A Truer Kind of Honesty
A winter reflection on truth, performance, and living what we believe
Hello, dear reader.
Thank you for joining me here. This is a longer, very personal January letter about truth, performance, and choosing depth over breadth. I’ll be back to our regularly scheduled programming next week.
The new year has arrived, and winter has fully settled in. The light is beginning to return. The pace is quieter. Things feel a little more honest when the world isn’t rushing us forward.
I’ve never been one for resolutions or annual reinvention. I’m not interested in becoming someone new. What I am interested in - especially at this stage of my life -is choosing how to live more truthfully. More intentionally. With fewer layers between what I believe and how I show up.
A huge part of that truth lives here, in my writing - and in this ongoing conversation with you. The work I do here is not separate from my life; it’s a seamless extension of it.
Every letter, every note, every word carries me with it. After a lifetime of trying to find my center, my heart is fully invested now - in how I live, and in how honestly I speak about it.
As this new year begins, what I’m settling into isn’t another set of expectations or a broader appeal.
What I truly want this year, is a deeper commitment to what feels most alive and true.
I’ve spent much of my life craving acceptance and acknowledgment (as many of us do) and what you think and feel about my work genuinely matters to me. But I’m learning to stand more firmly in what matters most to me, and to trust that this is where the real work, and the real conversations, begin.
I’m so grateful you’re here.
When honesty narrows the room
Living more truthfully eventually asks something of us. To make choices.
Not long ago, I chose to do that here, in a letter called An Artful Cottage at Christmastime. I wrote more honestly than I had before - about home, beauty, and my deep belief in smaller, simpler, more beautiful ways of living. I didn’t soften the edges. I didn’t try to make it broadly palatable. I simply spoke from where I truly stand.
And the room changed.
Some readers quietly stepped away.
I don’t share that with resentment or regret - just clarity. When we speak more honestly, we become more specific. And specificity, by its very nature, narrows the circle.
What surprised me most wasn’t that some people left. It was the feeling that followed.
Relief.
That moment forced a thoughtful reckoning for me. I could pull back - smooth the edges, widen the appeal, return to a more careful performance. Or I could step more fully into what feels most true, knowing it might not be for everyone.
Choosing the latter didn’t feel easy. But it felt right. And with that choice came a deep sense of relief, as if a door had opened wider.
Because if we’re only performing for others (editing ourselves to meet expectations or avoid discomfort) what is this life really about?
That realization made something unmistakably clear to me: this work I’m doing cannot be theoretical. It has to be lived. And it has to be spoken from the same place I live from. From my heart.
Convictions - A different perspective
My ethos about smaller, simpler, more beautiful ways of living didn’t arrive quickly, or easily. This was shaped over decades of striving, building, and proving. Of pursuing what our culture so often rewards: more success, more recognition, more accumulation. More. Bigger. More.
I followed that path earnestly, and for a long time. But somewhere along the way, I began to question what all that effort was actually meant to deliver.
It took time - and more than a few course corrections - to understand that beauty and contentment itself can be enough. That a meaningful life doesn’t have to be louder, bigger, or more impressive to be deeply satisfying.
This runs counter to much of what we’re taught here in the U.S., where expansion is praised and restraint is often mistaken for lack of ambition. Or worse, lack of decisiveness. Choosing otherwise isn’t always comfortable, but it can be deeply grounding.
I’ve written more fully about this journey before, including in a letter last summer called Creating Beauty Is Enough. And also on my About page. I won’t repeat those stories here.
But I want to be direct about this: these convictions weren’t adopted for effect. They were earned slowly, through lived experience, and they now sit at the center of how I choose to live - and how I choose to write.
And if you find yourself somewhere in that questioning - still striving, still proving, or quietly wondering if there might be another way - I want you to know that you’re not alone.
Many of us arrive here not because we failed at the “more” story, but because we lived it fully enough to see its limits.
That’s why this conversation here with you matters to me.
Truth vs. Performance
Lately, I’ve been paying closer attention to where performance shows up in everyday life - especially in the spaces I write about most.
In our homes, it can look like choosing what photographs well or follows the latest trend rather than what actually feels like us. Decorating for an imagined audience. Editing out the imperfect, the worn, the deeply personal.
In our lives, it can show up as staying busy, staying agreeable, staying just impressive enough - because slowing down or choosing less or smaller or simpler can feel like falling behind.
Don’t get me wrong. Performance isn’t always fake. It’s adaptive.
Most of us learn it early. But over time, it can quietly pull us away from what’s honest and sustaining. We begin arranging our lives not around what nourishes us, but around what will be understood, admired, or approved.
Truth feels different.
Truth is choosing what feels right even when it doesn’t translate easily. It’s trusting restraint in a culture that celebrates expansion. It’s believing that beauty doesn’t need to announce itself or be on-trend, and that a meaningful life doesn’t have to perform to be valid.
The moment I felt that room shift with those unsubscribes, the distinction became impossible to ignore.
I could continue shaping my words, and my work here, for broad appeal. Or I could speak from the same place I live from, from my heart, and allow the conversation to become more intimate, more specific, and more real.
I’m choosing the latter.
A smaller circle
If you’re here - reading, subscribing, replying, engaging - it means more to me than I can put into words.
This isn’t a casual endeavor for me. I bring my whole heart to this work, and knowing that there are thoughtful, curious, kind people on the other side of these letters makes the conversation feel real and deeply worthwhile.
And if at some point you decide this isn’t for you anymore, that’s okay too. Truly. Not every conversation is meant to last forever, and I respect that.
Also - just so you know - I’ve turned off my unsubscribe notifications. I won’t even know. (Which feels oddly liberating, honestly.)
What I do love, though, is hearing from those of you who are here. Your replies, comments, and shared reflections remind me that this isn’t about broadcasting - it’s about connection.
If something in these words rings true, or even gently challenges you, I’d genuinely love to hear your thoughts. Click the comment button💬 below.
This is a smaller circle, by design.
And it’s a good place to be.
Stepping into the light
As this new year begins, I’m welcoming the light as it slowly returns - not as a call to do more, but as a reminder that clarity often comes gently. That living well doesn’t require resolutions, or lists, or a new you.
Here’s to a year of going deeper rather than wider. Of speaking plainly. Of choosing what feels most alive and real, even when it narrows the room.
I’m grateful to be here with you, at the start of it. 💌
With contentment & possibility,
P.S. And now, back to my regularly scheduled programming :)
Some great wisdom here, Miriam! Yes, beauty for its own sake. Absolutely! Beauty is a value. And living a true life. This is what I'm pondering right now as well. We have limited time on this earth. We need to make it true.