaction in this type of conversation with an artisan — the kind you’ll never get into with a building materials website.

The handmade bathroom sink

Here’s the thing about renovating a house when you’re a potter: you start seeing opportunities everywhere.

I’ve been making ceramics for almost 30 years. I know stoneware clay, what it can hold, what it can take, how it wears. When we started talking about the bathroom — what it should feel like, what level of comfort it should have — I kept coming back to the sink. Here’s where I could use my own abilities to make something highly individual in what is a completely personal space.

So I made one.

The glaze I used for the sink is high fired to 1250°C, and is made of ash that comes from Piemonte acacia trees and old grape vines. It is a glaze fitting of this region and has a complete mind of its own. It drips hot iron extrapolated from hungry vines and vitrifies (turns into honey-colored glass), winding paths through the clay.

It took time — forming, drying, first firing, glaze mixing, glaze testing, actuall glazing, the second firing — and the result is something I can’t fully describe without sounding insufferable. But I’ll try: it’s wide and deep and the glaze is both matte and glossy, in an earthy tone that will only get better with use. It is unmistakably handmade. You can sense the hand in the work.

The kitchen backsplash

I made the kitchen backsplash tiles as well. Same conversation between the clay and the space — the house will hold many other people’s craftsmanship; these are my contributions to it.

I need the tiles to be tactile. You should want to touch them. I don’t want anything feeling slick and cold.

If there’s one thing I want in a kitchen that lives - that soothes the spirit of everyone who enters it.

It’s the heart of the home, and though the kitchen in this house isn’t huge, its design is exceptionally pretty.

I thought about making a sink for the kitchen as well, but the existing sink that’s been in the home for God knows how many years could not be more perfect. In an Italian kitchen, especially an old one, the sink is not an afterthought. It is a place of serious work: vegetables from the garden, wine glasses at midnight, the rinse of a pasta pot. The kitchen sink in this house is all of that. We’re just adding a new tap.

The exchange between craft and place, something I wrote about in the very first renovation post is actually happening.

Why the details are never just details

I ask myself three questions before committing to a finish or material in an old Italian house.

Does it speak the same language as the existing materials?
Old stone, original beams- these details have a voice. Anything new that comes in needs to be able to hold a conversation with them. Nothing should overwhelm or in any way take away from what’s already there.

Can it age gracefully?

In any house, everything will show wear eventually. The question is whether that wear will look like neglect or bring additional life. Chestnut patinas. Handmade stoneware deepens. Lime plaster becomes more tactile over time. But modern finishes tend to simply deteriorate and need replacement.

Will it confuse future owners about what is original and what is new?
This is the one that gets skipped most often. I care about it a lot.

Honesty in materials is a form of respect for the house’s history, and for the people who’ll come after us.

The chestnut window sills pass all three tests. So does the sink. So do the tiles.

What halftime looks like in Murazzano

We are roughly halfway through this renovation now. The demo is done, the first-fix electrics and plumbing are in, and we’ve extended the scope to include the cantina, which will become — I’ll write about this properly soon, because it deserves its own post — a ceramics and art studio.

The bones are bare and honest.

In the next few weeks, the floors will go in, the chestnut sills will be measured and fitted along with all the new soft white painted windows and plastered walls, lime washed. The kitchen will start to look like a kitchen. My handmade sink will sit on its chestnut plinth.

I keep coming back to one image: water running over the glaze of that bathroom sink for the first time — the ash glaze I made from acacia and old grape vines, in a house whose walls are built from the same land. There is something quietly circular about that. Clay I shaped, fired in my kiln in the Black Forest, carried to Murazzano, set into a room that has held other people’s daily lives for centuries.

It doesn’t need to be more complicated than that. The story is simple and complete.

Next up: I’ll take you inside the cantina, and the work of turning two cold, dark storage rooms into the ceramics studio I’ve been dreaming about for years.

If you want the full framework behind these decisions, the why behind the what, Old Walls New Lives — my guide to buying and renovating in Italy — is available now in print and on Kindle. If you’re still dreaming of your own Italian property journey, or deep in the middle of it, it’s the book I wish someone had handed me before I started.

It’s work for me to stay grounded in our current home, a wonderful exposed timber house on the edge of the Black Forest that holds me close in ways that have been deeply comforting in both good and troubled times.

We’re not anywhere close to being in the future one yet. I’m not the woman I was twelve years ago when we came here; I’m not yet the woman I will become in that home either. In German this is die Zwischenzeit, the in‑between time, and I feel the word’s meaning in my bones because change is something I recognize as inevitable.

Just after Easter, we’ll head back to Italy. This holiday of renewal reminds me something has to close in order for something new to open. Down in Murazzano, the builders will have been busy changing the house — but the truth is, a deeper evolution is underway in places I can’t photograph. Liminal spaces are thresholds, uncertain zones where you’ve left one shore but haven’t yet arrived at the next.

This is the part no restoration show tells: the not‑knowing, the days when you’re neither in the old story nor the new one.

All doors are thresholds, the psychological ones and the physical ones, bringing us from one stage set to the next. I try to cross these liminal thresholds by staying focused on the next task, then the next. Sometimes that works. I tend to be a worker bee, thinking that if I just put the pedal to the metal firmly enough I’ll arrive on the other side whole.

Which I won’t. I know this, because I’ve never arrived in a new situation whole. There will be challenges, and adjusting to newness at this age looks radically different than it did 12 years ago, or 22 or 32 years ago.

But in my not wholeness I will know that’s an illusion, and it will go away, and I will feel my wholeness again, after the boxes are unpacked and the first fire of the season is lit in the wood burning stove.

I remember sitting on the empty living room floor of my house in Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania, the moving company having swiped everything up to put on a boat for Hamburg, thinking, I cannot ever do this again. No more massive changes. I was 35. That was 32 years ago.

Little did I know what I was actually capable of. My life became a series of in‑between times, adrenaline‑pumping events, “oh my God how are we going to fucking do this” moments that have left me enormously satisfied with the journey. I managed, through no real strategic plan, to find the perfect partner with whom to travel this intrepid road, and have not just survived, but thrived, in ways I never would have thought possible for myself.

And it continues. I’m not quite sure where or how this journey will go — this one back to Italy, to a new town, a new vibe, a new way of living — but I am optimistic, a characteristic that has never been my strong suit. Living in this space of planning and waiting, I feel suspended in air in a good way. I’ve been here before, and I’ve made friends with the liminal part of the journey.

In essence, it’s the spaces in between that are the rich cloud of curiosity which bind the storied layers of life.

I wonder about you: where are the hallways in your own life right now, the thresholds you’re standing on but haven’t yet stepped through?

That’s a lot for the last week of January, considering I normally get up at the crack of 10 this time of year. But I’m also a good sport, and if there’s coffee, I can hustle (in a late 60s kind of shuffle-way).

The four‑hour miracle

Our first order of business was tackling what I’ve been politely calling “the too-much-shit situation” in the first house. It was a decades‑deep layering of other people’s lives: broken chairs, dressers that I couldn’t even budge, sagging mattresses, dusty dishes, bags of clothes… you name it, we had it. It was the typical situation that happens when owners pass away. You get a good deal on the place, but you get all the crap along with the keys. I had already sorted through for the things I wanted to keep, and a friend took a few pieces. The rest had to go.

Enter Christian.

Christian arrived one cold morning with a small army of five guys with the energy of a professional moving crew. They took one look at the mountain of crap we had, gave each other a “we’ve seen worse” shrug, and then just got on with it.

My kind of guys, people. My kind of guys.

For four hours, it was choreography. Old dishes hitting the base of the truck bed, broken furniture surrendering to the mallet. All of it sorted for the very strict recycle center in the next town (Italy is very strict about recycling). The rooms slowly emerged like someone had pulled back a curtain. By midday, what had felt overwhelming for months was done. Poof.

The photos here are of the first room when you walk in the house. One third will be entry and two thirds will be the bathroom. Right now the toilet is on the balcony. I mean, it’s a seat with a view but…

If you take nothing else from this: when you can, hire the Christian in your story. The right help at the right moment is worth everything. It can clear out your thoughts and energy enough to keep going at a quick pace, and is worth every centissimi.

Meeting the people who will rebuild this place

The other big task this week was making sure we had the right people before anyone picked up a hammer.

We sat down with our builder, Mauro, and his wife, Elizabeth and Giorgio, our geometra, in that familiar Italian configuration: paperwork on the table, conversation ping‑ponging about building details. I brought a space heater, but it blew the circuit every time I turned it on.

Elizabeth, who is American, has become an unexpected anchor for me—someone who gets this process as much or more than I do (I mean, she’s married to a muratore), and understands my humor. That is what you call a win-win.

Then came the team I always tell people to assemble early:

• Aron, the electrician, young and sharp, already thinking in circuits, checking the current meter and walking us through every outlet.

• Gabriele, the plumber, equally young, with the kind of attitude you want from the person responsible for big things, like a safe gas connection and the boiler.

Both of them listened, and asked questions. And, one other thing - they’ve worked together before and both work well with this particular builder. How does that translate during the project? Aron can call Gabriele at the spur of the moment and come up if he spots something that needs the plumber’s attention. First and second fittings can be time co-ordinated with Mauro easily. From experience, I know this is critical to the job coming in well and on time.

We also met Renato, our shy but hugely talented window maker and door restoration guy, who’s done work for us in the past. He took one look at the house and said he really liked the project. That’s what you want to hear from your serramentista / falengame—not “ maybe I can do it,” but “I want to do this one.” Old stone and new wood window frames are a delicate symbiosis; you need someone who understands how these projects come together.

I already started the WhatsApp group, where our geometra, our builder and all the trades are informed of everything at the same time. We have a start date of the 1st of April, and we’ll be down there shortly after to do the walk-through for the first fitting electrics and plumbing. What that means is, we’ll rough out the outlets, the switches, the IT stuff, the toilet-sinks-washers-showers, and the radiators with the guys. That’s the first fitting. The second fitting is the actual placement of all those things, which is done closer to finish.

Weather, wood, and the tiny house

Outside, Piemonte did its January thing. Some days were bone-chilling‑cold; some days we could stand in the sun in just sweatshirts and pretend spring wasn’t that far off.

Back at our tiny house, we burned through a frankly impressive amount of wood just to keep the chill at bay. That wood stove is the heart of everything in this 500 squre foot house: heat, cooking, and definitely mood regulation. There is a particular kind of coziness that comes from simmering something on a wood stove while you peel off layers of clothing.

In the evenings, soft NYC jazz and fireplace vibes ruled. We talked through layouts and decisions, warm and comfortable but still knowing that comfort in our little sweet house is something you work for, not something you plug in or switch on.

Tiles, future bathrooms, and one handmade backsplash

A highlight of the week—at least for me —was choosing the floor and bathroom tiles. I’ve spent enough years working with clay to know when something feels right in my hands and under my feet. We found tiles that carry that quiet, grounded, rugged beauty I’m always after: colors pulled from the surrounding landscape, textures that feel like they’ve already lived a little.

I could finally see our future bathroom take shape: a black, rusty matte tile surface in large format, lit from above. Drama, baby, drama. There will be a twist, and it will be beautiful, but I’ll save that for later.

I made a decision that felt inevitable: I’m going to make the kitchen backsplash myself, in the studio. It feels right to let my own hands leave a visible, permanent trace on these walls. The house will hold many other people’s craftsmanship; this will be my piece of it, a quiet conversation between pottery and place. The tiles will be simple, playing off of that star patterned hexagon shape above. The floor will be the star (in more than one way) and the backsplash the supporting choir.

We accomplished everything we set out to do:

• Cleared a house we’d been low‑key dreading, in four hours flat. I cannot state how huge this was.

• Confirmed a builder we trust and met the electrician and plumber who will wire and plumb the house for a fair price.

• Brought our window maker on board and watch how happy he was to do our project.

• Lived the winter in our tiny house where the only heat is a wood stove - it was work, cozy as can be, and absolutely worth it.

• Chose the materials that will meet our feet and hands every day, and claimed one corner of the project—our kitchen backsplash—for myself

Next up, I’ll take you inside the plans: layout, what we’re keeping, what we’re letting go of, and the non‑negotiables I’m insisting on before anyone swings a hammer at these old walls.

From job site to book launch

Since we’ve been back from Murazzano, something else has happened that feels slightly unreal: I released the book that’s been quietly scaffolding all of this work. Old Walls New Lives is now out in the world—in print and Kindle on Amazon, and through most major book channels worldwide.

This book grew out of two decades of trial and error on Italian building sites and out of watching too many people arrive in Italy with unrealistic dreams and no roadmap. It’s the book I wish we’d had before our first real estate agent meet-up (it involved a tiny old lady in a mink coat and a small dog - a story for another day), before our first completely indecipherable notary appointment (he had wild grey hair and an old fashioned calculator with the tape almost wrapping around the entire room. No, he didn’t speak English), before we stood in our newly purchased condemned farm thinking, “Where do we even start?”

Old Walls New Lives walks you through the whole arc: decoding listings, understanding who does what (geometra, architect, notary, agents, and trades), wrapping your head around taxes and the catasto, figuring out which properties are promising and which are money pits, and then planning realistic budgets and timelines so you don’t get swallowed by “surprises.” It’s a working manual, not a coffee‑table fantasy—meant to sit next to your notebook while you view, negotiate, sign, and renovate.

What I’m doing with Our Italian Renovation here on Substack is the live feed—the cold hands, the junk piles, the young electrician with good questions, the tile decisions made on too little sleep. The book is the structure underneath: the step‑by‑step, the numbers, the questions to ask before anyone drills into your walls. Together, they’re the two halves of the same project: one gives you the why and the feeling, the other gives you the how and the roadmap.

If you’re renovation‑curious, already in love with a crumbling house, or just trying to decide if you’re brave or foolish or both, this is your invitation to pull up a chair to the table. Keep reading here for the messy, in‑progress story of our Italian renovation—and if you want a guide you can throw in your carry‑on on the way to that first viewing, Old Walls New Lives is waiting for you, wherever you usually buy your books.

I’m writing this with fingerless gloves on from one of our two frigid, newly emptied rustici in the hills of Piemonte, Italy, with contractors ready to start demo and dust settled deep into my wool hat. I have two pairs of leggings on and my thickest black parka. Trucks have been back and forth past our house, looking and pointing, “yeah, it’s that one” as they search to find somewhere to park on the narrow passage. I think back to when these meetings could send me into a flight of anxiety that would take days to recover from. And I remind myself, this isn’t then. This is now. I know much more now than I ever could have then.

But in the stillness before the chaos, the smell of very old furniture and sheets still hanging in the empty air, I hear myself think, is this in any way an appropriate path for us at this age?

Damn straight it is, I say out loud, with a cackle in my throat and wrinkles around my eyes that betray every one of those years.

I have to admit I do love a good job site visit. Especially like this one, right before the chaos begins, when the future still seems bright, and there isn’t a cost overrun in sight. Yet.

There are a few advantages to being this old and this experienced at this kind of task. For one, there isn’t a cinematically magical photo to be taken anywhere in this country of a gorgeous home to which I will not say, “Someone suffered a great amount of misery to make this happen.” Because I know that to be true. Suffering is part of what makes Italy what it is. It’s the part no tourist coming from the outside wants to grasp, but it’s the thing that creates the soul‑clenching beauty of the place, because you cannot have this kind of beauty without pain. Think about the guys who had to get twenty‑ton chunks of marble from Carrara to Florence for Michelangelo with cattle. It’s always been about suffering for beauty here.

A person simply has to decide if the pain is worthwhile. For us it is.

But the thing is, it doesn’t have to be as painful as people make it, simply out of a lack of willingness to deal with the facts. As chaotic and as erratic as Italy might be, there are ways to do things that can make the entire process easier. With knowledge comes strength. And when you combine knowledge, strength, and some language skills, restoring a ruin in Italy becomes, well, not child’s play, but something that’s manageable and doable. Which is all you want it to be because the real payoff is at the end when you’re in your home in the state of disbelief that you actually pulled it off.

Having been through this rodeo before on numerous occasions, I’ve come to realize that all Italian renovation follows a certain pattern. Even though different comune have different interpretations of procedure, every comune eventually falls in line with how things get done. The problem is, in the beginning, when you’re first starting out trying to pull information on best practices for your first and maybe only renovation, there’s nowhere to go except to the University of Doing It The Wrong Way, which has very high tuition costs and from which you don’t graduate until you’re broken.

And broke.

So I figured it was time to open a different kind of school.

Instead of hoarding and eventually forgetting what I’ve learned from two decades of Italian restoration, I’m putting it here where anyone can walk in, sit down, and start to understand how this actually works. No “we bought a €1 house and magically transformed it in six weeks” (sweet baby Jesus no), just the real sequence of events and the arc of turning an old building into a new life.

This Substack is where I’ll share the parts that don’t fit neatly into a how‑to book: the odd little moments, the conversations that go sideways, the jokes the trades make when they think I don’t understand, the days I want to throw something, and the days I stand in a beam of new light and think I can’t believe we get to do this. I want to record what it feels like to build a life inside old walls in a country that is both beautiful and infuriating, often in the same moment.

A couple of weeks ago, you may recall I removed the paywall on this newsletter and decided to keep it that way. I want people who are dreaming about Italy from Chicago or Sydney to have access to this information whether or not they ever buy a guide, book a consult, or get on a plane.

If you later choose to support the work by buying Old Walls New Lives or one of the focused guides on pre‑purchase, hidden costs, and budgeting, I’ll be deeply grateful—but it’s not a condition for being here.

Old Walls New Lives: A Step‑by‑Step Guide to Finding, Buying and Renovating Property in Italy

Pre‑order on Amazon. Publish date is February 16th.

The book I’ve written grew out of watching too many people show up in Italy with fat ideas and thin knowledge, myself included. Old Walls New Lives is my attempt to give all of us a map before we wander too far into the woods. It’s a step‑by‑step guide to buying and renovating here, with numbers, timelines, and questions to ask at every stage so you don’t have to enroll in the Wrong Way University at all.

This newsletter will sit alongside the book as the messy, living notebook. Out here, I can show you what happens when aging knees meet scaffolding and how much fun it is to relearn technical Italian for the third time.

And bore you with a continuous stream of views from our property.

If you’re renovation‑curious while standing in front of a condemned stone house wondering if you’ve lost your mind, you’re in the right place, there and here. Hit subscribe, tell me where you are in your own Italy story, and I’ll shape future posts around the questions that keep you up at night.

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Next up, I’ll take you through Week One on this current site: the emptied rooms, the first meetings with the team, what went right, what wobbled, and the three things I’d insist you do before anyone takes a hammer to your own fixer‑upper.

So I’ve made a decision. I’m closing the door on the paid tier and opening everything here to everyone.

This doesn’t come from a place of burnout, but rather from clarity and a deep desire to bring together all of my knowledge about the Italian property game under one, cohesive umbrella. The work I’m doing — disentangling Italian bureaucracy, navigating restoration in real time, piecing together stories from old walls — wants to be shared in a way that’s as open like the old village doors I keep propping myself against. No more barriers. If we’re all truly to flourish, then this has to be a free space - a wide table where anyone curious about these stones and buildings and dreams can pull up a chair.

To those of you who chose to support this Substack financially: I want to pause here, look you straight in the eye (through a screen, I know), and say thank you from my heart. Your support wasn’t abstract. It paid for the quiet hours where I could sit with a notes and turn them into something coherent. It kept this project from being squeezed only into the margins of my days. You trusted that these words and images were worth something before there was a bigger shape to point to.

Your belief has been a kind of scaffolding — holding things up while I figured out what exactly I was building.

And now, behind the scenes, that “something” has started to take a clearer form.

While I’ve been sharing individual restoration stories here — that one wall, that one beam — I’ve also been laying out a much larger map: a series of guides and a book for people who aren’t just reading about Italy’s old houses, but are quietly thinking,

Could I do this? Could this be my life, too?

These guides gather everything I’ve learned (and am still learning) from years inside this world:

• the legal labyrinth of buying in Italy,

• What your geometra actually is and what they’re really doing (and what they aren’t),
  how to talk to a muratore (builder) who has seen a thousand houses like yours and still thinks your particular house is weird,
  how to hold on to your vision when ten different professionals are tugging on it from different angles, telling you all the reasons it cannot be done.

• If the posts here are like letters from the field, the guides and books are the field manuals — structured, practical, dog-ear-and-highlight-able. They’re meant to sit beside you at the kitchen table while you scroll through property listings or stare at a crumbling ceiling and wonder where on earth to begin.

This Substack is the bridge between the two:
the lived, messy stories of real projects,
and the organized, step-by-step frameworks of the guides and book.

I’ll keep bringing you into rooms mid-restoration, into conversations with professionals, into the small, very human decisions that shape how a house becomes a home.

The guides are the first pieces of a much larger work that’s been slowly forming in the background — the book, OLD WALLS NEW LIVES traces the whole arc from first viewing to living inside your own set of Italian walls.

Guide number one is a free, 20 page checklist that asks reality based questions while viewing properties in Italy. Click on the cover below to get your download:

Alongside that, I’ll begin to pull back the curtain on how the guides and books are taking shape — the chapters, the themes, the questions I’m building them around, many of them drawn directly from what you’ve asked me over the years.

So this is both an ending and a beginning.

The paid tier is ending, but what it allowed — the time, the trust, the sense that this work mattered to more than just me — is turning into something larger, something that I hope will be genuinely useful for anyone drawn to Italy’s old walls and new lives.

Thank you for being here, for reading, for supporting, for quietly cheering from wherever you are. I don’t take any of it for granted.

In the next post, I’ll share a first glimpse of the very first guide: what it covers, who it’s for, and how those dusty restoration stories you’ve already read are woven straight into its spine.

A big shout out to my girl, designer and author for inspiring me to birth this project and for helping (big time) with the cover and book title. You rock, my friend.

Italian Advent is magical.

Everyone’s out buying their panettone and strolling through the Christmas markets, bundled in scarves and smiles. Even the tiniest villages hang up twinkling lights spelling out AUGURI (“best wishes”), and the smell of roasted chestnuts wafts through the cobblestoned streets. In the north, where the fog likes to linger and the damp settles into your bones, people queue patiently at the butcher or the pasta fresca shops, chatting as if they have nowhere better to be—which, in December, is probably true.

Let me take a brief and completely justified detour to rave about those pasta fresca shops. They are temples to carbohydrates. You can walk in and order ravioli filled with meat, cheese, or vegetables, all made fresh that morning. There are large ones called panzotti, tiny ones called raviolini, the oh-so-Piemontese plin (meaning “pinched”), stuffed with prosciutto and spinach—or with boraggine and ricotta if you’re lucky. The fact that you can just stroll in and buy what in any other country would be a Michelin-worthy meal is one of life’s purest Italian joys. It’s gourmet food for everyone, and I will never tire of how good it is.

Italy at Christmas is dreamy. There is a presepe di Natale (Christmas nativity scene) in every square and window, and neighbors wander over bearing the most unglamorous yet extraordinarily heartfelt gifts—a freshly slaughtered and plucked chicken for making broth (a true badge of rural affection), a truffle or two if you happen to befriend a tartufaio, or a gleaming pandoro dusted with sugar. Others gift jars of honey from their own hives or mostarda, that tangy, jewel-toned fruity condiment that varies wildly from village to village. It’s all so beautifully convivial and genuine.

Unless you actually have to get something done, in which case you’re completely screwed.

It’s not that I don’t know the drill. From December 8th—the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, when Christmas officially begins in Italy—until well after Epiphany, the country collectively exhales and slows gently to zero productivity. I’d come to adopt an almost Zen-like resignation about these Italian quirks: things will happen when they happen and not a second before.

Except now I have a project to do so hold my vinsanto.

I briefly considered jumping in the car and heading down to the properties to nudge things along, but took a breath and remembered: there’s always January. Or February. Or May. 2026 will offer plenty of opportunities for me to blow plenty of gaskets. For now, I’m embracing the December calm as best I can under the circumstances.

Update: All team members have been contacted, and a mid-January site visit is officially on the books. Will progress be made? Who knows for sure. Stay tuned.

I also found out that once the paperwork is in at the Comune, we can start work the following day, because there is nothing in this project that requires architectural review. Whoop.

I’m trying to be both realistic and ready to drive the process. That’s a fine balance in a country like Italy. There’s only so much that calling, threatening and pleading a person can do before giving into reality. I’m at the beginning of the process and have lots of positive energy, but I well remember break dancing on the driveway of our not-finished Bed and Breakfast, less than twelve from the first guests when the builder told me he’d see me after his two week beach vacation.

I am seasoned. I’ve been broken.

And yet this ridiculously useless optimism lives in my soul, jumping around like Clippy in Office 1997, telling me I got this. I don’t got this.

But I’m playing like I do.

And on that note, let’s look at ideas for the bedroom and the living room, because nothing spells denial like designing all the interiors before demo day is even on the horizon.

Living Room

The living room opens up to a breathtaking view of the Alps—honestly, you could stare out that window all day and forget you have an apartment to renovate. I want this room to feel like a sanctuary: a cozy space where guests curl up by the wood stove after a day hunting truffles or exploring mushroom trails in the Langhe. At about 30 square meters (that’s 320 square feet), it’s roomy but still intimate.

Our old chestnut beams from Germany are coming with us—they’ll be reborn as two striking coffee tables, one for each property. I love the symbolism of that: a thread connecting one home to another. The color palette will be warm and tactile, with walls hand-washed in limestone paint. We’ll expose some areas of stone for texture and mount soft sconces in those nooks. A few niches will display pottery pieces, little reminders that craft and place are always intertwined here.

The indoor shutter on the main window is staying (it’s too good to lose), but the window itself will be replaced.

A new glass balcony door will be hung with flowing linen curtains that move like light breeze. The whole space will feel organic, layered, and inviting—modern comfort with that irresistible Piemonte soul.

Bedroom

The bedroom, meanwhile, is spacious enough for a king-sized bed, an armoire, and the kind of dresser you actually want to dust. In our old B&B, guests always raved about our real linen sheets, fluffy duvets, and luxurious mattresses, so that’s our baseline. We’ll add soft rugs, good reading lights, and perhaps a woven cotton blanket for summer months.

Both the living room and bedroom share those gorgeous wood-beamed ceilings, which we’ll sandblast and seal in their natural tone. I’m toying with the idea of a single bold wall—hand-rubbed with iron oxide pigment from my pottery studio and finished with wax. Because why not? Everything else in Italy takes time; I might as well turn the walls into art in the meantime.

Right now, there’s some incredible mid-century furniture sitting in the living room— pieces with honest lines and loads of character. They’re getting a second life in the bedroom once they’ve had a little TLC. And the doors! They’re ancient and full of charm, just begging to be stripped, sanded, and either painted or stained. That’s the kind of work I live for, and when the weather turns warm, I’ll be out there with a brush in one hand and a grin on my face.

I’m putting together the to-do list for the site visit in January, all the while knowing the rule of thumb is for every ten things you set out to do on a given day in Italy, one might or might not actually get done.

I will be sharing that to-do post plus the design boards for the entry and bathroom in the next post.

In the meantime, I wish you all a wonderful run-up to Christmas.

Ciao for now,

Diana

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It has been a while since you’ve heard from me inside FLOURISH, and in that time the world has not exactly become a gentler place. This year has felt heavy on so many fronts—globally, politically, environmentally, personally—and like many of you, I’ve been trying to keep my head above water while still making things, caring for people I love, and paying attention to my own nervous system.

I won’t give you a big list of excuses, because the truth is simpler: I ran out of words. Or maybe more accurately, I needed to listen more than I spoke. I found myself questioning what “flourishing” even means in a season that feels so exhausting, and I didn’t want to send you something that sounded like a pep talk from a parallel universe.

What I do know is that I still believe in what we started here: a small, human space to explore creative power, not as a performance, but as a way of staying awake and alive in difficult times. I’m grateful that you chose to support this work with a paid subscription, and I want what lands in your inbox to feel worthy of that trust.

So instead of trying to catch us up on everything or offer a grand plan, I want to simply pick up the thread of our shared curiosity and start again with a small, real story about reclaiming creative power in everyday life.

Being Alive Is Better Than Staring at a Cell Phone

There have been countless instances this year where I’ve found myself immobilised, only my thumb exercising, trying to take in the existential crisis endlessly pushing itself onto whatever screen I have in front of me. I’m not particularly proud of this, but it’s a fact. The doomscroll pulled me back, over and over, away from my own power and my own joy. I’ve felt the weight of it in my shoulders and in my hip joints, the wasted hours. There hasn’t been an actual point where I’ve said to myself, “Alrightee. That’s enough of this bullshit,” and thrown the phone out the window. But I’ve become increasingly aware of just how much I don’t want this anymore, and how much more I’d like to recommit to things that make me feel less captured and more free. Less anxious and more free. Less burdened.

And more free.

It’s not anything new, but what is new is artificial intelligence that thoroughly understands our best and worst inclinations—and feeds both.​

I think about this a lot. Doom thinking, I suppose. But I am well aware that the only way away from that kind of thinking is to consciously omit the source of it from my day, for periods of time, and reclaim my own power.

An example. I take my phone with me when I walk long distances. The pretext is to see how many steps I’m getting in. But I know now from experience how many steps are in a kilometer, and I’m smart enough to multiply.

But then—what if I see a flower and want to take a picture?

I don’t think I could possibly count the number of flower photos I’ve taken, and wouldn’t it just be much nicer to think in my actual brain while I walk?

My phone and I have an unhealthy relationship. I really, really want to check it when it lights up or pings. I feel the serotonin pulsing into my veins when I check it. I say I don’t care—and I mean it. I really don’t care. But I check it because I’m a well‑trained monkey controlled by a system that knows me almost better than I know myself.​

The only real value in having a phone on a long walk has to do with personal safety. And that counts for a lot. So I bring the phone with me, and work on exercising control over my own impulses to use it. The first step to solving a problem is to admit you have a problem.

I have a problem.

I’m leaving the phone out of the studio more often, too, which means no music, no podcasts, just me and my brain humming away in a zone so focused I can easily forget where I am.

I don’t bring the phone anywhere near the living room in the evening, so that my husband and I can talk or watch a film without it glaring down at the table every time it lights up. Because when the phone lights up, even if the ringer is off, I look at it. I want it BAD.

That being said, it’s amazing how quickly I forget about it when it’s in the other room.

My phone does not go into the garden with me anymore. It’s tried a couple of times, but now I make sure I slam the door before it can come out and start pinging at me.

My phone often keeps me from flourishing. It has too much control over me and my time. In order for me to flourish and to create I need for my brain to be free. And my brain can’t be free if my day is one long checking‑in session.

This does not mean my phone doesn’t have its place. I love creating content on my phone. I just don’t want it to be an out‑of‑control monster anymore, one that I look at expectantly, waiting for what? God only knows.

I just want to create and enjoy being healthy and happy. And free. There is enough going on in this world for us all to feel like we’re spinning on a top that is going nowhere but down. But it feels that way often because that’s what we’re fed. We are what we eat. If we ingest doom, we become doom. If instead we ingest from our spiritual (or actual) garden and create art and touch the deepest part of our creative beings, we become that.

A small experiment for this week: Choose one walk, one hour in nature, or one simple household task and do it without your phone in the room. Notice what your body does, what your mind starts chewing on, and what you see or hear that you would have scrolled past. If you feel like it, hit reply and tell me what you noticed.

This entire post is a careful dance around the subject of AI. While I’m a forward‑thinking, pro‑technology person, I believe the ethics around AI are probably the most important discussion that we should be having with each other right now.​

To that end, I’m sharing what I think might be the most important podcast I’ve ever listened to, hoping against hope that when you have the time, you’ll listen too. And if you like it, please share the link with others. Steven Bartlett from Diary of a CEO interviews Tristan Harris, a technology ethicist who has been sounding the alarm about how AI systems, left to pursue profit and engagement alone, can undermine our attention, our mental health, and even our democracies—and what a more humane path might look like.​​

Thank you, lovely people, for being here.
Diana

The start of this series on renovating two fixer uppers in Italy starts here.

The Italian property purchasing process is different from buying a house in the states in that you need a notary.

Il notaio, when accurately translated, means “person with big office licensed to print money.”

This is true of notaries in pretty much all of Europe. They’re way richer than people with a stamp in their bottom drawer in case someone needs a signature verified like in the states. It’s especially true in Italy because there can be hugely lucrative backdoor deals that involve a lot of cash. No one in Italy likes to pay taxes, including these highest official representatives of the Republic, sworn to uphold contractual law. They have big posh desks and a lot of panicked assistants making sure that everything is in order. By order I mean huge chunks of paperwork lying around everywhere in piles.

The assistants run around and photocopy everything in triplicate, swearing when the toner runs out of the copy machine, because no one knows where the new cartridge is. We wait patiently, making small talk with the owner of the property (our neighbor) and Giorgio, our geometra, who has made the introduction between us and our neighbor, therefore being somehow involved in the sale and is here, although we are not sure why, because we haven’t paid him anything. We talk about how bad the Italian health care system is - well, not the care, but the wait times, and how we should buy supplemental coverage if and when we move back to Italy.

The notaio, a guy maybe 42 or so, dark hair, tight jaw, beaming white smile, crisp suit, comes out of his office and shakes our hands. He has two offices. This is his Friday side gig office near his house. His main office is in Alba and is much larger with a far bigger desk and more assistants.

We know Marco (although we are not on a first name basis) because this is not our first rodeo with him. We already bought a property a year ago where everyone marveled that I was able to instantly transfer money from Germany using an app on my phone.

In a country that still uses checks, apps are suspicious. Especially foreign ones.

Precursory jokes about us buying up all of Murazzano are cackled and I assure Marco he will never see us again after today.

I try to sit down but Giorgio scrambles to get to my chair which he declares to be his. He’s clearly been here before. Maybe Giorgio is more than just a geometra because his presence here is still confusing me. Someone is paying him something. I’m fine with that, as long as it isn’t us.

Marco reads through the contract out loud from his desk, which is about 20 feet from the table we’re all sitting at. Nobody has a copy to follow so it’s like watching a boring movie in a foreign language. Everything is in Italian but the 2X button has been pressed as Marco has a few more closings to get through before checking his bank balance over an aperitivo at the end of the day.

We speak Italian but our brains are not geared for this speed in any language. Marco periodically summarizes like this: “That page and a half I just read means you gave me money and I give money to him” pointing to our neighbor. I nod with a hint of impressed surprise as if he just split the atom in front of me.

Initials and signatures all around on every piece of paper, our neighbor gives us the keys, shakes our hands and leaves. We’re left to pay Marco with my magic German app. I know that if we had paid cash we’d have gotten a discount but we don’t do that. We’re Germans, after all. By the book. I reckon Marco just grossed around fifteen hundred euro for under an hour’s work on a fixer upper, after I subtract out our tax payment to the Italian government (and maybe a payment to Giorgio from the notaio? Who knows? ).

Outside, the assistants run around getting documents ready for the next group in the waiting room.

We walk to the car, holding hands, monstrous keys from a century ago clanking in Michael’s pocket. We now own two derelict houses in Murazzano, with adjacent gardens, walled to the east in stone and the west in brick, with a southern exposure, and we’re happy.

Planning the Design

I think this is the part I now love the most of everything, the planning. It wasn’t always that way. I used to have huge anxiety over making decisions on projects. But as I’ve gotten older and more experienced at foreign country restoration, I understand the process thoroughly and although every project is different, there are basics to be covered in all of them that I build upon.

A great help to me has been the mood board classes I’ve taken from my friend . As an ADHD person, my brain gets scrambled when too many ideas are in front of me. The whole concept of mood boarding has allowed me to focus on the design of each room and then see how the spaces work together. A cohesive design is so important, especially in a nice rental, where people should feel at ease from the moment they walk in.

The Guest House Renovation

Our first focus is on the Guest House, which is a property we bought over a year ago and are now planning to start in the next month or two - that is, if Giorgio gets us the overdue drawings, and those drawings are finally submitted to the Comune and they have no objections.

Phone calls and What’s App messages, many of them, have been made. Frustration mixed with a strong note of guilt, essential for all official transactions in Italy where delays happen for no reason, has been expressed.

The Floor Plan

This floor plan isn’t really to scale - but it’s close and these are the approximate sizes of the rooms. The size is about 960 square feet, a great size for a one bedroom apartment. I’ve just place furniture to show scale, nothing here is real or reflective of how the apartment will be, except for the dividing walls.

The wall with no windows is the wall that’s attached to the house we just bought. These two houses are in the town itself and the windows to the back in the living room are where there’s a southern exposure view of the Alps. Off of this wall there is a balcony that’s not shown here, so that door in the living area actually leads to someplace and not just the great beyond.

The Kitchen

Today we’ll focus on the kitchen plans. This will be an eat-in kitchen, and although it’s not large, it’s certainly roomy enough for kitchen appliances and a table for four. I can’t see a scenario where more than four people will stay in this apartment, so this is fine.

The tones in the kitchen (and the rest of the guest house) will be earthy and comfortable, with natural wood cabinets and possibly a beautiful marble counter top.

Note: whenever I use the word “possibly” in these essays you can assume that the possibility is entirely budget dependent.

There is an old white ceramic kitchen sink in the kitchen, which is in very good condition. It’s fitted in under the window, and that’s exactly where it will be remounted once the water pipes have been changed. I would like to possibly get a very nice tap to upgrade the sink, and I will be making the tiles for the backsplash.

Here’s the mood board for the kitchen:

No upper cabinets, just natural wood shelves. The picture of my handmade tiles is from another property, and I’m thinking I’ll do the same sort of organic treatment in a slightly different colorway. I might try to make the pendant lamp myself from stoneware - and all the tableware will also be handmade.

A little video of Michael and I demo-ing the existing kitchen:

Next up: The plans better be ready and we’ll take a look at the bedroom and living room!

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There comes a point in life when the logical thing to do is to slow down, simplify, and enjoy the fruits of past labors.

We’re missing that gene.

Somehow - we’re not quite sure - we found ourselves signing not one, but two Italian property contracts — both for houses built around when Galileo was fumbling around with his telescope and becoming a heretic.

If it sounds like a lot that’s because sweet baby Jesus it is.

And I honestly haven’t figured out what it all means yet. What I do know is this: we fell hopelessly in love with an ancient village perched on the edge of Piemonte and Liguria, high in the hills above the wine country and the Mediterranean.

It’s not that we stopped loving the Barolo region — arguably one of the most beautiful and generous regions in the world — but we were definitely ready to explore someplace else. A place with less tourism and climate-related heat, with more open space and a little more artsy vibe.

The name of the village we found is Murazzano. It sits at about 2,300 feet above sea level, looking south toward the Apennines and, on a clear day, the French Alps.

We set out for a drive one spring afternoon in 2024, when Michael was feeling a bit antsy and we thought, why not visit a couple of towns close by we’d never been to but have heard good things about?

(Whenever we do something like this, it can result in something life changing happening without a plan. We know this about ourselves. WE KNOW THIS ABOUT OURSELVES).

Discovering Murazzano was like uncovering part of what make Michael and I tick as human beings. It was a small town, but softly sophisticated with a beautiful piazza, plenty of locals, but different languages being spoken as well. Art all around. Ancient walls. Restored homes. We were immediately swept away in this elegant, charming, beautiful village.

Which led us like pavlovian dogs to real estate ads.

And, as it inevitably turned out, a village property was available with those exact southern exposures. Michael suggested we look at it. I said no. It was long and narrow — a shotgun, I feared, like the two-front-two-back shotgun tenement apartment in which I grew up in Manhattan.

But he turned out to be right, which almost never (always) happens.

Because when we did look, we saw that while the house looked narrow at the front, it widened toward the back, and by the time you reached the last room — the one with the view — it was generous enough to feel open, light-filled, possible.

A fixer-upper, yes, but one that needed what we know how to give: time, attention, care.

And money.

We thought about it. Long and hard. But neither of us could get Murazzano out of our minds. We were in alignment. And that alignment led us to eventually making an offer and buying the house. Here’s a video of the unrenovated apartment in this house.

But then, a close friend came to visit, peeked into our new project, and we casually mentioned that the house next door was also for private sale by the owner, who happened to be our neighbor.

When the owner opened to doors to the cellar, all jaws immediately dropped to the ground.

It was a proper fixer-upper, with a scary-as-hella roof, very questionable floors, and a whole lot of soul waiting underneath in the form of a hand-built stone cantina straight out of a Da Vinci sketchbook.

She thought seriously about buying it, then decided against it, which made perfect sense for her situation. But we couldn’t get it out of our minds after touring it with her. In the end, we dove in where others would have run away screaming with their hair on fire.

Not to belabor the point, but the second house came with this handbuilt stone cellar out of a fairy tale, an actual poured concrete cellar floor AND intact planning permission.

WHAAAAAAT.

How could we not?

POV: we did NOT set out to buy two derelict properties in the mountains of Italy because who the f does that?

If I’m honest, I guess we do that, because we’ve done it before, so maybe it’s an addiction to possibility (wasn’t that very carefully worded?). At least we’ve learned a few things. We’re no longer entertaining acres of land that need to be farmed and tended in the sweltering summer heat. I take that as marked improvement. With these properties, there are two proper gardens, adjacent to each other, each the size of a large postage stamp. Tomatoes, basil and zucchini will prosper, but in adequately small quantities. Not enough to feed half of northern Italy, not that I’d know anything about that.

These will, no doubt, be the last two properties we ever buy.

No doubt. (← somebody out there needs to hold us to this)

Let me also make clear that we’re not glitzy people roaming Italy in a Ferrari with an unlimited budget. For us, that’s the challenge and what makes this adventure so enticing - creating frugally and using vintage materials that are carefully sourced or repurposed is far more interesting and exciting to me than simply buying and installing from the big box store or some designer showroom.

Now comes the part that’s less dream and more root canal.

We have our geometra, Giorgio — the Italian hybrid of surveyor, draftsperson, permit wrangler, and land registry agent. In Italy, you don’t need an architect, but if you try to renovate even the corner closet without a geometra, you’ll pay. Dearly. Maybe forever. Italy can be unforgiving as hell sometimes.

Together, we’ve mapped out a plan:

• Get a simplified planning permission (called SCIA) for the first house, which lets us start modest work without the bureaucratic circus. I’ve designed a 900-square-foot, one-bedroom apartment, and Giorgio’s turning it into a project plan for the Comune di Murazzano.

• Begin construction in spring.

• Update the existing permission for the second house — two new roofs, a large apartment, and turning that gorgeous stone cellar into a pottery studio and lounge/exhibit area.

• Start the second phase when the timing (and our bank balance) say yes.

We still have our tiny 500-square-foot house nearby, and we’ll keep it until the apartment’s done. Then we’ll sell it, breathe, and call that progress.

Beyond that, the plan is to:

1. To grow medical marijuana in case there’s an international incident that triples construction costs.

2. Relax and enjoy the process (see #1)

After we got the second set of keys a few weeks ago, here’s what I realized, standing and breathing in that cool stone cellar: this isn’t just going to be about bringing old walls back to life — it’s about returning to something ethereal.

Something so easy to misplace or forget.

When I find actual words for it, I’ll let you know.

Next up: The Day(s) We Got the Keys — the part when one house became two. Just like that.

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If you’re looking to deepen your creative journey, I invite you to explore Flourish, my paid subscriber series. Through video, podcasts, and written reflections, Flourish helps you align with your highest values and live a life fully your own. It’s a space for inspiration, practical guidance, and gentle encouragement toward your most meaningful creative life.

Today’s free post is about three of my favorite subjects - food, wine and Piemonte, Italy.

There is a corner of Northern Italy where hills roll like velvet, vineyards cling to the land as if they’ve always belonged, and meals are never rushed but savored over hours of conversation and laughter. Piemonte offers a beautiful way of living, expressed most vividly in its food and wine. Here, a table set with antipasti, handmade pasta, and cheeses both delicate and bold becomes a gathering of stories, memories, and deep-rooted traditions. And always, there is a glass—Dolcetto, Barbera, Nebbiolo—lifting the flavors of the land into something even more luminous.

To taste Piemonte is to taste harmony: the earth, the season, the hand of the maker, all converging in a single sip or bite.

A good deal of my life has been spent in the wine hills of Piemonte, Italy - and each time we go, we feel a pull we don’t elsewhere. There’s a gentleness and and a warmth to the people, many of whom have spent their lives working unyielding calciferous or marl and clay rich soil, coaxing vines that make some of the worlds finest wines. The nature is especially intense now, as late summer brings the rush of heat that causes large flushes of tomatoes and zucchini, eggplant and parsley, and ultimately the grapes, which start coming into full ripening the end of August, starting with whites and moving gradually to the reds and ultimately, the more heavily tanin reds, the ones that require cool September nights and balmy days to reach their full potential.

Piemonte, the word, means “Foot of the Mountains”, because here we’re surrounded by the Alps to the south and west. The views stretch from the Ligurian Apenine to the French and Swiss Alp ranges. When the haze of high summer has given way to cooler evening air, the mountains show themselves in every direction.

There is a certain slant of light in Northwestern Italy this time of year—a golden olive wash over vineyards, centuries-old stone villages tucked between folds of green and purple hills. As the season moves on, the air is scented with the last round of hay to be bailed, woodsmoke from a distant stove on a chilly evening, or the faint perfume of fermenting grapes in cellars everywhere in autumn. Here, food and wine are woven into the rhythm of life.

In the Piemonte region, three red grapes in particular tell the story of place and time: Dolcetto, Barbera, and Nebbiolo. Each carries the imprint of its landscape and the temperament of the people who tend it.

Dolcetto is the friend who makes you feel instantly at home—supple, warm, uncomplicated in the best possible way. Despite its name, which means little sweet one, Dolcetto is typically dry, with gentle tannins and a round, berry-rich generosity. It is a wine for everyday tables—pasta al ragù, roasted chicken with herbs, or a board of local cheeses shared between friends.

Barbera is the easy charmer—bright with acidity, deeply fruited, and effortlessly versatile. It has the gift of lifting whatever it’s paired with: mushroom risotto, grilled vegetables drizzled with olive oil, or even a slice of pizza pulled fresh from a wood oven. Barbera carries the joy of the moment in its glass—fresh, direct, and eager to please

.And then there is Nebbiolo, the quiet force. Named for nebbia, the mist that settles over the vineyards in autumn, Nebbiolo is a grape of patience and depth. In its pure form, it becomes Langhe Nebbiolo—youthful, fragrant with roses and cherries, approachable yet hinting at greater depths to come.

With time and a particular village’s signature, it transforms into Barbaresco—elegant, perfumed, with a structure like fine lace. And when given the grandest expression, it becomes Barolo—majestic, layered, with a power that demands both respect and time. These wines are companions for slow braised meats, truffle-laced pastas, or simply an evening where conversation stretches long into the night.

To taste these wines is to travel—each sip carrying the hills, the fog, the sunlight, and the patience of those who coax beauty from vine to barrel to bottle. They are not just beverages, but small, shimmering windows into the soul of Northern Italy.

But it’s not just wine.

A Feast Beyond Wine

Piemonte is a region that knows how to live beautifully at the table. While its wines — Nebbiolo, Barbera, Dolcetto — often take center stage, the food culture here is just as rich, layered, and deeply rooted in place. Every season brings its own feast, and every glass of wine is meant to be accompanied by food that elevates it.

The meal often begins with antipasti — small bites that showcase the generosity of the region. A slice of veal bathed in tuna and caper sauce (vitello tonnato), or peppers stuffed with anchovies, are perfect companions to a glass of Dolcetto d’Alba. Dolcetto’s freshness and soft tannins don’t overwhelm but instead highlight the delicate salt and creaminess of these starters.

Vitello Tonnato + Dolcetto

Dolcetto, with its easy charm and gentle tannins, was made for the table’s beginning. In Piemonte, where meals unfold like a story, Dolcetto often arrives with the first chapter: antipasti. Today, we’re imagining a plate of vitello tonnato—tender slices of veal in a silky, lemony, capered tuna sauce. At first it seems delicate, but it carries a quiet richness. Dolcetto’s notes of dark cherry and violet cut through the creamy sauce. The wine’s freshness keeps the palate awake, inviting another bite, another sip, as the conversation drifts and the meal takes root.

This is the beauty of Dolcetto: unpretentious. A companion rather than a star. It doesn’t ask for attention but deepens the experience of what’s on the plate, embodying Piemonte’s gift for balance—nothing wasted, nothing hurried.

From there, Piemonte opens itself through its pasta courses: delicate tajarin, strands of golden egg pasta made rich with yolks, or agnolotti del plin, tiny pinched parcels filled with meat or vegetables, often served simply with butter and sage. These pastas shine beside a lively Barbera d’Asti — its bright acidity cutting through richness, leaving the palate refreshed and ready for more.

Tajarin with Ragu + Barbera

If you’ve ever been to Piemonte in autumn, you’ll have tried the rich egg-yolk pasta that defines the region’s cuisine. Tajarin is a pasta made with almost absurd amounts of egg yolk — sometimes forty yolks for every kilo of flour. The result is a delicate, silken noodle, cut fine, yet full of substance. It doesn’t need much: a simple butter and sage sauce, or perhaps a slow-cooked ragù that clings to each strand.

And beside it you’ll usually find Barbera.

Barbera is the wine of daily life in Piemonte. It doesn’t demand ceremony. Ruby red, brimming with cherry and plum, sometimes a touch of spice, Barbera is perfect with tajarin because of its vibrant acidity: it lifts the richness of the pasta, refreshes the palate, and keeps you reaching for another bite, another sip.

This pairing is Piemonte’s everyday elegance. Nothing ostentatious, nothing rare — just the kind of everyday beauty that lives where food and wine are treated with love and respect. It’s a reminder that the heart of a place is often found not in its most expensive wines or elaborate dishes, but in what locals return to again and again.

The main courses reflect Piemonte’s hearty agricultural roots. Slow-cooked meats, game, and the iconic brasato al Barolo — beef braised in that noble wine — anchor the table, especially in autumn and winter. Here, nothing is more fitting than Nebbiolo itself. Whether as a youthful Langhe Nebbiolo with earthy notes or as a structured Barolo or Barbaresco, the grape’s tannic backbone and subtle perfume of roses and tar stand up to the intensity of the dish.

And then there are the truffles, Piemonte’s most elusive treasure. Shaved over pasta, risotto, or eggs, the white truffles of Alba call for the elegance of Barbaresco or Barolo. Silky structure and refined aromatics let the truffle’s perfume remain the star, while still offering depth and resonance.

Brasato al Barolo + Barolo

Brasato al Barolo is not just a dish, it’s a sumptuous specialty seared in the tradition of Piemonte kitchens in the Langhe. Beef, gently seared and then left to bathe overnight in Barolo, emerges tender enough to yield to a fork, its fibers infused with the wine’s essence. Carrots, onions, and herbs soften into the sauce, carrying both sweetness and warmth, until what remains is not simply meat, but a harmony of earth, vineyard, and time.

To pour a glass of Barolo alongside is to complete the circle. The wine, with its firm tannins and layers of violet, dried cherry, truffle, and spice, mirrors the dish’s depth while offering a structure that cuts through its richness. Each sip both refreshes the palate and deepens the experience, drawing out the subtle, smoky sweetness of the braise.

This is Piemonte at its most authentic: patient, generous, rooted in tradition. A meal where wine and food do not merely accompany each other, but become one voice—resonant, lingering, unforgettable.

Here’s the recipe:

For our roast I used Piedmontese organic veal. Ask your butcher for either veal or beef. The shoulder is best for this. You need two days to prepare it.

The recipe is for 6 people:

1.5 kg roast beef

4 carrots

2 large onions

4 sticks of celery

4 garlic cloves

4 bay leaves

4 sprigs of rosemary

2 cloves

8 juniper berries

1 cinnamon stick

salt/pepper

1 bottle of Barolo

Butter

flour

Raw sugar

Day 1

Briefly sear the roast beef on all sides. Set aside.

Roughly chop 2 carrots, 1 onion and 2 celery sticks. Finely chop 2 garlic cloves and add. Sauté the vegetables briefly.

Place the sautéed vegetables in a large saucepan. Place the roast on top.

Pour the bottle of Barolo over it.

Add 2 bay leaves, 2 sprigs of rosemary, 2 cloves and the cinnamon stick.

Put the lid on and leave to soak overnight. Turn the roast now and then.

Day 2

Remove the meat from the pot, remove the vegetables from the sauce and pass through a sieve. Set the wine aside.

Cut the remaining vegetables. Vegetables, add the 2 bay leaves and the rosemary to the wine.

Return the meat to the pot with the wine and vegetables and cook over medium heat for 2 hours.

Melt 2 tsp butter. Add 1 tsp flour and mix together.

Take out the meat and let it rest covered.

Pass the vegetables through the sieve and then bring to the boil with the wine and the butter/flour mixture (roux) and reduce by half.

Add 1-2 teaspoons natural sugar. Season with salt and pepper.

Slice the meat and place in the Barolo sauce to warm it up.

Serve with polenta and Barolo.

Desserts in Piemonte are delicate, never too sweet. In the summer, raspberries are floated in Brachetto DOCG, a floral light red with sweet notes and a heavenly bouquet. Think bunet, a chocolatey, amaretto-laced custard, or torta di nocciole, a rustic hazelnut cake. With these, a gently sparkling Moscato d’Asti is a perfect closing note — fresh, floral, and light, it pairs with sweetness without overpowering it.

And then — the cheeses. Piemonte is a paradise for cheese lovers. There are more individual cheese types in Piemonte than in all of France! From soft, luscious Robbiola to the tang of goat’s cheese in the Alpine valleys, to Murazzano DOP, a protected sheep’s milk cheese from the Langhe, the variety is astonishing. Pair Robbiola with a crisp Arneis, try Murazzano with a young Dolcetto, or match aged goat cheese with a structured Barolo for an unforgettable harmony.

From September 19 through 22nd, Bra — a lovely city in southern Piemonte — will again host Cheese, the biennial Slow Food festival dedicated entirely to the art of cheesemaking. It’s an event that draws artisans and lovers of cheese from around the world, a celebration of tradition, innovation, and above all, taste.

To eat in Piemonte is to understand its wines more deeply — every sip of Barolo, Barbaresco, or Barbera feels more complete when accompanied by food that was born in the same soil. Here, glass and plate are inseparable.

Both are an invitation to slow down, savor, and truly flourish.

In this week’s Flourish, I explore how beauty protects and sustains us, especially in hard times — and how noticing even the smallest fragment of it can change the way we experience our days.

If this speaks to you, I invite you to step inside Flourish, the more intimate companion to my free letters, where we go deeper into the ways beauty and creativity can steady us, heal us, and help us flourish.

This week in Flourish, we’ll explore what it means to reclaim beauty not as a luxury or distraction, but as an essential grounding force—especially in challenging times. You’ll be invited to reflect, to notice, and to feel your way back to what is quietly, deeply beautiful to you.

In the constant jackhammer of Western life, we’re expected to absorb a staggering amount. News cycles are full of information and disinformation that we’re supposed to somehow decipher until the next one comes on the heels of the last one. The endless scroll hums like background static, ignoring our burnout, and just when we think we've caught up, it shifts again. We’re overwhelmed, anxious, and even ashamed for not being somehow able to stay on top of it all.

Somewhere along the way, even beauty became another task to "get to." Another item on the list, tucked between replying to messages, scrolling social and staying informed. And in that endless and losing race, we simply pass by what once moved our heart. A golden light on a wall. A deep breath of pine and moss. The gentle curve of a bowl made by hand.

In a culture that never stops speaking, social media and digital devices become both lifeline and overload. We scroll through curated beauty, tragedies, headlines, insights, and opinions—all within seconds—until our nervous system can no longer tell what to absorb and what to release. This flood of input leaves us overstimulated and undernourished, severed from our own deeper knowing. Beauty, which requires stillness and receptivity, gets lost in the noise.

Here's a fact: We were never meant to keep up anything. It’s not how our brains are constructed.

Ten Minute Meditation Breaks

Ten minutes of daily meditation—real, slow, silent attention—can begin to shift our brain chemistry back towards mental health. In those few minutes, our bodies soften, our minds quiet, and something essential opens. Our parasympathetic system begins to lead. Breath steadies and the world expands inward. These small pauses are not escapes—they are desperately needed repairs to our central nervous system. They are how we return to emotional and mental balance.

In other words, giving our tired mind the chance to deeply rest for short periods of time and allowing ourselves to think of nothing has the potential to heal what toxic, late-stage capitalism and culture try to kill.

Our individuality.

When we release the pressure to absorb it all, we create space. We give permission for our senses to return to observation and inner knowing and awareness becomes activated. Our ideas around the meaning of beauty are given space to exist again.

Small actions are so meaningful, especially if they’re done with intention and consistency. We can start with a short daily meditation, but we don’t have to stop there.

Natural World Meditation

I’ve noticed when I turn off my focus on all the things, I feel immediately drawn to being outside. It’s really astounding how beautifully nature’s colors are intended to calm us immediately. If I focus on trees and plants, the collective beauty of it all, my breathing slows automatically. I breathe deeper, more consciously, improving my homeostasis and blood oxygen levels, and activating my vagus nerve and my parasympathetic nervous system.

The Vagus Nerve

This is a hidden thread that runs quietly through our bodies, a bridge between mind and body, often overlooked yet profoundly powerful: the vagus nerve. Its name, from the Latin vagus—“wandering”—is fitting. It winds its way from our brain to our breath, from our heart to our gut, and touches nearly every system that keeps us alive and whole. This is the mind-gut connection in real form. When we are under stress and duress, all of our organs are called to action by this nerve, spilling our cortisol and other hormones as a response. If we don’t react and allow ourselves to conciously relax after a stressful episode, the vagus nerve keeps informing our organs and gut to keep producing, and we end up in a cycle of fight or flight that doesn’t come to an end.

But if we know to pull out of stress, breathe deeply and consciously, and stretch our muscles, it signals to the vagus nerve to reset.

Which means when life pulls us into stress and anxiety, the vagus nerve offers rest, softness, safety. It is activated when we breathe deeply, when we hum, sing or chant, when we linger in silence or stretch gently. In these moments, heart rate slows, digestion steadies, and the body moves from fight or flight to calmness.

This is not just physiology. The vagus nerve opens the door to connection—with ourselves, with others, with the world around us. It creates the inner conditions where beauty can be noticed, and where creativity can rise without fear.

Vagus nerve activation is something yoga practitioners have known for thousands of years, whether they had a name for it or not.. By stretching the body gently and controlling our breathing, we can activate that part of our physical selves that merges with our emotional and mental health. No equipment and very little space is needed.

To care for the vagus nerve is to care for our capacity to flourish. It asks so little: a few quiet breaths, a song under your breath, a hand over your heart. And in return, it gives us a renewed ability to pause, to notice, and to let beauty do its healing work. It gives us a door to noticing beauty in the natural world.

Noticing beauty in the natural world is it is a vital practice for physical and mental wellness, and is an extremely effective meditation technique. When we pause to observe the curve of a leaf, the way light spills across a vineyard, or the rhythm of bird song, our nervous system responds with calm. These small acts of attention reorient us away from stress and toward presence. Our vagus nerve, which runs from our neck down through our In nature’s quiet details, we remember that life is not only about striving and survival, but also about wonder, renewal, and belonging. Beauty in the natural world offers us grounding—a way center ourselves in uncertain times.

A Simple Vagus Nerve Reset

Sit comfortably and place one hand over your chest, the other on your belly.

Inhale slowly through your nose to a count of four, letting your belly rise.

Exhale softly through your mouth to a count of six, feeling your body release tension.

Hum quietly as you exhale—just a low, gentle sound. The vibration soothes the vagus nerve.

Repeat for 3–5 breaths, noticing how your shoulders drop and your mind clears.

Enjoy your week and I hope you can take time to relax and enjoy all the beautiful things around you. Here’s a recording to take this subject a little further. I hope you enjoy it.

I’m so glad you’re here. In this free space, I share reflections, stories, and practices around creativity, craft, food, and the beauty of daily life between Germany’s Black Forest and northern Italy.

If you’d like to go deeper, there’s also Flourish—the more intimate sister to these free posts. It’s my paid series where I share essays, videos, podcasts, and guided practices that explore how to align with your highest values, nurture your mental and emotional well-being, and create a life—and spaces—that feel truly your own.

Consider this space a doorway, and Flourish the rooms inside—warmer, fuller, more private. You’re welcome to step in whenever you’re ready.

I believe creativity begins not with a plan, but with a pull.

Sometimes it’s a color that stops you in your tracks, a texture you can’t help but run your fingers across, or a material that simply feels alive in your hands.

Clay was that for me. The weight of it, the earthiness, the way it gives and resists at the same time—it spoke a language I instinctively understood. At first I didn’t know where it would lead, only that I felt at home in the conversation. Over time, that dialogue between hand and earth became a life’s work. It’s led me to trusting myself to fall in love with other materials: lime plaster and wash for walls (that have no plastics in them, allowing natural walls to breathe), natural linen and iron. I can say that learning about clay eventually led me to develop my aesthetic and interior design style in ways that might not have been possible without it.

One way to capture your aesthetic is through the use of mood or inspiration boards. I’ve taken to this practice largely because of my friend, interiors expert and journalist , who has shown me time and again how using boards will help bring my aesthetic out of the nebulous periferie of thought and into my prefrontal cortex, where I exercise planning and consideration. I find the more I look around, very conscious of what I’m looking at and for, the more I see, and the more I bring into focus for myself. By doing this, it helps me bridge from observer of beauty to creator of it. I’ve become much more sure of myself as a designer/creator through exercising my powers of observation and presence.

There’s nothing more beautiful to me than natural materials. Often, we see old spaces that have been renovated to the point that the imperfect magic has been stripped out of them completely. I’ve become more aware of this over the years since restoring old structures has become such an important part of what I do. Working with the historic preservation council here in Germany, I learned a great deal what they look for when deciding what an owner can and cannot do with a historic property. It’s challenging to work with the council but completely understandable that they are concerned about retaining as much of the original structure as possible when renovating a space. I’ve become much aware of the importance of both retaining integrity and making spaces work for 21st century living.

My own living room is a combination of natural wood, linen, wool, lime wash and iron - all materials that work well together in creating an atmosphere that’s warm and still contemporary.

Below is our barn renovation, where we took a section of our barn and created a new kitchen, dining/sitting area and bathroom. We used only local materials, insulated with wood fiber and had a blacksmith (a super talented one) create a kitchen for us out of black steel.

I fell in love with black steel as a material because it’s beautiful, and when used correctly it radiates warmth and style. I felt there was too much wood in this room already to go with a wood kitchen, so using this steel material was a great contrast. The back wall is lime plaster that was pigmented before it went on the wall in a mushroom color. The door and window frames, as well as shelving, it made out of the same black steel.

Each of us has these quiet invitations. Maybe it’s fabric that you can’t stop touching in a shop, or the play of sunlight on a piece of bleached wood wood, or a shade of green on your daily walk that conjures feelings of home. These aren’t coincidences. Rather, they are clues—cookie crumbs pointing you toward your own creative voice and aesthetic.

So much of creativity is simply paying attention.

That sounds simple; it’s anything but. In today’s Western reality, we live in a constant tsunami of notifications, deadlines, and distractions that drag us away from our primal senses. We fly past colors, surfaces, and moments without pausing long enough to feel their weight or hearing what they might be telling us. Creativity requires slowness, but slowness feels almost radical in a world that rewards frenetic speed and toxic productivity. To truly notice—to let a material or color stop us dead in our tracks— means we have to make a choice to step out of distraction and into presence.

I take so much of my inspiration from nature, and I am constantly working at simplifying our life and making use of materials I already have. The ethos is to live in harmony with the planet, preserve old architecture the best we can, and create spaces and products that add to people’s lives without hurting the environment.

Listen to what attracts you, notice what you can’t walk past, and give yourself permission to follow that thread. You don’t have to know what will come of it. You only have to begin.

Gentle Practice

Maybe today, let yourself notice: what material, color, or texture is calling to you? And what might happen if you let it guide you?

As you move through your day, choose one thing to give your full attention to—a color, a texture, a sound. Pause with it for a few moments. Notice how it makes you feel, what it reminds you of, what memories or sensations it stirs. Let this single act of paying attention be a small practice of creativity, a way of opening the door to what is already calling you.

Love and light,

Diana

But I’ve also learned that risk, like fire, needs to be tended carefully. Too much risk, taken too quickly and at the wrong time, and we burn out or shatter from anxiety and depression. Too little, and we grow stagnant, repeating the same patterns until we’re flat and disinterested - and paradoxically, also vulnerable to anxiety and depression The balance must be between daring and rest, between courage and care.

I’ve experienced both extremes.

When I take on projects that overwhelm me—renovating an old house with the wrong people and watching the roof collapse (yes, it happened), saying yes to too many commissions—my mind begins to spiral. Anxiety, and old and unwelcome friend, takes over, and instead of feeling expansive, I flail. On the other hand, when I avoid risk altogether, when I only do what feels safe, I crawl in to myself, contracting, and my creative spark dims. The work becomes mechanical, stripped of my particulare brand of vitality, and I feel controlled by deadlines and kiln temperature.

Mental health and creativity are not definitely separate worlds; they are threads in the same tapestry we weave every single day. Risk nourishes creativity; stability nourishes the mind. We need both - the leap and the landing. Getting the balance right is really the dance of living well.

For me, that balance has come to look something like daring to push out beyond my comfort zone but still respecting my outermost boundaries of safety. This was so hard to learn. I can’t even tell you the number of times I blasted through my own outer boundaries to find myself in the land of having no floor beneath my feet. I terrified myself and learned, the hard way, the meaning of limits as they apply to my psyche. I’ve had to learn an essential truth: respecting my own limits is at the heart of self-love.

I try to approach most things with moderation now. I’ll start a new piece of writing, but give myself permission to let it evolve slowly. I’ll experiment with a new glaze formula while still making the bowls I know will succeed. In other words, I try not to get so stuck into the world of doing that I completely forget about being.

Not forgetting about being is also at the heart of self-love.

I don’t mind taking risks, as long as those risks are in doses that stretch me without unraveling me .

Maybe the question isn’t “Am I brave enough to risk everything?” but rather “Am I brave enough to risk just enough to make my creativity bloom?”

That’s where it seems my creativity catches the wind—not in recklessness, and not in safety, but in the gentle, steady balance between the two. The yang of movement must be tempered by the yin of being perfectly (or imperfectly) still. But this is something I was taught over time by the grace of spirit, and it requires practice, just like throwing on the wheel or listening to the sound of my own breathing.

We’re given experiences in life for many reasons, but maybe one is so that we can learn exactly what our outer boundaries are. We can - and should - develop coping skills to keep us safe while we explore those parts of us that we can push beyond convention and social contracts.

In challenging times like the ones we’re in, prioritizing mental health is absolutely essential. We need to honor our requirement for rest, and set boundaries that protect our well-being. But prioritizing mental health doesn’t mean shutting down our creative selves or silencing that restless spark inside. Rather, it’s more about finding gentle and meaningful (to us) ways of staying in our creativity through small, manageable acts that nurture rather than drain us.

If thinking about being creative feels overwhelming, it’s really important to look at that and try to see what’s there. Maybe the type of creativity you’re thinking about is too much to start. Instead, maybe it starts with a walk, collecting leaves and flowers, looking at colors, observing what’s going on in nature. This can lead to a slow rooting process of growing creativity naturally, without having to take on the entire world or buy a whole pottery studio (not that I’ve ever done that…).

Creativity doesn’t have to be frenetic - it can be a balm, or a subtle light in the darkness. In fact, creativity borne of anxiety is actually running away from a fundamental truth - that we need to focus on our own sense of wellness before anything else. It’s in embracing both care and creation that we can to move forward with resilience, honoring our whole selves in the process.

A Reflective Moment

Take a moment to reflect on your own creative rhythm. Where in your life are you playing it too safe? And where might you be stretching yourself so far that your energy feels thin?

Write down one small, nourishing risk you could take this week—something that excites you without overwhelming you. It could be trying a new recipe, sketching for ten minutes, sending that email you’ve been putting off, or experimenting with a new material. Keep it small, but make it real.

Creativity thrives when we practice courage in little steps—brave enough to grow, grounded enough to stay whole and honor how far we’ve come.

A Short Breathing Exercise

Find a quiet place where you won’t be disturbed for a few minutes. Sit comfortably and close your eyes if you like.

Take a deep breath in through your nose, filling your lungs completely… hold for a moment… and slowly exhale through your mouth. Repeat this three times, feeling your body soften with each breath.

Now, bring to mind a small creative act that feels nourishing and manageable—a sketch, a small water color, a few words, kneading clay, or simply noticing colors around you. Picture yourself gently engaging with this creative spark, without pressure or expectation.

As you breathe, silently say to yourself: “I honor my need for rest, and I welcome my creative spirit.”

When you’re ready, open your eyes. Carry this balance of care and creativity with you as you move through your day.

We are inundated from every side with messaging that is intended to keep us reacting from a place of fear and scarcity rather than initiating from a place of love and curiosity.

This makes things feel incredibly heavy and overwhelming, and damn unnavigable, regardless where we are or what we’re trying to do. Even when we make every effort to shake it off, the weight of all that is happening now, beamed to the palm of our hand nanomoments later, becomes the stuff of dread and dopamine. We watch on as the world which we thought we had a grasp on proves itself to be a house of cards, and even though that’s what it always has been since the beginning of time itself, it is disorienting to feel the impact of our paradigms being blown up, one after the other.

We thought that if we worked hard and did the right things (whatever those things were), we’d benefit and find happiness. We thought happiness was a thing to strive for, and that when we finally found it, we’d stay in that head space, maybe, forever? Wasn’t that the idea? That college, work and country were the holy grid that would keep us afloat? That accumulating and marching up the ladder to financial success more would keep us satisfied?

That things would somehow go on the way they did for our parents and their friends, that not all of the work and striving wasn’t for nothing?

Life has gone slanted. The grid’s not holding anymore. And it’s up to us to find a new way through this new and unfamiliar situation.

I don’t know if I’m just obstinate, but I can’t stop believing there’s a way through everything that is going to lead to answers about how we need to live on this planet. The harder things get, the more it feels that way. That all of this is happening - the floods, the drought, the heat - to push us into understanding exactly how it is we have to change and how that life will look, and honestly, how beautiful it can be.

The more simple we make our lives by detaching from accumulating, the more emotionally and spiritually abundant our lives become. We Americans were brainwashed into believing it would be communism, but it turns out that good old-fashioned-American-style capitalism truly is the death of the planet. If we didn’t want to know it before, we surely can’t look away from it now unless we choose denial as a defense mechanism and lifestyle. If we don’t act on what we know, we’re part of the problem and will never, ever be part of the solution.

The planet is giving us all the messaging we need.

Let’s strip away the ego-driven social conventions of western life and instead focus on how to build soul-based, creative and individual lives, and gain distance and perspective from all the craziness. Society’s hyper focus on mediocrity and validation through sameness, boredom, repetitive behavior and not questioning the premise is something that we can break out from, if we have the gumption and intestinal fortitude (and self esteem) to do so. If we crave expansion and air and freedom, fear and contraction do not have a chance. Not in the long run.

There’s nothing more satisfying than stepping out of someone else’s idea of what life should be and into the existence you want for yourself, taking responsibility for the impact you make during your life here.

Michael and I did this for the first time in 2003 when we sold our home, quit work and bought a derelict farm in Piemonte, Italy that we renovated and ran as a bed and breakfast for ten years. It was a move full of fits-and-starts, a vertical learning curve, and a slow re-shuffling of life’s priorities to align with nature, which controlled everything we did.

Let me share with you what I experienced when we executed the big decision to unravel our very tied-up life.

Abject fear and panic. We did not have a plan B; we had to make our concept work. That drive pushed us forward hard to get to a point where we could actually see money coming in again. Those first years were hard and very painful.

But there were also things I learned during that time that only that specific terrifying experience could teach me.

I could push ahead despite being scared shitless, and could become good at winging it in a country I had never lived in before.

There is something very surreal but invigorating about not living life floating along on a steady salary and predictable future, but rather scraping by and making things work even when it felt like there wasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell that it would be ok.

I could stand in the shower and admit to myself that I felt like dying because the fear was so immediate, but I could also see that I could die some other day and in the meantime, give this crazy plan my best shot.

I learned the endless pursuit of pleasure is a losing, boring game for people with no curiosity. Nothing worthwhile is only pleasurable; pain in some measure is absolutely necessary. This has to do with how human dopamine receptors work; pain and hardship keep our dopamine levels in check so we don’t become addicted to those things that only make us feel good (for more on this breakthrough research, read the brilliant work of Dr. Anna Lembke, Stanford University, Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence).

It was because of hardship of learning that I eventually lost what scared me and became keenly aware of the small amount of time we’re actually here, and the preciousness of each day, and how much more I desperately wanted to learn.

At this point in life, moving forward, it’s my wish to create beauty using whatever natural materials I can, whether it be seeds or food or clay or paper or plaster or rooms or windows or houses. The rest of my days need to be spent in conjunction with what nature offers me, wallowing in it, being enchanted by it, giving back to it. I want a direct connection to all that is good and to turn my hand at those things and make them even better, if it’s possible.

I want to learn. I want to fail. I want to learn from my failures. And I want to be surrounded by people curious enough to feed my soul, so I can feed theirs as well.

I know how heavy things feel in this moment.

But we can change it. We really can.

Love,

Diana

I woke feeling I had no more stories to tell.

The pounding of the world’s pain in my ears stopped my imagination and even my desire to observe. All the things, so many, I could do nothing about. My americanness shoved my amygdala into frenetic action. Girl, get those bootstraps pulled up and write something. Make something. For God’s sake, do something. But I couldn’t. Nothing came out. It felt like writer’s block, or a creativity lull, which I know about, and can accept. But this felt different. Like paralysis. Behind the paralysis, so much to give voice to. I could hear the whispers, but I couldn’t reach what was being said.

Feet pounding on the needled path, the light splattering through the branches and cones. Air so fresh it felt like mint, dark patches of pine against wild acid green leaves of heaven-knows-what plant, everything supporting each other, playing off each other. Touching each big tree I past, saying a soft, “I love you” to each until tears rolled down my cheeks and I asked all of them at once,

“what would you have me know?”

The breeze rustling the birch trees’ leaves like rice falling from my hand, the massive pines holding themselves majestically. Kingfishers singing near the water’s edge.

“What would you have me know?” this time in a whisper, a prayer, my hands stretched out.

Trust and respect us. Don’t hurt us. Learn from us how to do good.

We take in your poison and release the gift of air for you to breathe. Killing us is killing yourself. It makes no sense. Learn to live with us. If you must kill us in order to survive, make sure that something good becomes of us having lived. Show respect for us having stood here for so long, making the world a better place.

“Yes” I answered, sitting in the moss, my hand stroking its softness. “Yes, I’ll try to do this as best I can.”

2/

It took me years to decode the things that make my life feel right, and almost all of them have to do with nature and living by its rules. When I am in touch with nature, my creative energy flows. When I cut myself off from nature, I am isolated and blocked.

There are a billion ways to live, and ultimately, we get to choose. Or not. The thing about staying in a situation that doesn’t align with our values is that it does not require our approval. We can be passive, indecisive, chronically unhappy, physically sick, mentally drained and deeply exhausted, never understanding exactly why. People live their whole lives this way without even realizing there are two parts to the equation:

How you live will determine how happy | healthy | creative | empathetic you are.

How you live will also determine how miserable | sick | angry | depressed | anxious | egocentric you are.

There is a conundrum. In order to propel ourselves forward into a late-stage capitalist definition of success, we leave large pieces of ourselves and the natural world behind. This is intentional - the system demands it of us. It impossible to stubbornly climb the path to today’s societal success and at the same time hope to live in harmony with nature. Every single part of our well-healed Western lives requires more resources than the earth can give us. There is no part of it that can be saved moving forward.

Everything has to change.

This planet cannot continue this way physically, emotionally, psychically, spiritually.

3/

We still have a responsibility to infuse our lives with meaning. Our life, this precious singular energetic plane we find ourselves on at this time, is fully open and loaded with possibility. I lose focus of this sometimes, because of - distraction and calamity brought to me every day by every screen I own.

I stop and ask myself the simple question, what makes life meaningful?

My answer is always love.

Love channeled as beauty. Which to me, is an extension of love. It’s what I felt when I touched the remarkably beautiful trees and asked them to help me.

Love channeled as sunlight and rain. As compost from our vegetable scraps that grow beautiful new vegetables the following year.

Love channeled as clay on the wheel spinning, my hands perfectly still on centered clay going hundreds of rotations a minute. Lifting it up, feeling it slide, creating a form where there was none before.

Love channeled as a home that has seen over 20 generations come and go and still holds us safe and warm.

Love channeled as friends and loved ones that have weathered the test of distance over so many years.

Love channeled as longing for peace and a healthy planet. Love channeled as beautiful food and clean water.

I firmly believe, now more than ever, that creativity is an act of rebellion against a corrupt and dangerous system built on taking it away from us. The noxious swirl of current events becomes more and more toxic with each passing moment. We’re getting folded up into a tech billionaire universe where actual humanity is an incidental - and unwanted - afterthought. Consumption of things this planet can no longer afford to create while working jobs we hate or are becoming obsolete for the privilege of buying them is the imperative.

Staking claim to our own individuality is becoming more and more challenging. But we have to do it. I read recently that IKEA sells a Billy bookshelf somewhere in the world every 5 seconds. That’s a piece of completely disposable fast furniture, destined to last maybe 10 years before it ends up with its glues and polymers and broken trees in a landfill. 10 years is optimistic.

Not buying fast furniture, fast food, fast clothing or fast anything is an act of civil resistance. We cannot love trees and love fast anything. They are morally mutually exlusive.

We have to choose.

Let’s choose for the trees.

For my FLOURISH paid subscribers, I will be back shortly. I needed a time out. The events of the world somehow took a toll on my ability to write and to envision and create. It’s coming back, though. This post, which took days and days to write, has helped me.

Thank you for reading and understanding.

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Days weave together in a warp of time and a weft of events. They stretch in this direction and that, stories bubbling to the surface. Small stories, the stuff of daily life, of how we go on, how we pull back, how we love and how we fear the next moment or day or week, until it’s in the past and we’re left to try and figure out where it all went. But if we look back we see the tapestry we created stretching behind us, acting as our magic carpet, bringing us to the next place we’re meant to go.

I’ve been back from my brief Paris trip for a long time now, and yet there are moments from those short days I am still processing, memories that come back full of color and life, and I feel I see things slightly differently than I did before I went.

My friend Dana and I met, on the morning of March 13th, at the metro stop to head into the city to see a textile art installation of Olga de Amaral’s work.

De Amaral is a Columbian fiber artist in her 90s, and is internationally known for her textile work. The installation was taking place at the (absolutely stunning) Cartier Foundation for Contemporary Art, and we both thought it might be an interesting exhibit to experience.

I don’t care much for hyperbole, especially in today’s climate, but it’s not exaggerating to say something shifted inside of me when we saw this show. First was the sheer immensity of it. It was a retrospective of de Amaral’s life’s work in different phases and materials. Then there was the diversity and use of fiber in such a way to create visual stories. It felt something like a journey through her life to be there. It was vast and intimate at the same time, and it brought me so much creative inspiration just to be in the same room as these pieces.

I don’t know what I was expecting, but I do know that having visited this exhibit has changed my approach to large scale ceramic and art work.

I have to add that such an installation in Paris brings out the most interesting people. It felt wonderful to be among others with such creative flair.

Reticently we left the exhibit, in search of a quick lunch - and Dana knew exactly where to go. But before we stopped at her favorite little Vietnamese place for some yummy bańh mi sandwiches, we discovered the beautiful pottery studio of Karen Swami, on Rue Monseur le Prince, in the 6th. There’s nothing that can entice me like looking at the work of another ceramicist, and Karen’s work is just beautiful.

We made it to Opla, a really lovely little banh mi shop and cafe on Rue Daguerre. admit I was a banh mi virgin but I full-on loved this Vietnamese sandwich, full of spice and zing. It won’t be my last. Especially on a fresh French baguette.

Our day took a turn towards the unexpected, and brought us to the beautiful Canal Saint-Martin, where we chatted, walked, people watched. This is an absolutely beautiful area of the tenth and eleventh arrondissements where I’d love to stay when we go back.

It started sprinkling, and we ended up, through beautiful chance, at one of Dana’s favorite hotels, the sumptuously beautiful Hotel Providence, ( 90 Rue René Boulanger) in the tenth, where we enjoyed a coffee and a hot chocolate and took deep dives into subjects that move us both in front of a roaring (real wood, ya’ll) fire in the lobby.

That evening, my last one in Paris, we went to a restaurant closer to home. Paulownia (15 Rue des Vignoles, 75020 Paris) is a hip, comfortable bistro with a mid-century modern vibe. Of the three dinners I enjoyed in Paris, all of which were wonderful, this was by far the best (and slightly pricier than the others).

We chose an excellent Pét-nat from the Loire Valley to celebrate our last evening together.

I started with a risotto which was actually made from celery, while Dana enjoyed a plate of muscles. I don’t know what the trick was, but the celery actually had the consistency of a creamy risotto and it was splendid.

Dinner for me was the vegan choice - mille feuille pastry filled with woodland mushrooms. Dana feasted on delicate turbot, perfectly cooked. The plates were beautifully presented with flowers and fresh greens.

For dessert, we both had sage ice cream presented in profiterole.

The food was incredible, and the service was warm and so heart-felt. This is the kind of restaurant I want to go back to again and again.

The next morning, we had breakfast at The Happy Goat and said our goodbyes.

Afterglow

I’ll never forget these precious days in Paris—on so many levels and for so many reasons. There’s a risk in visiting a place and meeting someone you’ve only known online—so much of our lives are spent in the digital realm. While we can get to know people through screens, there’s a dimension that only comes from seeing one another in person.

Her weeks in Paris, living there, trying it on as an actual home rather than a vacation, brought Dana a multitude of thoughts and realizations. I understood her feelings because I’ve experienced something similar—changing countries, trying to find my footing in new cultures, feeling both overwhelmed and grateful for the opportunity. That emotional place became a foundation for countless conversations—about how a location transforms when you live there, about bureaucracy, the weather, and how everything looks so different once the rose-colored glasses are swept away by the damp European wind. It’s about how we adapt to that new place, how we must find ourselves—our true selves—in order to stand and breathe.

Being with her brought back memories of my early days in Hamburg, when trying to master the language felt like an act of courage. Some days, I thought the relentless rain was meant to break me. But then, the sun would break through, and I’d realize there’s no more beautiful place than Europe in spring. And I’d keep walking.

To language school. To the butcher who couldn’t understand my German. To a friend over coffee, feeling human again. To my life.

Since Paris, I’ve reflected on so much—the bold use of color everywhere, the deep sense of beauty and grit. I was reminded of my roots as a New Yorker, that vibrant, creative city vibe. And I’ve felt a renewed urge to create art. I’ll keep working on that—because that’s who I am.

Thank you, Dana, for all of it.

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Thank you for being here. I am grateful for you.

The summer season is almost upon us andI’m behind on everything, from gardening to spring cleaning, but I’ve also been able to travel this spring; there are always two sides. Our trips to Portugal and Italy were inspiring and stunned me with new ideas and thoughts. I’ve come back to Germany full of ideas for art, ceramics, writing, and plotting the path ahead.

I’ve been pondering how we define success and what that does to our creative energy. Success is such a misnomer, because what is it, really? I look at people that get kicked around social media as being successful and I would want to be…none of them. A few weeks back, when the China tariffs were announced, every single knock-off shop in the country was on TikTok hawking their fake Birkins and Louis Vuitton handbags. And people lined up on Whatsapp to snap them up. By the thousands.

Are we stark raving mad?

How are these fantasies around what’s important created? Why do we buy into myths regarding success and happiness, only to find out it’s scam to separate you from whatever you might have in your wallet?

Are we really this unoriginal?

Extricating ourselves from the poison that is greed-driven, traumatically pernicious capitalism and allowing ourselves to focus on what is real and beautiful is hard, but if we’re ever to walk a path of individuality and dignity, we have to shake off consuming as a lifestyle.

In our paid subscriber program, Flourish, we’re talking about creative power. Flourish is a framework of alignment and creating from your highest self. Your paid subscription give you access to the program so far, plus all of my 90+ posts about lifestyle, European living, art and food. I’d love if you’d join us.

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