Moving to a new state after twenty-two years firmly established in a tight-knit community of friends and family is eye-opening. While I’m deeply grateful to be studying what I love at a new school and embarking on stimulating adventures, there are a few attendant challenges. I sometimes feel a tug of homesickness for my family, and for the comfort of the known. Oddly enough, one of the most effective ways I’ve found so far of fending off these feelings has been to stick stubbornly and exactingly to the small rituals of beauty I built at home. I’m still not sure why something as simple as polishing my nails or writing a letter by hand can so reliably make such a positive change to my frame of mind, but it never fails.

Perhaps it’s because, in a new place, surrounded by novel influences and pressures, the carefully drawn edges of my sense of self grow blurred and fragmented, and these small, familiar routines restore an air of familiarity to my life. Perhaps by being an almost militant femme in my personal space is my own way of pushing back against the mundane daily difficulties that can seem overwhelming. Or perhaps I am just restored by the beauty of these small things and moments that make day-to-day life a celebration instead of an inconvenience.

In any case, I am grateful. Grateful for the few, precious trinkets that I was able to bring from home as talismans in this new world—for the tiny, beaded ballet slippers my aunt gave me as a child, the carved wooden type block with my initial “M” standing out boldly from its square base, and the large crystal wineglasses that were a birthday gift years ago from a dear friend. These things, scattered around my plain little studio provide touchstones in the moments when I feel disconnected, adrift in a sea of possibilities that are both tantalizing and confusing.

Likewise, the time I snatch greedily from the day for my own private rituals of self reiterate an intimate, constant reminder of who I am. The moments I take in the morning arranging my clothes, my jewelry, my hair—these moments sustain me for the rest of the day. I feel cared for, content in solitude or company, while the scent of my perfume floats in and out of my consciousness, an invisible armor of sensuality. By attending to these details, small and frivolous as they may be, I am thus able to create a more gracious reality for myself to inhabit, a refuge from all that would ail me. And by doing so, I make this new, wild, strange place my beautiful home.

Growing up, and the attendant maturity that supposedly comes with it, are often far more mundane experiences than I had expected. In high school and college, I had a lot of romantic ideas about bettering myself, creating a version of me that was cooler, cuter, funnier, or just more popular. If I made friends with one of the willowy indie girls on campus, I started shopping at Anthropologie and tried (unsuccessfully) to enjoy folk music. When I spent time with the edgier art kids, I started looking for sleek leather moto jackets and made some very bad, angst-filled mixed media paintings. In my short lifespan, I have tried on dozens of identities based on my admiration for a lot of really interesting people that were, unfortunately, not me.

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Once upon a time, when I was but a tiny home-schooled darling, surrounded by the harried, tight-lipped matrons that stood in as advisers for my first forays into femininity, I was decidedly unsure about my place as a woman in this world. On the one hand, I learned much from my mother, who is and always has been an indefatigable romantic. She introduced me early to fine perfume, glossy magazines, and silky dresses, and I adored every moment of those first peeks into what seemed a mysterious, grownup world. Yet, despite these positive experiences in my youthful feminine sphere, I hung back at the edge of adolescence, not quite able to fully immerse myself in the world of the Woman.

Because, behind the pleasant and beautiful frivolities that were offered to me as a girl, I could sense a deeper cost. The community I grew up in was exceptionally conservative; many of my girl friends where not allowed to cut their hair, wear pants to church, or listen to contemporary music. No woman was allowed to preach in my fundamentalist Baptist congregation, and very few young girls even attempted a college education, instead resigning themselves with varying degrees of contentment to early marriages and domestic duties. And as much as I loved the trappings of femininity, the rich scents and stories that swirled just out of my reach in old books and movies, I knew that I was unwilling to be a true woman if it meant giving up myself.

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