The healing journey of a widowed, unschooling badass in Delaware.
We had a successful day catching up on weekend messages, booking clients, and creating art…until a snag.
Now, instead of blogging, I’m tracking down an email bug that has our main communication medium frozen.
For now, enjoy the initial peony additions (double line cleanup to come) Kristen worked on today:
When we opened By Her Hand Tattoos in May of 2023, Kristen brought an amazing core of clients with her from Dover to Wilmington. In Delaware, it is no small feat to convince someone to drive 60 minutes out of their way for anything but french fries on the boardwalk.
We’re slowly building a local reputation and the number of people getting their first tattoos from Kristen has been remarkable.
We haven’t leaned into social media, except for the fact that Instagram is the perfect platform to show off Kristen’s creations.
As our main outlet, it was exciting to approach a milestone like 1,000 followers. At 999, I made a short request on my personal Facebook page to recruit a couple more friends to follow. Most of my FB friends are real and local and it was encouraging to see our number pop up to 1,007 (the banner pic is already archival).
We’re not obsessed with metrics, but we are proud of an organic growth that is bringing us to light in the community.
This year has been a parade of novice excursions: business ownership, living in a blended family, continuing my white belt journey in jiu-jitsu, and taking on goaltending as a primary position in soccer.
It’s an exciting place to be as I approach my mid 40s. New challenges are constantly arising: fixing a clothes dryer, installing a dishwasher, and various other repairs were other first-times this year.
The process is rarely comfortable and never smooth, but the results compound to make me more capable to face the next obstacle.
I haven’t been taking time to play with Lego and it shows.
For the month of October, I’ll be working with my sons and other homeschoolers to build 31 distinct sculptures.
This will be our third time participating in Delaware Fun-A-Day and I’m excited to see what we come up with.
Today’s park day gathering was a feast of interesting sights.
Most of my process for choosing my first tattoo is composed of all the tattoos I don’t want.
I didn’t find any great ideas in this book about literary tattoos, but the story about a woman getting Eric Carle to draw his Very Hungry Caterpillar on her is cute.
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We have cute, wonky coffee cups.
We do not have cute coasters.
EDIT: We found some very cool, silver coasters and I discovered that where I place my coffee is way more important to me than I had known.
Stay tuned for pictures.
We’ve got our space.
It was a busy and rewarding day as we positioned the furniture and supplies that we’ve been gathering for months.
There’s much yet to do, but we feel so close to our dream of owning and operating our own business.
One of these videos made me cry. The other one is about cakes.
Kristen and I have been discussing what her own tattoo studio would look like for years.
A year ago we started looking at properties in our desired area. Prejudices met us at every phone call and email. We weren’t ready to reach out to our social circles and we felt isolated and frustrated.
We paused in our searching and concentrated on devising creative solutions. We reached out to arts groups and business-owning friends, but still there was little to encourage us.
At the beginning of this year, we both felt that we were poised for the next chapter of our lives. Co-owning a business felt so right that we decided to again dive into the world of commercial realty to see what we could discover. We found more properties, sent more emails, made more calls, filled out more web forms, and carefully pushed when we met resistance. Over and over we were turned away or ignored. It was frustrating, but signs started to appear. They were vague, but it was clear that we were meant to keep pushing. My mantra became, “This place wasn’t right for us, we were blessed to be rejected.”
Then, a few weeks ago, Reneé from Elevated Studios texted me. They were moving their school to a larger location and there was an open space adjacent to the one they were considering. She connected me directly with the landlord and the puzzle started to fall together.
The number of coincidences, synchronicities, and signs that followed is too great to list here. It has had a to-good-to-be-true feel as each new challenge is resolved with ease.
However, after a productive day of setting up hardware and software needs, an old concern from an earlier search of this same neighborhood resurfaced. There was a tattoo shop in a shopping center right around the corner that had slipped our minds. It wouldn’t stop us from our plans, but how would we be received? Should we introduce ourselves? Try to befriend them? Ignore the proximity and do our thing?
As I thought about the possible approaches, I sought out their social media feeds to get a feel for their attitude, hoping to find a mutual friend or other connection to facilitate communication.
That’s when the WTF moment hit.
The other shop moved this week. This week. Our nearest competitor just moved farther away. God is making room for us.
What The Fuck? Each confusion is followed by greater clarity and encouragement. God has had my back many times in my life. Never have I been so aware of, and affirmed by, the signs.
Tomorrow we get the keys and start moving in. We’re working hard, but the path is being laid out before us with ease. We are blessed.