The Ordinary Alchemy of Love & Beauty

on motherhood, memory, and the rituals that make life shimmer

Lately, I’ve been sitting with the essence of love — not just the sweeping, storybook kind, but the quiet, undramatic kind. The love that lingers in the corners of the room, in the way light moves through linen, or in the soft sigh of a baby resting against your chest.

I didn’t grow up surrounded by tenderness. Affection was rare, like sunlight breaking through heavy clouds. And perhaps that’s why I became a mother not once, but four times — not to receive love, but to give it. To pour it, unmeasured and whole, into little hands and soft cheeks. To understand its shape through the act of offering it freely.

Still, I’ve learned that even the deepest well of love must be held within strong, sacred boundaries. Without them, I gave too much to those who didn’t know how to honour it. And in that unraveling, I realised something precious: love, when given without reverence, becomes untethered. But when rooted in beauty — in intentional moments, in soulful connection — it becomes a quiet revolution.

Long before we began measuring worth in output or pace, love and beauty were seen as sacred forces — not luxuries, but life’s very essence. Beauty wasn’t decoration; it was devotion. It was in the curve of a ceramic bowl shaped by hand, the scent of herbs scattered over bathing waters, the soft murmur of lullabies passed down through generations. Love, too, was not just a feeling, but a way of being — a form of daily grace, expressed through care, presence, and intimacy. Today, beauty arrived in the form of my friend Shay’s gentle hands, as she gifted me an Ayurvedic massage while I breastfed my baby at home — a moment woven with quiet care and deep love.

The Ancient Greeks spoke of kalokagathia, the unity of beauty and goodness. In their eyes, to live beautifully was to live ethically, with harmony between soul and form. In medieval times, love was a spiritual path, a sacred longing — not always romantic, but always redemptive. Even in folk tradition, love was embedded in labour — the weaving of cloth, the tending of gardens, the making of meals — acts of devotion shaped by the hands of women whose names are now forgotten, but whose love was written into everything they touched.

Today, I try to live that way. To find beauty in what’s real and reachable. Not the airbrushed, polished kind, but the kind that breathes — the kind that grows between the cracks, that whispers, that waits.

Beauty for me this past week has looked like this: washing dishes by candlelight, with a handmade soap that smells like rosemary and lemon verbena. Folding small clothes in silence while the house sleeps. Stirring porridge with rose hips and honey. Warm hot chocolates with a dash of cayenne to greet my children as they rise. Embroidering bunnies in the evenings for our Easter/Autumn Nature Table. It’s in the rituals that root me. The slow, loving things that no one else sees.

But not every moment shimmers. Some days are foggy with fatigue (most). Some hours stretch too long. Motherhood is a landscape of contradictions — breathtaking and bone-tiring, sacred and mundane. There are mornings when I crave solitude more than touch. Evenings when the mess feels louder than the love. But it’s in these very moments that I return to beauty — not as a fix, but as a way through.

As we prepare to sell our home, I find myself purging the unnecessary and returning to what holds meaning. I feel an ache to create beauty not through accumulation, but through intention. A room feels transformed not by how much is in it, but by how much of it speaks to the soul.

My aesthetic is less about design and more about feeling. It’s a quiet blend of English countryside tenderness, Parisian poise, and a hint of Nancy Meyers comfort. I want rooms that feel lived in, loved in — that smell of beeswax and bergamot, that echo laughter and the soft padding of little feet.

Turning 40 has brought a clarity I didn’t expect. A feeling of fullness, not in having it all figured out, but in knowing what matters. My youngest is still a babe in arms; my eldest is becoming. I live in the midst of it all — nappies and novels, lullabies and long talks, art strewn across the floor and big feelings in small bodies.

My children are constant reminders that beauty isn’t something to chase — it’s something to witness. It’s in the crooked smile of a toddler, the quiet concentration of a drawing, the chaos of a room filled with laughter and laundry and life. It’s sharing home baked goods with my friend Rose tomorrow and her girls. There is beauty to be shared. To be witnessed. To be discovered everywhere.

I often return to this: love and beauty are not goals, but gestures. They are found in how we stir the soup, how we touch a shoulder, how we look up and notice the sky. They are not about perfection, but about presence.

So I’m learning, slowly, to romance the ordinary. To see the sacred in the simple. To write poetry with my days, even when the ink runs dry.

There’s a kind of alchemy that happens when love meets beauty in the small moments — the tender ones, the hard ones, the half-asleep ones. This is where real life happens. And this is where I want to live.

And yet, if I’m being honest, the most challenging place for me to consistently find beauty is within my marriage. It sounds almost contradictory, doesn’t it? That the very place where love and romance are meant to collide could also be the place where beauty sometimes feels just out of reach.

After nearly fifteen years together, our relationship has weathered many seasons — of growth, of tension, of deep connection, and quiet disconnection. My husband is a wonderful man, grounded and kind, and we share the same dreams for our life together. But we experience the world through different lenses. Where I’m often caught in the poetry and symbolism of things, he walks a path that’s more measured, more cerebral. Meeting in the middle isn’t always easy.

Loving someone not for who you wish them to be, but for who they are becoming — that, I’ve learned, is its own form of devotion. It requires a commitment to witnessing their unfolding, and to honouring the shared history that has shaped you both. There is a quiet kind of beauty in that — one that doesn’t shout, but hums beneath the surface if you're willing to listen for it.

I believe that so many people give up on each other too soon, not because love isn’t there, but because the beauty hasn’t yet been recognised. Or perhaps it’s been buried under the noise of daily life and the pressure of unmet expectations. Sometimes, you have to dig deep — really deep — to find it. And I suppose that’s what makes it all the more precious when you do.

So perhaps this is the quiet lesson love and beauty continue to teach me: that they are not always loud or obvious, not always wrapped in the ideal we imagined. Sometimes they shimmer through the cracks — in the laughter of our children, in the light across a freshly painted wall, in the hands of a friend offering care, or even in the hard-won tenderness of a long-held relationship. To live a beautiful life is not to seek perfection, but to stay open to wonder — to keep returning to love, even when it asks something more of us. And in doing so, we begin to see that beauty is not something we find — it’s something we learn to recognise.