Caring less is a boundary.

We care too much. We lose ourselves.

I learned this first through the hands, not the heart—measuring, reformulating, reforming again. I wanted every bottle to please everyone: the purist who fears a chemical syllable, the collector who worships luxury, the mother who reads every label twice. Somewhere between their expectations and my own conviction, I lost the center.

I sat among jars and numbers, the arithmetic of devotion. Natural, synthetic, sustainable, luxurious—the words began to scrape against one another like stones. I stripped formulas bare to prove my sincerity, then built them back up in fear of judgment. What was meant to be creation became apology.

Science is not the enemy of nature. It is her interpreter. The cell, the molecule, the leaf, the lab—they all speak the same grammar of balance. Still, I doubted. I let the noise of virtue drown the quiet of truth.

The truth is simple: anything done with reverence belongs to nature. A hand guided by integrity is still a natural thing.

I think often about how this reaches beyond the workshop. I have cared myself into exhaustion for people, for perfection, for approval. I have bent until the shape was unrecognizable, then wondered why others saw a villain instead of a giver. Care without boundary mutates. It begins as light, ends as fire.

So I draw the line, at last. Between excess and essence. Between serving and dissolving. Between purity and paralysis.

The products will not please everyone; neither will I. But they will be honest. They will hold both chemistry and soul, discipline and tenderness. That is enough.

“In every formula and every heart, the truest balance lies between what is grown and what is made.”