One of the biggest reasons I’ve scaled Crystolight down to a limited mode until October has little to do with business, and everything to do with something much more personal:
I’m finally building a home of my own.
Not just a place to live. Not just a milestone to check off. But a safe, grounding, nourishing space; the kind I’ve long needed, and never had.
Before I started renting my own room seven years ago, I lived in an environment that was, in every sense of the word, disturbing.
It looked like “family” on the outside but behind closed doors, it was a world of control, emotional submission, manipulation, and fear. There was shouting. My mother’s cries echoing through the walls. Police visits. And there was abuse; the kind that slowly erodes your spirit until survival is the only thing you know how to do.
That place gave me clinical depression as young as 12. And there were stretches of my life so dark, so hollow, it might as well have been hell.
And this was in the early 2000s, before social media gave people a voice, before it was common to talk about things like narcissism, trauma, or emotional abuse. Back then, there were no infographics on healing. No trauma-informed language. No online support groups just a click away. There was only silence. Shame. Survival.
So when I finally made the decision to leave, even if it meant renting a single room, even if it meant financial instability.. it wasn’t impulsive. It was an act of self-preservation. A refusal to stay buried in soil that had long gone toxic.
Over the past 7+ years, I’ve been learning how to live on my own terms. Making do with tight budgets. Navigating less-than-ideal living conditions. Constantly adapting just to feel okay. But I never gave up on the idea that one day, I’d build something better.
And now, I’m finally doing it.
I’m building a real home for myself. One where I can finally breathe. Where I no longer flinch at the sound of footsteps or a door knock. Where I don’t have to shrink or hide my joy; or brace myself in fear of triggering the monsters I once lived with, who could turn the smallest thing into a war.
A home is supposed to feel safe. For the longest time, mine didn’t.
It’s taken me years to get here. And honestly, this moment feels like a soft kind of victory; not the loud, triumphant kind, but the kind that makes you tear up in the quiet of your own new kitchen.
This is why Crystolight is a little quieter right now.
Not because I’ve lost direction. But because I’m finally reclaiming it.
Because when a plant isn’t thriving, you don’t blame the plant. You change its environment.
This isn’t a pause out of burnout. This is a sacred rebuilding. A homecoming to myself.
And once I’m settled, I can’t wait to return with a more grounded, clear, and expansive version of what Crystolight was always meant to be.
Crystolight 2.0 is coming.
But for now; I’m tending to the soil.
The bloom will come.