Launching in March

I chose March intentionally to launch THEQUIETBLOOM mail club.

Not just because it is the beginning of spring — when the earth softens, when buds begin to appear quietly on bare branches — but because it is also my birthday month.

For most of my life, I never felt entirely the need celebrating my birthday.

Even as a high school girl, I was the one who shrank from attention. I didn’t feel particularly worthy of being celebrated.

But life has a way of stretching you.

Over the years, I had the fortune of celebrating many birthday parties of friends, families and of course my own. I am always big on celebrating others but when it came my turn to be the birthday girl , I felt it was unnecessary.

But the last few years of life has shifted something in me. Becoming a parent, twice , losing one, lockdown , I have experienced exhilaration and deep ache. One thing remained constant - no matter what I have served my family - emotionally, practically and sometimes financially — in ways that required strength I didn’t always appreciate in myself.

And somewhere along the way, the little girl inside me — the one who once received her very first letter in Year 6 and felt her heart leap at the sight of her name written on an envelope — was still there.

Still waiting. Still dreaming.

This March, I decided to do something I have never done before.
I decided to celebrate myself.
Not with a party. Not with noise. But with creation.

The Quiet Bloom is my birthday gift to myself.

The girl who once treasured a single handwritten letter has now built a website so that others might experience that same joy — the pause of opening an envelope, the texture of paper, the quiet intimacy of words that are meant just for you.

There is something beautifully full-circle about that.

Here’s to spring. Here’s to paper. Here’s to the little girl in Year 6. And here’s to beginning — gently. 🌷