On finding belonging in my thirties amid the flower crowns

In which our heroine celebrates a trip around the sun

Mar 20, 2025

On a rainy early Spring evening in Chicago, we found refuge in an old concert hall, decorated in ornate plasterwork dating back over a hundred years. All around the space were women in flower crowns and corsets, clutching books to their chests to exchange with other fairies. We were all patiently waiting for Paris Paloma to take the stage and to experience her transportive music together.

I turned to Lucas and said, “It feels so magical in here — like everyone is just like me.”

I purchased the tickets months ago as a birthday present to myself (my birthday was Tuesday!) and had spent many a conversation trying to explain to friends who Paris Paloma even was. I’d start with “you might have heard her song, ‘Labour’?” and subsequently describe her music as “cottagecore with a bit of feminist rage.” But really, I think her music appeals to a deeper part of me. Her storytelling feels infused with magic and the community she’s built feels no less powerful than a coven.

I’ve learned that any text can be treated as sacred, so long as it is given intention and attention. That’s what this experience was for me, a sort of sacred awakening happening right in the middle of a bustling and cosmopolitan city.

As I reflected on my birthday, the year past, and the year ahead, I found myself coming back to the songs that penetrated my heart that night. You might not know the music - that’s okay. The lessons are universal.

On belonging

“give me one millennium more there, maybe I will belong more there.” - bones on the beach

parispaloma

A post shared by @parispaloma

In the car on the way to the concert, I asked our friend Richard for the third time, “are you sure I don’t look stupid in this flower crown?” I’m a girl who simultaneously wants to be “just like other girls” and “not like other girls.” I credit this to my nature as an enneagram four, which, as you might imagine, makes my brain a truly chaotic place to be. So in my desire to fit in, I was questioning my twirly floral dress with ribbons at the shoulders and the lace trimmed chemise I’d layered under it.

But when I stepped out of the car and walked to the end of the line to enter the venue, I passed dozens of girls in corsets and flower crowns. I think there is something beautiful and brave about confidently showing up just as you are even when it’s different than everybody else. But I think it’s equally beautiful and brave to take a chance that you might show up and find people just like you.

The older I’ve grown, the more myself I’ve become. I haven't really discovered new interests or facets of my personality, rather I have burst open the cage that held my childhood self and let her fly free. She loved to dress up and invent stories to tell through her clothes. I know she would have loved my outfit that night.

In this place filled with women in fairy wings, corsets, and flower crowns, with sacred music flowing around us, I felt myself let go. When Paris sang a song about learning to knit from her grandmother, I did nothing to stop the tears flowing as I thought of my own grandma who taught me to knit. I let the song sweep me up, safe that there was a community there to catch me (chief among them my husband, who accompanied me and understood what it meant for me to be in that space).

In my next trips around the sun, I want to stop trying to fit into spaces that don’t light me up. I want to find the spaces and the people that allow me to bring everything I am and everything I believe. That doesn’t mean I want everyone to be like me. I’m lucky to have found the people who are excited and curious about the magic in me — and in them. While my friends might not be chomping at the bit to practice the Pagan sabbaths, I know they’re always game to let me give them a tarot reading at the equinox — and that they’ll believe in their version of the magic.

On the pursuit of beauty

“what a lovely hiding place you have made to delay our parting.” — triassic love song

I cried for the second time that evening during “triassic love song,” a tragically beautiful story of lovers lost to time. To me, it’s a reminder that creating a safe place to call home — especially in the darkest of times — is always a worthy pursuit.

There is power in the ability to surrender, to be still, and simply observe, whether the first snowdrops forcing their way through frozen earth or an artist’s masterwork hanging in a museum. Through art and beauty, we are forced to see things from a new perspective, to build empathy and remind us what the world is we want to create.

I’ve filled our little cottage with art because I want it to feel inspirational, but also like a safe haven. Because art reminds us that we are never truly alone in this world.

On strength

“If I was easy to kill, you would have done it already.” — hunter

parispaloma

A post shared by @parispaloma

On the morning of my birthday, I did a past-present-future tarot spread. It’s one I like to return to on my birthday, to reflect on what I’ve learned and look toward what the future holds. When I flipped the card representing my past, it revealed a woman crowned in roses, reaching out to a lion that sat peacefully at her side. Strength.

It’s a card that’s guided me for the last two years, whose wisdom I’ve reached for when I felt my anxiety was taking all my strength away from me. To me, the card reminds me that when I feel I don’t have the strength to keep moving forward, the gentle lion is there beside me to carry the weight. But the lion isn’t separate from me, he’s part of me - after all, he too is crowned in roses. (It doesn’t hurt that he is a cat.)

It made me proud to see Strength as a representative of the past. It doesn’t mean my struggles are over, but I believe it means I’ve learned to trust the strength within me. I no longer have to remind myself that my lion is there, instead we are walking side by side in our power. It’s a reminder of all I’ve learned about what it means to be strong.

At the concert, with hundreds of voices creating a cacophony, I felt the power of the sacred feminine around me. I’ve learned that my femininity, my softness, is not a weakness, but my greatest strength. It’s a magic passed down by generations of women. We need not make ourselves like men in order to prove our strength. There is a resilience and fortitude in moving slowly, in making beauty, and leading with emotion.

On trusting the magic

“You ask, "Who will answer? In need, who'll come? "When the last line is broken, when the day is all but done” — the rider

lordoftherings

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I’m not here to tell you that you can manifest all your problems away or that if you just believe then your life will be filled with sunshine and daisies. We live in a world built on systems designed to tear people down — and keep them there. We can’t just dream our way out of them.

But I do believe that the small moments, the quiet moments, the little choices along the way are what add up to a life. In my efforts to slow down and really feel the world around me, to sense the wheel turning, I sometimes cannot believe I have come to be here.

When I was a little girl, I dreamed of being a large animal vet living in the Lake District in England. Obviously, that is not where my path took me. But pieces of it have been with me the whole time, each time I chose a floral wallpaper, put on a linen dress, or tied a ribbon in my hair. All of it part of my dream English countryside life.

My literal dream didn’t come true, but the pieces of it that I needed did. I came to a place with four seasons, where I could find magic in nature. It brought me to a little cottage that I could make my own, even just for a little while. I planted a garden that taught me how to let go of control.

I don’t think I could have imagined this is what my life would look like at 33. The future often scares me, that abyss into the unknown. But I know that if I trust the magic inside myself and follow where it leads me, it’s sure to be beautiful.

Finally, your cozy inspiration for the week:

This week I have a related task for you. Take some time to peruse through your record collection or your spotify library and look for those artists, albums, or songs that wake something up in you. Then just sit for a while and listen, let yourself become absorbed in the music and the story.

Tell me in the comments what you chose — or what chose you.