Your Home Sees You the Way No One Else Does
Home is where it’s safe to unmask — maybe for the first time
I’ve lived most of my life as a mirror for other people. I never learned to have my own stable, internal world — rather, I’m just now learning at 36 years old. It’s always been there— vivid, real and important, but not important enough to be the driving force in my life.
From the time I was a little kid, I learned to watch and mimic what other people said and did. I was sensitive and emotional, but I never seemed to be on the same page as anyone else — I was always reacting too much or not caring enough. So, to make friends, get good grades and win praise, I watched, studied, copied and did my best to blend in well enough not to be seen as different, yet stand out enough to be special.
I performed my way through life, existing for the pleasure of other people, because it meant I was safe. Being seen accurately, being understood — that didn’t matter as much as being seen the way I thought everyone wanted to see me. I wasn’t aware of any of this, for the record.
I chamelioned, adapted and became everyone’s friend, therapist, crutch or mentor, desperate to prove that I have value worth holding because no one had ever validated my own.
I’m not telling you a sob story. I’m telling you how it’s been most of my life. And it was no one’s fault. It’s incredibly rare to teach a child, especially a highly sensitive, aware and observant one, that their own inner life is real, when they see no coherent reflection of that outside of themselves. Now, I assume this is a pretty universal experience, actually, at least to some degree. I suspect his even more so for women or other groups who have to mask themselves to fit a pre-destined reality we didn’t ask for to begin with.
I was diagnosed with ADD when I was 4, and I’m suspicious now that I’m actually AuDHD, but without a formal diagnosis, I won’t claim that. I’ll just say I heavily identify with the symptoms and behaviors.
This potential label is an unmasking for me in and of itself. Learning that you were right all along, you are different, and you should have been supported and cared for the right way, through parenting, schooling, work, socially, etc is devastating because it’s soooo systemic. This can’t be pinned down to any one person doing something wrong that harmed me — or you, potentially. This society was built brick by brick. And, yes, it’s changing. But we’re still responsible for rolling up our sleeves to heal the past we once invalidated by fragmenting and morphing parts of ourselves into oblivion.
This week on Instagram, I took this bland, copy-paste mood board advertisement and transformed it step by step into something with actual soul.
If you’re a millennial, you’re likely grappling with some big themes in your life — work, love, friendship — it’s all in question as every system and institution that raised us is actively collapsing. We all logically knew it was coming (at least the neuro-spicies did), but to live through it in real time is disorienting at best and devastating at worst.
If you’re also going through something that’s rocking you to your very core, I see you, and I am you. Which leads me to my thesis:
Your home can be an intimately precise route for you to come home to yourself if you treat it as such.
Home is a Reflection of You
I didn’t “get into home styling” because I want to tell you what to buy or make your home look like the latest trend.I couldn’t stay away from it any longer because our homes are an extension of our souls. They’re sacred portals to our most intimate expression. They hold everything that we are, every day without wavering. When we treat them with reverence, care, and ritual, they become our very own sanctuary of healing, growth, expression and freedom.
I believe that with my whole heart.
I created my signature design method, The Foundry Formula, to be 7 steps, because there are 7 steps in the alchemical process. Alchemy is mostly known for turning metal into gold, but that’s just the mainstream presentation, fragmented and morphed to fit neatly in a box.
Alchemy was never about turning metal into gold, but rather breaking down what’s not true, inauthentic and hollow — burning it off until we’re left in our purest form, only to rebuild into the “gold” we’re meant to be. It’s the Phoenix, burning alive, turning to ash, reborn of those same ashes.
That’s the real process I walk you through when we construct a room together, I’ve just been hiding it behind socially acceptable terms like “How to Style Your Home Authentically,” and other such algorithm-approved titles. Isn’t that the irony? I’m still trying to mask just to be seen.
Today though, I want to teach you each step assuming that you, too, want to unmask who you are and see yourself clearly reflected — maybe for the first time. That’s what my home did for me, and why I created Alchemy of Home to begin with. So, let me drop the mask and hopefully help you drop yours a little too.
7 Steps to Alchemy of Home: The Foundry Formula Method
Step One: Clear Space — AKA Clear Stagnant or Negative Energy
I start every project by clearing the room completely. I’m a bit harsh about this, even though I understand that not everyone can afford to buy a whole new room in a weekend. Shit, I can’t afford that! But I don’t use money or “necessity” as an excuse not to be honest anymore. You’re an adult, you can make your own decisions based on what I suggest. I trust you to do that.
That said, I propose moving absolutely everything out of the room to sever the emotional ties that are keeping you in a loop. This decisive action really does clear the way for you see vividly what you actually, like, use and need because it’s all out of its usual pattern and placement. Rarely does it not require a rude awakening or a sharp cut to snap us out of our deeply rooted patterns, and that’s what this step does.
You need to make active decisions about your space and your life, and this is the first, bold and active step in that direction.
Step Two: Choose a Color Palette — AKA Define the Emotional Atmosphere of the Room
Color is its own language rich in symbolic, emotional and energetic meaning. We gravitate towards different colors at different times in our lives — I mean, even getting dressed every day, don’t you pick to wear what you’re in the mood for? I coach clients to define their color palette before making any other decisions because we need to establish parameters, boundaries and a language that feels native.
There’s a lot of unnecessary technical rhetoric out there about choosing the perfect colors, but I don’t subscribe to any of that. My focus is always about helping you choose the atmosphere of the room first. Technical application can be learned, and the emotional temperature of any room can be balanced and harmonized in a way that feels right to every person as an individual — that’s the important part.
Your color palette informs the space of its mood and emotional range, thus creating a unique energetic transmission. This must be intentional, or your home will continue to feel fragmented, and you will continue to feel misunderstood by it (and maybe yourself).
I want to add here though, I’m not trying to scare you. There’s no perfect color for you out there — what I mean to say is that the intentional choice made by you that feels right is what will ultimately make you feel seen and reflected in your home.
Steps 2-3: Define a color palette + select furniture
Step Three: Choose Your Furniture — AKA Build a Stable Foundation
Your furniture informs the room of its purpose. You must choose based on utility, preference and budget, but you must also define your own wants, needs and boundaries within the room. Everything from balance to placement can make a room feel purposeful, clear, stable, and grounded, or it can feel cluttered, chaotic, temporary and hodgepodge.
Creating a grounded, stable foundation has nothing to do with style or budget. It has to do with function, form and decisions made for a reason. I help you figure out what’s necessary, what’s clutter and what the room can do for you via your furniture selection and placement.
Step Four: Layer Texture — AKA Tap Into Your Physical Senses
Texture is where we get out of the emotional body and into the physical. Throws, curtains, rugs and the material everything else you choose is made from has a physical job to do. Some textures create a feeling of levity, movement and freedom. Others make us feel held, enveloped and warm. They ground us and connect us back to the physical when we get lost in our own minds, they move us when we feel frozen, and they soothe us when words can’t.
I coach to pick for pretty and for balance, sure. But I also want you to make choices that feel like your baby blanket, your teddy bear, summers running through the sprinkler, or winters warming by the fire. Your physical senses come online at this step, bringing into awareness what already exists in the room and adding based on what you need from there.
Steps 4-5: Layer texture + add lighting
Step Five: Choose Lighting AKA Light You Up From the Inside
Lighting is famously my favorite step of the process because as a high masker, lighting gives me the power to illuminate or shadow anything I want, exactly the way I want. If you’re a makeup girly, you know the power of a contour and highlight. This is what lighting does for your home, but at the soul level.
Warm pools of light mimic firelight, which is a safety signal for humans. I want the glow your home radiates to illuminate the sensations of warmth and safety within you. Especially now, when blue light screens dominate our eyes and nervous-systems, a rich, layered light-scape in your home will, factually, change your nervous system for the better.
I give clients very easy solutions for their lighting, and when they’re budgeting, I often recommend starting there first to get the most bang for your buck and impact to the room.
Step Six: Choose Art & Decor — AKA Put Your Personality on Full Display
This step is a close second favorite of mine because this is where a home becomes unequivocally un-copyable. Even the most “basic” of homes can come completely alive when you decide to stop hiding the things you’re drawn to.
I’ll make a bold claim with confidence: most people do not feel awe in their lives even once a year, let alone every day. We are served mass-produce decor and trend-driven art by an algorithm. You can one hundred percent think you genuinely like something enough to buy it just because the post where you saw it had 100k likes. But you know the truth: once you get those shiny objects in your home, they rarely feel as good as the rush of buying it did.
This step asks you to slow all the way down and just notice: what do you stare at a little longer than normal? What weird videos sneak into your algorithm that you secretly like? What kind of music do you listen to when no one else is around? These things are bright green flags, yet they seem totally beige because we’re so used to keeping them to ourselves.
In this step, I encourage you to be radically honest about what you like and dare to put it on full display in your house. This is where your home will feel like a magic mirror, reflecting you the way you see and experience yourself.
But there’s one more alchemical step.
Step Seven: Natural Elements — AKA Energy Tuning
Many are surprised by this step, because they assume the natural elements would be folded into texture, decor or even lighting. But I categorize the elements within their own right. Nature is probably the closest thing we can all agree on that feels like some kind of higher power, because we all feel soooo deeply connected to it in different ways.
Some of you live and die for a dreamy sunset. Some of you neeeeed to go to the beach at least three times a year. Some of you (me) long to run away and live in the forest like a bog witch.
So this step is about fine-tuning the energy in your home to your exact desired frequency. That’s not a houseplant on the windowsill, that’s a fellow traveler, growing side beside you in this home.
Steps 6-7: Add art & decor + natural elements
Return to Sender
If it’s not clear yet (although I’m sure it is) Alchemy of Home wants you to know and believe that what you consciously put into your home is what will be reflected back to you. Isn’t that how life works, anyway?
It’s time for us to stop missing the forest for the trees, and see that what we do inside our very homes has a massive ripple effect into the entire world. If every choice you made was guided by choosing love and authenticity, would you agree that your life would be better — to a small degree at least? And what if someone out there is waiting for you to be brave so they can see that they can do this too? (Hint: it’s little you that needs to see you drop the mask, once and for all)
I know that freeing yourself is the only thing you can do, but I also know that by freeing yourself, you give others permission to do the same.
I’d love to help you on this alchemical transformation so you can translate your inner world to your outer space. I’m working putting together a revamped, holistic self-paced home styling course paired with live support calls for members, where we get on video together to answer your questions, solve your styling problems holistically and get you past your creative blocks and into the home that reflects you completely — mask off.
There’s more to come about that, so if you’d like to keep up with the launch, subscribe to our weekly newsletter, The Alchemy Archive. You’ll be the first to know when the Foundry Formula relaunches into something fuller, richer and more supportive than ever.
In the meantime, I hope something you read is useful and that you feel a little bit more seen here.
