Deeper Magic: It’s More Than A Shop

On the fertile foundation and true message of my work through Hina Luna

Dear Reader,

It’s here! It’s back! On October first, I reopened the (online) door of the Hina Luna shop after a very long hiatus. Since closing the brief chapter of its brick and mortar iteration a year and a half ago, this season, I answered the call that it was time again to resurrect this part of my creativity and personal passion. While I still keep the torch lit for another physical location to share everything Hina Luna in a more tangible way (I daydream often of days spent inviting both new and familiar faces into a warm, sunlit space that delights the senses and feels like a home away from home), I am using what is currently available to me and am grateful to be able to share this part of my life’s work with you — wherever home is for you — in this world wide web.

Curating quality made, well-sourced, beautiful, functional things with a story is a deeply personal process for me. It exceeds the superficiality of shopping, but rather taps into the art of attention required to be a good collector — the former focused on consumption and sale value, the latter a reverence for intention and the potential of what these things can offer to the experience of life. I don’t want to just sell you things. I want the objects that I thoughtfully collect to then share with you to inspire you, to serve a purpose in your life, to offer you a softer, slower, more connected way of being.

The biggest struggle for me in creating a livelihood dependent on the selling of goods is having to do so when the heart of the world is aching. Active genocide. Climate crisis. Social polarization. Inequitable access to basic resources. What purpose does a beeswax candle or a pair of cashmere socks serve to these collective devastations? They don’t, really. And I’ve more than once honestly considered letting go of this life calling because of this reality check. But as I deepen into relationship with this work, as I am called back to it again and again, I have recently realized that it’s because this work has less to do with what is seen on the surface — the aesthetic of a good color palette and beautiful design — and more to do with what these objects represent.

They are tangible reminders and my personal interpretations of life’s simplest pleasures — a soft texture, rich flavor on the tongue, a scent that conjures memory. They are an invitation to slow and to soften enough to not only bare witness to more of these pleasure pockets, but to pause and savor them — to practice feeling deep gratitude in our bodies for life’s littlest magic moments, often missed by most.

The deeper message is that the experience of simple pleasure is a birthright for living here on earth. It is not a privilege, though the short-list of collective struggles listed above have made them seem so. The deeper message to these offerings I share through Hina Luna is an advocation for the movements working to balance the scales, to offer a compass of empathetic ethics to humanity, to be in a relationship of reciprocity with everything we share this life with. As I’ve shared here before, the antidote is connection. Connection is born from our presence and awareness, and it fosters the foundation for empathy and reciprocity to take root and bloom from — fertile ground for a safer, gentler, heart-led world. One that fills our own cup enough to enable us to generously pour into another’s.

I feel confident that this is why you’re here. That you relish in the beauty and welcome the moments of pause that I share with you, and also, you see the deeper magic below the surface. You opening these letters every week, your support of the shop and inviting these objects into your precious home and life — you are participating in the collective movement toward the slower and softer. You believe in another way of being — even if it doesn’t look just like mine. You believe that we are the change we’re seeking, that it begins at home, that it begins with you and me. And sometimes, it starts with something as simple as striking the match and lighting the candle.