A New Season, A New Year
March is my birthday month, which in my world also means it’s permission month. Permission to loosen the rules I made for myself when I was a different woman. Permission to do more of what brings me joy, and less of what feels obligatory. Menopause has its gifts. One of them is clarity, and another is an increasing lack of interest in pretending.
If you’ve been around me long enough, you know I do not really celebrate the new year in January. I posted on Instagram that if the Gregorian calendar had not removed the thirteenth month, we would not be forcing ourselves into resolutions in the dead of winter. We would be celebrating the new year the way the earth does, in Spring, when the soil softens, and buds push through bark, and the light stretches its limbs and puts a little pep back into my step. The frozen earth does not say begin. It says rest. It says hold still, we are still hibernating. At least in this hemisphere, the reset happens now.
This is the season of new shoots and brave blooms, and perhaps bold new moves. It is the season of earlier sunrises and later sunsets and momentum, when what has been gestating quietly underground decides it is time to show itself. This year, that feeling is amplified for me by the symbolism of the Fire Horse. It rejects fences and craves freedom. It does not wait for permission. It runs because it is built to run. When Fire meets Horse, we get propulsion, and the energy intensifies. Fire brings visibility, courage, illumination. It transforms whatever it touches and has very little patience for stagnation.
Embodying elements of spring, of renewal, and of the year of the fire horse. Artwork by Bibby Gignilliat. Photos by Laura Martin Bovard and Eyecatcher.
What better energy to plan a transformation of a home than a Fire Horse in spring? Few things catalyze change like a renovation. Walls come down, systems get rewired, and light shifts. Old patterns are exposed in the most literal way. We can recognize where we have been living small, and where we are ready to expand. Renovation is rarely just about cabinetry; it is about identity. A Fire Horse season invites bold decisions. It asks where you have been circling the paddock and whether you are finally ready to open the gate.
I love that these symbolic systems have been guiding humans for thousands of years. However literally or metaphorically I take them, they remind me that change has rhythm. That momentum builds. There are seasons when staying still feels safe, and then there are those when running feels inevitable. This feels like a running season.
I feel it in my bones, that something in me is new. I am the same woman with twenty-four years of designing homes across the Bay Area, the same devotion to craftsmanship and environmental stewardship, and creating spaces that hold real life, and yet the way I want to speak about it feels different. Less polished. More honest, and more embodied.
It has been since November that I wrote a proper blog, and for a while I told myself I was waiting for new photos, for fresh installs, for something finished and glossy to present. But if I am honoring Spring, I do not need finished. Spring is not finished; it is becoming.
So this month, I am changing things up. Four writings. Four deep dives into how we approach design and why it matters more than ever. As I move into another year of my own life, I find myself less interested in decoration and more interested in depth, less interested in what photographs well and more interested in what feels right in my body.
When I speak about soulful design, I am not speaking in metaphor. I mean the nervous system. I mean the way my shoulders drop when I enter a room that reflects who I am now. And when I am working with a client, how design might impact their nervous system. I mean choosing wood carved with human hands, wallpaper that tells a story, materials that carry weight and provenance rather than speed and convenience. Homes are not content. They are containers. They hold our grief, our celebrations, our reinventions. They witness the shift from raising children to rediscovering who we are without the noise.
Spring asks us what wants to bloom. Sometimes the bloom is a renovation. Sometimes it is a new identity, a new chapter, a new willingness to invest in spaces that match the person you have become.
This whole spring renovation season, I want to talk candidly about what working with us actually looks like, about the value of experience, about why wisdom makes your life easier, about who we are perfect for and who we are not.
The earth is beginning again.
So am I.
And if your home feels like it belongs to a former version of you, perhaps this is your season too.
Next week, we will explore something many people often feel but rarely name because once it is acknowledged out loud, we might need to do something about it. The moment when your home no longer fits the life you are living now. Not because anything is wrong, but because you have grown. And growth asks for new space.
For now, happy [almost] Spring.
Let’s begin!
Written by Laura Martin Bovard.
