Twenty Years of BrocanteHome
How the Years Have Flown...
Well now. TWENTY YEARS. Good lord. What on earth have I been waffling on about for twenty whole years? I have raised a whole child in that time! I have moved house four times and lost my mum, and dealt with all manner of shenanigans and lost weight and put it on and lost it again, and wept into too many blankets and danced with silly joy around my living room at least once a week and throughout it all you and BrocanteHome have been here, despite me and my extra-ludicrous brand of restlessness taking us on a merry go round all the platforms online in a frankly daft, but somewhat committed and well-meant effort to find a place that felt like home for us all.
And now here we are. Older and more ourselves, with chin hair that needs plucking and wisdom hard won through graft and joy, sorrow and determination. Still here. Still standing. Still knowing we are but always works in beautiful progress and some years are better than others, because some are just plain old bonkers and no-one saw fit to warn us that life isn't a linear race to the top, but instead a meandering wander through ups and downs we can rarely predict.
Take for instance, this year at Chez Brocante. I stepped in to January positively abundant with ideas for the betterment of what is and the November celebration of what has been over the past two decades. But in the hush of the first month of the year I simply had no idea how very much would change in 2024. A new relationship, the end of my tenancy at Square Lane, the quiet but suddenly insidious awareness that doing what I have always done, would not inspire change but would in fact be further proof that doing the same thing and expecting different results is a special kind of madness, and perhaps most pertinently, that the effects of menopause would result in the kind of unveiling of who I really am, in a way it simply isn't possible to go on ignoring. And I have been consumed by it all. Utterly consumed. And in so many ways it is the undoing I have long needed and in other ways it feels scary and catastrophic and in yet more ways it all feels beautiful and possible and the stripping away of all the ways I have been pretending is so thoroughly liberating that some mornings I wake up staring at a new ceiling utterly astonished by my own gutsy willingness to step into a new life, and find myself almost paralysed by the oddest sort of joy. Joy I do not yet understand and feel a little overwhelmed by, because the deeper I examine myself: the more I allow Ben, who has twenty years experience diagnosing neurodivergence, to show me who I am, the closer I get to feeling both free and somewhat imprisoned by my own limitations. By the trauma I have absorbed and minimised so very, very often. By the me I have to some degree invented.
Twenty years though! Twenty years committed to the creation of a body of work I am so very proud of. Twenty years of routines and rituals and puttery treats. Twenty years of getting to know you, wherever you have followed me. Of meeting so many beautiful women online I now consider friends though we have never shared so much as a cup of tea. Twenty years of nurturing a space I adore, curating thoughts, and dreams and pretty things. Getting it right and getting it wrong, sometimes feeling so overwhelmed I haven't been able to switch the laptop on for weeks at a time, and at other times feeling like I am on fire with ideas and words I am desperate to commit to the screen. Twenty years of feeling like Brocantehome is home. That wherever I go, wherever I am, this lovely site is just a few clicks away. Certain that I am not talking into an abyss, but to friends who genuinely care for me and pop over to see how I am doing and to take whatever I am offering with grace and love. Friends who value my outlook on life and learn along with me, as year by year we garner courage to unfurl together.
What a blessing. What an absolute blessing. And oh what an honour.
So what's next? For sure there are aspects of Brocantehome that are tired and done now. The online world has changed so much. And there are parts of me no longer in alignment with how I have been doing things. Parts of the way I have been trying to run things that too often feel noisy and claustrophobic to me. And of course my life is different now. In the next twelve months I will be renovating a whole house, designing a way of life that supports above all else, physical and emotional wellbeing, and creating a home we may or may not find life long sanctuary in while we nurture our unmasked selves and try to decide who we need to be moving forward: so I have to be realistic about what that means for the way I work, what I want to put out into the world, the things I have to teach now, the work I truly want to one day leave behind.
My instinct says that as I have so often said, I mostly just want to write. Blogging was beautiful once, but often now it feels irrelevant in the wider scheme of social media and I want to work out what that means. All of us are overwhelmed by courses we sign up for but do not complete and I keep dipping in and out of Substack and honestly not really understanding where it fits within the Brocantesphere. But I'm not done yet. Far from it. I have so much to say, to share, to teach and I want to keep on inspiring you to be brave, to create sanctuary for heart and soul, to act for yourself! I want to keep encouraging you to design your life, to prioritise your wellbeing and above all else, to live as loudly and as proudly as you can, exactly as you are NOW.
I had planned all manner of celebration for Brocante this year, but it struck me a few weeks ago that over the next twelve months, I stand on the brink of a sort of coming of age. That it would be ok to defer the celebrations for the grandest of 21st birthday parties next year, while I edit the site and fine-tune my vision for the next twenty years. That for once I can and should give myself time to refine that vision for what I want Brocantehome, the all grown up Brocantehome to be, while still sharing all the highs and lows of becoming the all grown-up, most honest version of myself, instead of hurtling towards the next thing, one giddy, noisy idea after the other,
So all this to say I am still here. BrocanteHome is still here. And I'm so grateful that you continue to give me the grace I need to keep on re-inventing our lovely site. For that is, when all is said and done, what I believe matters above all else. That we are never, ever afraid to find our way back to ourselves, by way of constant betterment, undoing that which isn't working, daring to say I can't do that anymore and I desperately need to find a way of being that both sustains me and inspires me, daring to trim away the fat, the bloat, the draining and the unnecessary in every walk of life. In life, and love and to go back to the very beginning of Brocantehome, in vintage housekeeping. Knowing that above all else we are only ever truly at home when we have designed "home" in a way that never asks us to compromise our most authentic selves.
Thank you so much for still visiting me here at BrocanteHome. For celebrating her birthday with me with the bliss of a single violet creme. I will share more thoughts about what she will be in all our tomorrows as they unfold, but for now please know that I will always, always be grateful to each and every one of you for holding my hand, for cheering me on, and most of all for believing in me for twenty lovely years.
Let's raise a glass to old friends and new beginnings.