You Always Gotta Make Things Deep

I've always been a person who feels things deeply.

Always.

The words people said to me. The way someone made me feel. How they viewed me, and, in turn, how I started viewing myself. The little things that probably seemed insignificant to everyone else but somehow stayed with me.

I journaled a lot.

Not necessarily because I thought I was a writer. I just needed somewhere to put things.

Sometimes I'd write exactly how I was feeling in real time. Sometimes I'd write little stories. Sometimes poetry would come out of me, even though I wasn't always convinced it was any good.

But they were my words.

They were the best words I had at the time.

I remember people joking with me:

"Okay, Kathy. You know you always gotta make things deep."

And depending on the tone, I knew whether that was a 'compliment' or an insult. 😂

But the truth is, I couldn't always help it.

Sometimes it was easier for me to write something than to say it.

I could sit with my thoughts. Rearrange them. Find the right words. Take out the parts that didn't 'make sense'. Try again.

Because what made perfect sense inside my head didn't always come out of my mouth that way.

Writing gave me time.

It gave me somewhere to put the things I couldn't quite explain out loud.

And then there were scents.

I've always loved them.

Candles. Perfume. Laundry detergent. Incense. Anything that made a space or even a person smell good.

But my fascination with scent has always been a little deeper than simply enjoying a good smell.

I love how scent lingers.

How someone can leave a room and somehow still be there because their perfume remains in the air.

How you can walk into a space and immediately know someone was just there.

How one smell can transport you somewhere without asking permission.

But, of course, that works both ways.

There are scents I absolutely despise because they remind me of things I'd rather not remember.

That's the strange thing about memory.

Sometimes you choose to remember.

Sometimes your senses choose for you.

Eventually, I started wondering what would happen if I combined the two things that had always been outlets for me:

words and scent.

And that's where the idea of making candles began.

I decided I was going to learn how to make them.

So I researched.

And researched.

And researched some more.

Day and night.

I spent money on candle supplies like I had absolutely lost my mind. 😂

Wicks. Fragrance oils. Jars. Wax. More fragrance oils. More jars.

And very quickly, I learned that candle making is an expensive way to discover that you don't know what you're doing.

I've heard people say, "Don't buy all of that yet. Start with one fragrance. Test one thing at a time."

And they were probably right.

But in my head, it wasn't really about that.

I had something I wanted to create.

Something I could see in my head.

And if it was going to cost me X amount of dollars to figure out how to get it there, I was willing to figure it out.

Thankfully, I have incredible parents who supported me through a lot of this.

They didn't seem to mind me turning my bedroom and their kitchen into a science lab as long as I cleaned everything up when I was finished. 😂

So I tested.

And tested.

And tested.

I cried.

I got better.

I tested some more.

Sometimes the results changed and I had no idea why.

Sometimes something I thought was going to work absolutely did not.

But eventually, I made a candle.

Was it perfect?

No.

My measurements were slightly off. My math skills have never exactly been something to brag about.

But I made something.

I created something.

And that feeling mattered more than I realized at the time.

Because around that same period, my life had changed.

I quit my job.

And suddenly, the thing that had given me so much creative energy had to take a back seat while I searched for another one.

Day after day of applying.

Waiting.

Not hearing back.

Applying again.

Waiting again.

My light started to dim.

And eventually, I stopped writing.

I stopped creating.

I felt worthless.

There I was, a grown woman at home without a job, wondering what exactly I was doing with myself.

A creative person who couldn't really afford to create at the capacity she wanted to.

And honestly?

It got heavy.

Depression settled in.

But eventually, I picked it back up.

Not because I suddenly had everything figured out.

I just needed something that wasn't another job application.

Something that reminded me I was still me.

So I started creating again.

I wrote again.

I made candles again.

I worked harder.

And slowly, that creative part of me started coming back.

Eventually, I outgrew my bedroom.

Then I outgrew my parents' kitchen.

And I moved into a space of my own.

Looking back, there's something almost poetic about that.

I started creating in a bedroom and a kitchen while I was trying to figure out what the hell I was doing with my life.

And eventually, I needed more room.

That's part of what Zens and Echoes has always been about.

Making room.

Room for creativity.

Room for memories.

Room for feelings.

Room for the things we don't always know how to say.

Because the more I thought about my own experiences, the more I started thinking about everyone else's.

My friends.

The stories people have told me.

The things I've witnessed.

The mistakes we've made.

The people we've loved.

The people we've lost.

The moments we've laughed about years later.

The moments we wish we could forget.

The versions of ourselves we outgrew.

The versions we secretly miss.

All of these things become chapters of our lives.

And I started to believe that maybe those chapters deserve somewhere to go.

Not every experience needs to be shared publicly.

Not every memory needs an audience.

Some things are just ours.

But sometimes there's something powerful about realizing:

"Oh. You went through that too?"

Or:

"I thought I was the only one."

Or even just:

"I don't know exactly what you're talking about, but somehow I understand."

That's the kind of connection I'm interested in.

That's the community I'm trying to build.

Not a community of people who all have the same lives.

Not even necessarily people who have the same interests.

Just people who have lived.

People who have stories.

People who have felt things.

People who have had chapters they didn't know what to do with.

And maybe that's why candles made so much sense to me.

Because a scent can hold a memory. Even wax holds a memory.

A memory can hold a feeling.

A feeling can become a story.

And a story can become something you create.

For me, that first candle was a little more than wax, fragrance, and a slightly questionable measurement.

It was proof that I could still make something.

I could still create.

I could still take everything swirling around in my head and turn it into something I could actually hold.

That candle became Sweet Escape.

In a way, that's what Zens and Echoes became too.

A place for all the things that linger.

The feelings.

The memories.

The words.

The moments.

The chapters.

The echoes.

I'm still figuring out exactly what this becomes.

Some days I feel like I'm screaming about it from the mountaintops and nobody is listening. 😂

But I'm learning that building something meaningful isn't about screaming louder.

Maybe it's about telling the story honestly enough that someone, somewhere, hears it and thinks:

"Wait. Me too."

So if you're here, reading this

Maybe you have a chapter too.

And I think it deserves somewhere to go.