Sometimes, the more beautiful something is, the harder it becomes to use.

The candle kept pristine because it cost too much to burn. The notebook waiting for something important enough to write on its first page. The expensive cream rationed past the point of pleasure. We save things for later, for better, for an occasion somehow more deserving than the life we are already living.

We like the tube with its middle crushed in. The candle burned low enough to leave wax along the glass. The bottle packed for every trip and turned upside down for the last few drops. At some point, it becomes part of somebody's life.

My great-grandmother on my paternal side was a known healer. I've always been deeply intuitive myself, though it showed itself differently in me. Beauty became the place where that intuition made sense to me. Makeup gave it one language. Aromatherapy opened another. Formulation taught me how to make something out of an instinct.

I started with skincare, but I never thought its value ended with what it could do for skin. How something feels to use, and how it makes you feel, mattered just as much.

From there, the definition of beauty got a little bigger. Fragrance, in whatever form makes sense at the time. A journal because beauty has always given us something to think about. Whatever we make, it's meant to be lived with.