Beauty Begets Beauty

I was raised in a home with plenty of money and the belief that money was inherently bad. It was A Thing. My dad was so concerned my mom married him for his money that he kept her on a strict budget, from which she scrimped and saved enough to buy a furniture set, while keeping home and family in order under the awareness of his suspicion and scrutiny.

Being the daughter of "her dad's rich, let's date her," while seeing the reality of frugality reaching to pathology was an interesting and difficult contradiction.

Fellow students despised me because my parents were rich. But they only knew my parents were rich because people said they were. I don't recall a time we ever acted rich or had rich things.

So by the time I got married, I had a skewed outlook on money as an evil thing from the perspective of having had lots but felt little. I've said many times I'd have traded all that money for real connection with my family.

This is what I brought to my marriage, to a man who had no sense of self worth, a fact well demonstrated over two decades, a fact I mourn still. Parents: beware the teachings you instill, for they can crush the trajectory of a life otherwise filled with potential.

We agreed when we had children that we wanted to raise them at home, homeschooled. I would take care of home and family, he would take care of finances.

We welcomed our second child on a wage of $9/hr. By child #4, take home pay was about $4k/mo.

I sewed cloth napkins, bought secondhand everything, denied my love of and need for beauty because practicality and survival were more important.

It wasn't until I was broken, sobbing in my living room to my family in spring of 2025 about how desperate I was to have a home that wasn't filthy and cluttered, that I realized how intertwined environment and creativity really are for me.

I genuinely wanted to die, and I've shared here before the contrast in A Tale of Two Kitchens and What Freedom Feels Like.

I walked away and left the clutter. In its place I curated beauty, and it is this I want to talk about today.

The human spirit is meant to seek beauty and joy, in that order I think. When we surround ourselves with sterility, with blandness, with cookie cutter objects in a cookie cutter house with cookie cutter clothing, we are starving our souls of the nourishment so necessary to thriving.

Conversely, when we seek beauty, when we make room for joy, our creativity flourishes and our lives become fuller.

It isn't "decadence," to want beautiful things. For some, it is the balm to a nervous system under constant siege.

It isn't "being a diva," to wish for things to be curated, cultivated, and in order. It is the human spirit demanding its seat at the table of your life.

Since moving to a home of beauty, of uncluttered simplicity, of a life in order and organized by the joy it brings (okay, Kondo, you were onto something here), my creativity has exploded.

I am writing poetry, fiction, non fiction, deep research, and blog posts, all endlessly flowing from a fount that seems limitless, a gift I embrace with gratitude after the knowledge of its scarcity.

I wake up and walk through an orderly home, with carefully selected objects that need no justification other than they light up my soul. A copper bowl for my Kitchenaid? A chintzy floral toaster? A fountain gurgling gleefully as a soundtrack to my life? Absolutely.

Our greatest woe may well be that we convinced ourselves we needed sterility when our souls were sobbing in back rooms crying out for beauty and joy.

What have you given up because it was "impractical" when it might well have been what your soul most needed?

Here's your Internet stranger permission to value yourself as much as you ought, to invest in things that "serve no purpose" but you can't stop longing for them anyway.

Life is too short to waste on practicality, and no one ever lies on their deathbed thinking, "I'm sure glad I saved money."