The Journey

I didn’t begin in design.

I began in the beauty industry, where I owned and designed my own salon. It was there I first noticed something subtle but undeniable: the way a space could change how someone felt in their body. Clients would arrive guarded or tired and leave softened—more confident, more present, more themselves.

It wasn’t just the treatments.

It was the room.

The light.

The way the space held them.

Years later, as I moved into yoga and meditation, that awareness deepened. I learned alignment not only in the body, but in the breath, in stillness, in what happens when we stop forcing and start listening. Movement taught me how energy behaves. Stillness taught me how to hear it.

That listening followed me into an unexpected chapter—joining my husband’s 106-year-old family lumber business. There, I helped create Eastman Cartwright Home, a design division within a working lumberyard. It was a return to the bones of the home: materials, structure, craftsmanship. Wood that had lived a long life before becoming part of a space.

It reminded me that architecture isn’t just visual.

It’s historical.

Energetic.

Relational.

A home carries memory—whether we acknowledge it or not.

As I evolved, Feng Shui found me. Or perhaps I finally found the language for something I had always known. It revealed that the home is not separate from the self. That our spaces mirror our stories. That alignment—when done with intention—doesn’t just look beautiful. It heals.

In 2024, that understanding became deeply personal.

I found an 1888 miner’s cottage in Galena, Illinois and began a slow, intentional restoration. I didn’t approach it as a project. I approached it as a conversation.

I didn’t just renovate that home.

I listened to it.

Each decision—every brushstroke, every object chosen—became a dialogue between beauty and energy, past and present. What wanted to stay. What was ready to soften. What needed to be honored before it could change.

That cottage became a quiet teacher.

It showed me that good design doesn’t impose.

It responds.

That spaces—like people—open when they feel respected.

Today, this is how I work with every client.

Intuitively.

Slowly.

With reverence.

I don’t believe in forcing a home into an idea. I believe in listening for what it’s asking for—and aligning the space so it can support the life unfolding within it.

This work is not about trends.

It’s about trust.

About creating environments that feel steady, warm, and deeply inhabitable.

A home is not something you decorate.

It’s something you enter into relationship with.

And when that relationship is aligned, the effects are felt far beyond the walls.