What grew when I stopped forcing it

Photo by: Austin Deratour Photography

FernLight found me, not the other way around.

Just over a year ago, in 2024, I was presented with an opportunity to rent a small “office” space for a reasonable price. My intuition felt the spark before my mind could make sense of it. At first, I imagined a yoga and healing space, but almost immediately the design of the building revealed an accessibility misalignment. On top of that, I was deeply disconnected from my spirituality and personal practices at the time. Trying to build a healing studio from that place didn’t feel honest.

What did feel honest was my living room.

I was standing there one day, surrounded by piles of art supplies, stacked boxes, and the carefully constructed booby traps meant to keep my gremlin children (cats) from destroying everything. And something gentle clicked. I realized I could build something for my inner art-loving child. A place for my art. A studio.

The stairs still weren’t accessible at the location that I was presented with, but instead of seeing that as the end of the road, I saw an invitation to be creative. If my space couldn’t meet everyone’s needs, I could bring the magic to them: paint parties, art classes, mentorships, gatherings. I could meet people where they were.

And somehow… that felt like the point.

The building itself doesn’t match what FernLight has become. And honestly? I think that’s perfect. I love the idea of bringing soft, fern-filled light into places that might otherwise feel rigid or uninspired. It feels like transmutation. Like shifting the energy of a room just by tending what lives inside it. A reminder that what we look like on the outside doesn’t have to reflect the truth of what’s inside and that we are allowed to curate both our physical and inner landscapes with care, stillness, and joy just because we want to.

Finding the Name

Once I signed the lease, I knew this space needed a name. It couldn’t just be “my office.” This was something alive. Something that had grown out of me and beyond me. It deserved its own identity. It was just a matter of figuring that all out.

I’ve always been drawn to nature, and I wanted the name to honor that. Ferns are among the oldest plant species on earth, and that alone feels sacred to me. Many Indigenous traditions associate ferns with new beginnings and new life. That symbolism felt right. I wanted this space to hold my growth and the light that has both pulled me out of and taught me how to sit with darkness.

It took me time to land on it. But when “FernLight” finally came together, it felt like discovering something that had existed before I ever touched it. Like I had simply stumbled upon its true name. You’ll notice I often capitalize the “L” in FernLight and I think that is because I often feel a need to specifically honor each piece of its identity.

I made the intentional choice to keep FernLight’s URL as fernlightstudioart.com because, even with the addition of healing modalities, art and creativity remains the heart of everything here and I believe that in itself is healing.

Photo by: Austin Deratour Photography

The Slow Journey

Moving in felt like a ritual. Packing up my art supplies from my home and giving them a new life inside FernLight felt ceremonial and I was weaving gratitude into every box. But it didn’t take long to realize how wildly I had underestimated the time, money, energy, and emotional capacity this dream would take.

One of the most unexpected gifts FernLight has given me is how clearly it mirrors my inner world. It reflected back my struggles with inconsistency, executive functioning shutdowns, hyperfixations that ebb and flow, anxiety, fear, and self-doubt.

In January 2025, at 31 years old, I was formally diagnosed as autistic, alongside previous diagnoses of ADHD, anxiety, and PMDD. I had suspected this for a long time, which is why I pursued assessment, but I wasn’t prepared for the ongoing grief and liberation that came with finally having language. Naming patterns, struggles, needs, and truths cracked open an entire new way of understanding myself. (There will be more on that in a future post.)

Somewhere along the way, my dream of renting a studio quietly grew into the shape of a small business. And that transition scared the shit out of me.

When I’m faced with too much unknown, I shut down. And so, I did. I ended up postponing the DBA, drawing out the website, the store, the sales tax paperwork, the marketing - dabbling into bits and pieces here and there, but not feeling confident about any of it. Looking back at the last year, I can now see how slow everything truly was. And for a long time, I judged myself harshly for that.

But a few months ago, something shifted.

Photo by: Austin Deratour Photography

The missing Magic

A dormant hyperfixation stirred. A truth I had been quietly avoiding rose to the surface: FernLight was missing something essential. Healing practices and spirituality have always been a massive part of my life, but I had exiled them from my external world. Not only that, but I realized that my brain does not thrive when I’m forced into one-dimensional boxes. Art and healing were never separate inside of me. So why was I pretending they were outside of myeslf?

And just like that, FernLight reformed itself and brought me along for the ride.

Over the past few months, I’ve been reenvisioning my offerings and tightening the loose threads. SoulColor Sessions were born first as an intuitive blend of Usui Reiki and expressive art designed to create a soft space for people to unwind, check in with themselves, and reconnect with breath and body.

RootLight Reiki followed as a purely Reiki-based offering. Paint ‘n Pause remained as solely art. I wanted people to have complementing choice, to enter however they needed.

The most profound moments of my life have always arrived when I stop masking, when I drop into the most ancient parts of myself, and when I reconnect with younger versions of me through creativity without judgment. Holding space for others to experience something even adjacent to that lights me on fire.

And now, here we are.

Photo by: Austin Deratour Photography

I’m at a place with FernLight where I finally honor the slow beginning. I have deep respect for my passions and for the ways I choose to stay authentic, even when it means unpredictability. I will never run this studio on a rigid output schedule. I will never pretend I don’t have fluctuating capacity. I collaboratively choose booking times because my nervous system matters too. And yes - I will mess up. I am making room for that as part of the growth.

Accessibility, both financial and neurodivergent, is foundational to my values. I won’t always get it right, but I will always be trying. Every offering at FernLight is crafted with adaptability in mind and always has room to be better.

I built this space by meeting myself where I was because I am tired of spaces that demand arrival in advance.

FernLight exists for the in-between. For the tired artists. For the ones who almost gave up. For the people who crave creativity but flinch at pressure. For the ones who want to heal without being turned into a project.

You don’t need to be fixed here.
You don’t need to be impressive.
You don’t need to know where you’re going.

You only need to be willing to arrive as you are.

This studio is not a solution.
It’s a companion.
A lantern, not a lighthouse.
A fern growing back through the ruins.
A soft place to land while you remember how to belong to yourself again.

That is what FernLight means.

And if you find yourself here in the dark, squinting for something gentle…
you’re not late.

You’re right on time.

Thank you for being here.

All my everything,
Bee