🌙 A Porch Light Essay
The Quiet Reclamation of Making a Home
For most people, decorating a home may begin with questions about color.
What shade should the walls be? Which curtains belong in the window? Does this rug work with the couch? Should the room feel modern, rustic, traditional, or bohemian?
When someone recently asked me to describe my decorating style, my first answer was simple enough.
Soulful boho with a quiet, zen heart.
I love soft blues, natural wood, warm lantern light, plants, woven textures, meaningful objects, and rooms that feel collected rather than arranged. I want a home to feel peaceful and welcoming. I want people to walk inside, loosen their shoulders, and understand that they do not have to explain why they are tired before they are offered a place to sit.
That is the style I am drawn to.
But the longer I thought about the question, the more I realized my answer had very little to do with decorating.
Perhaps my style is freedom.
For most of my life, I was never truly allowed to decorate the places where I lived.
I could occupy a room. I could clean it, care for it, and keep everything running inside it. I could carry the weight of a household and tend to the needs of the people who called it home.
But I could not leave much evidence of myself there.
My preferences were not invited into the room. My comfort was not part of the design. I learned that choosing the wrong object, changing something without permission, or simply wanting a space to feel different could become a problem.
So I became careful.
I learned how to live inside rooms without asking them to reflect me.
There is a particular kind of loneliness in that.
It is difficult to explain what it feels like to live somewhere while knowing that the space does not belong to you in any meaningful way. Your clothes may hang in the closet. Your dishes may sit in the cabinets. Your body may sleep there every night.
Still, nothing in the room says, She was considered when this place was made.
There are people who disappear from homes long before they ever leave them.
Sometimes the disappearance is so gradual that no one notices—not even the person fading.
You stop suggesting colors.
You stop pointing out the picture you love.
You stop imagining what a quiet corner might look like if you were free to create one.
Eventually, you convince yourself that you do not care.
But I did care.
Some quiet part of me continued gathering images of the homes I might have chosen. Soft fabric. Blue curtains. Plants leaning toward the light. Wooden shelves holding old books and small treasures. Lanterns glowing warmly in the evening. Rooms with enough stillness in them to breathe.
I kept those imagined rooms somewhere inside me.
Then I moved in with Bridger.
For the first time, I was not only allowed to have preferences; I was asked what they were.
What do you like?
What color do you want?
How should this room feel?
Those may sound like ordinary questions. To someone who has always been free to answer them, perhaps they are.
To me, they were enormous.
There is healing in being asked what you want when you have spent years learning not to want anything out loud.
At first, even freedom can feel unfamiliar.
You hesitate before making small choices. You wonder whether you are taking up too much space. You wait for someone to object, change their mind, or tell you that your idea was foolish.
Sometimes permission has to reach the body slowly.
It arrives through repetition.
You choose the blue shower curtain, and no one becomes angry.
You place the plant where the sunlight reaches it, and no one moves it.
You hang something on the wall simply because it brings you peace, and the world does not end.
The object remains.
So do you.
Recently, I began creating a zen feeling in our bathroom. I chose shades of blue, natural textures, and pieces that made the room feel peaceful.
To someone else, it may look like a decorating project.
To me, it is proof.
The curtain is proof that I was allowed to choose.
The colors are proof that my comfort mattered.
Every object I place with care says something I once struggled to believe:
I live here.
I belong here.
I am allowed to make this place feel like home.
That is why my decorating style does not fit neatly into a category.
Yes, it is boho.
Yes, it is zen.
It is earthy, soft, a little magical, and filled with objects that carry meaning.
But beneath all of that, it is reclamation.
I am reclaiming the right to be visible in my own surroundings.
I am learning that creating beauty is not frivolous. Comfort is not something I have to earn. A peaceful room is not an unreasonable request. My preferences do not become burdens simply because they belong to me.
And Bridger’s role in this matters.
He did not give me a right that should never have been taken from me. But he helped create a home where that right was welcomed.
He did not merely make space for my belongings.
He made space for me.
There is love in that kind of welcome.
Not the loud kind of love that announces itself for everyone to see, but the steady kind that says:
Your presence does not disrupt this home.
Your choices will not be punished here.
You do not have to disappear in order to be loved.
That may be one of the greatest gifts another person can offer.
Sometimes healing does not arrive as a grand revelation. Sometimes it looks like standing in a store aisle and choosing the curtain you actually want.
Sometimes freedom is a lamp turned on at dusk.
A blanket draped over the chair.
A feather placed gently in a wooden bowl.
A plant growing in the corner because you decided the room needed something alive.
These choices may appear small, but small choices are often how a person returns to herself.
One room at a time.
One object at a time.
One quiet declaration after another.
I used to think home was simply the place where you lived.
Now I believe home is the place where your existence is allowed to leave a mark.
It is where your laughter remains in the walls. Where your favorite colors are not treated as an inconvenience. Where the objects around you tell the truth about who you are. Where you do not have to make yourself smaller to keep the peace.
I am still learning how to do this.
I am still learning not to ask permission for every preference.
I am still discovering what I like, what comforts me, and what I want the rooms around me to say.
But perhaps that is the beauty of it.
I am not merely decorating a home.
I am meeting the woman who was never allowed to.
I am asking her what colors she loves.
I am handing her the hammer and letting her choose where the picture belongs.
I am watching her arrange the room slowly, carefully, almost reverently.
And each time she steps back to look at what she has made, I hope she sees more than a beautiful space.
I hope she sees herself.
Perhaps my decorating style is soulful boho with a quiet, zen heart.
Or perhaps it is something simpler.
Perhaps it is freedom.
Before You Go…
Take a moment to look around the place you call home.
Is there something in the room that feels unmistakably like you?
A color you chose. A photograph you placed there. A blanket, candle, plant, book, or small treasure that makes the space feel softer when you see it.
And if there is not yet much evidence of you there, begin gently.
What is one small choice you could make without asking permission?
Perhaps home does not become ours all at once.
Perhaps it happens each time we choose what brings us peace, place it somewhere visible, and allow it to remain.
Until our next visit…
Take gentle care of your heart.
I’ll leave the porch light on.
With love,
Casey
Voice With A Purpose
Keep the Porch Light On Between Visits
If these words felt like home…
I’d be honored to leave an occasional letter waiting in your inbox.
Sometimes it’s a new essay.
Sometimes it’s a blessing.
Sometimes it’s simply a reminder that there is still room for you here.
No noise.
No pressure.
Just occasional words waiting for you whenever you need them.
I’ll leave a light on for you between visits.
