A Home of My Own
The Holistic Approach
As an interior designer, I have helped countless clients create the places where they live their lives - the places they call home. Through the process, they came to understand their physical and emotional needs and gained the confidence to express their own sense of style. From there, I set about finding the fabrics, furnishings, and artwork that brought their concept of home into a physical manifestation, but they were merely the props that allowed them to align with what matched their unique frequencies.
Knowing how you want to feel when you are in a space is the starting point of all good design and that criteria can change as ones life changes.
I have created several homes in my personal life, but a recent move abroad really made me consider what I needed and wanted at this phase of my story. I was creating a home of my own and needed to feel emotionally, physically, and spiritually nourished and taken care of. I also needed a sense of physical safety since I live alone. But perhaps most importantly, I knew that I needed my home to be lovely, warm, and inviting. In the course of a grueling search, I saw beautiful apartments in buildings that energetically didn’t feel right. I saw beautiful buildings that were broken up into illogically configured spaces. I saw apartments full of years of neglect, and I saw apartments that had absolutely no soul. I saw apartments that were filled with the discarded possessions of other people's lives, and I saw apartments with remnants of other people’s energetic residue. After two lengthy recon trips, I was just about to throw in the towel and accept that perhaps the universe was telling me to find a Plan B. And then, on the last day of one of those trips, a chance meeting (and perhaps some divine intervention) brought me right to the very doorstep I had been walking by the whole time.
I have always been very sensitive to energy, whether in people, objects, or spaces. I feel it in my physical body, and I have an auditory experience as well. When the energy is good, there is a pleasant hum, and I feel no maleficent physical sensation. But when a space is not aligned with my vibrational frequency, I experience it as an overwhelming buzz, and I find it hard to catch my breath. I can tell in a second if a place feels good or not by listening to how my physical body responds to it.
Admittedly, I expected another disappointment and hadn’t paid much attention to the address, which had been quickly scrawled on a piece of paper. When I arrived at my destination, I was pleasantly surprised to find myself in the courtyard of a building I had been admiring all week (two days earlier, my friend and I walked by, and he remarked, “Wouldn’t it be great if you lived in that building?” ). There was something drawing me…
You Are Home
Farmer's market haul in at home in Italy.
I knew this building was different as I ascended the first set of stairs. In these ancient buildings, the staircases are typically very dark, yet this one had large windows at each landing, keeping the space light-filled (distracting me from the fact that there are 42 steps to the front door!). Once I entered the apartment, I was immediately struck by the light and the positive energy coursing through the place. I wasn’t more than 6 steps in when I heard, “You are home,” and I knew I was. Every box, from the tub to the terrace, was checked, and I immediately said yes to making it my home before I left the living room. The funny thing is, I couldn’t tell you in great detail what the place looked like after I left, but I could tell you how it felt.
I wasn’t at all disappointed when I returned three months later and turned the key in the door to my new home. Even as it stood naked, waiting to be adorned, the energy was just as I had remembered, and I knew I had made the right decision to take it. I was so excited to get settled and start living in my new home that in a matter of days, I had the paintings hung, the dishes in the cupboards, and plants in pots on the terrace. I admit that it wasn’t an easy task. I cursed every large delivery that I had to carry up four flights of stairs by myself (no elevators in centuries-old buildings), the sleeper sectional that took me 5 hours to put together (with nothing more than stick drawings for directions), and every piece of furniture that required an Allen wrench (almost all in the flat pack world of European furnishings). When I wanted to cry from exhaustion and an aching back, I reminded myself that I was doing this to create a home for myself and Frankie, and that seemed to give me the energy I needed to complete what seemed like Herculean tasks.
Frankie makes friends everywhere she goes!
It’s Worth it in the End.
And in the end, I did it…my home was truly lovely and warm and inviting. But what really made it feel like “Kim’s home” was sharing it with others. At my first get-together with friends for Aperitivo, I suddenly felt overwhelmed by emotion. It hit me like a ton of bricks, all of the difficult decisions I had to make and the difficult things I had to endure to be standing in this place that was now filled with laughter and joy. It represented not only the physical changes I had made but also the seismic life ones. I had run the marathon, had my trial by fire, and climbed what seemed like endless mountains, and now it was time to reap the rewards.
I have made a new life, and now I have a new place called home to live it in.
Get Aligned in Your Space and Life
Contact Kim today to schedule a virtual or in-person consultation.
Read more about Kim’s services here.
Email kaeinteriors@gmail.com with any questions.
