Unlocking // Nurturing

traveling between doors

Oct 27, 2025

I used to be obsessed with keys - vintage keys, the kind that look like they unlock secret, ornate doors. Doors in the depths of overgrown gardens or in the dark recesses of a medieval dungeon. Or perhaps a dainty jewelry box long forgotten in a cabinet. I’d collect these keys at flea markets and antique shops; some I’d string around my neck and wear until they tarnished my own skin, leaving markings of history across my flesh.

Recently, I was in my childhood bedroom and opened the doors of my jewelry box to a small avalanche of keys. They were strewn about on their old chains, and I picked up each of them and remembered so much - where they came from, where they went with me, why I put them to rest in a heap of detritus. It felt like a marker of history, layered with past and present, of cyclical time but also diverse iterations of self.

basically the exact key I wore around my neck for ~4 years | credit: Etsy store WestEndMarket

When I was small, I’d imagine those keys as powerful vessels that could open vast doors. Doors to everything new. New places, new experiences, new knowledge, new understanding. I should have known from the very beginning that I was drawn towards adventure, learning, the unknown, the mysterious, the beautiful. The details have always called to me - the smallest parts of this world begging to be recognized for their immense, breathtaking beauty.

And I’m here to witness it.

I am many things, but most of all, I am a learner fueled by curiosity and the need to fill vacant holes with knowledge that digs even deeper holes. My curiosity feels ravenous - it’s why I read so much; I want to twist and turn perspective, fold it, bend it, look at everything sideways. I have always been fascinated by how meaning is shaped by the self in both its creation and its interpretation. It’s why I love museums - one of my favorite things in this life is to look at a piece and formulate my own thesis about it and then read the placard on the wall and be torn asunder by the impossibility of perspective and dimensions and history and meaning-giving.

florals at Dakota & Mackenzie’s wedding in June | credit: Shari + Mike Photography

Have you ever read or heard something so beautiful, so layered, that it makes everything still?

I live for that feeling. Whenever it happens, I stop everything and cling to it as it rushes by, trying to savor every second of its brief existence in my mind. It grants a stillness that makes its brevity feel permanent, life-altering. Like there was a before that will never lead to the same after. It’s the same feeling I get when I think about the moments I met my closest friends - there was a before that will never lead to the same after. And it’s in this after that we dream and roam, trying endless keys in endless doorways, but do we actually want to leave? I don’t know.

“I want to tell you that so often when we think we’re grasping to get somewhere else, what we’re really longing for is to feel like we can be fully here, right now, in the pulse of aliveness only found in the tenderness of presence.”
-Lisa Olivera, October 26, 2025, substack

When I write these letters to you, they come in snippets. I’ll have a thought, like I did with keys, usually in the middle of a drive, or a walk, or a reverie, I’ll hastily jot it in a notes app, and there it rests, either forever or until I get inspired again to expound it.

These spurts of inspiration used to happen to me a lot more consistently, and they were the moments that felt closest to what I attempted to describe above - it’s a feeling I love but one I felt I lost as I entered the workforce and stopped thinking about the tenderness of the present and only about the daunting questions of the future. Chasing this loss is part of what led me to writing these letters again, and I’ve been enjoying it so much - finding ways to connect with you over the digital space that feels more like sharing parts of my soul than a picture with a caption ever did.

Here’s to chasing those small feelings of wonder we used to feel. What sparked those in you? How can you nurture them back into your life? How can you make space for curiosity and wonder in tandem with responsibility, reality and fear?

They’re big questions - but I’ll be here if you want to open those secret doors with me.

some things that are giving me hope right now:

our favorite badass woman in new york in the polka dot dress (iykyk)
~90,000 protesters take to the streets of seattle #NoKings
me finally starting to recover from an illness that has kept me in bed for five straight days [thoughts & prayers appreciated]

some things that made me smile since we last spoke:

marrying four of my dear friends in seattle [august & october]; simply the greatest honor
a sunset painted mt. rainier [tahoma] from a boozy bachelor/ette boat
the magic of witnessing autumn from Seattle sidewalks
my first time experiencing the magic of mercado gonzález northgate market aka disneyland
cuddling my mom’s dogs & wishing my aunt a happy birthday in the october los angeles sunshine

letters from kayla

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