DESIGN, A FORM OF SELF-CARE

Published On: March 13, 2023
Contributor: Antoinette Arrington
Creative Credits: Photography by KAYE MCCOY | Courtesy of ANTOINETTE ARRINGTON

On the surface, HAUME is a lifestyle and decor brand on a mission to create goods that inspire women to curate home sanctuaries and pursue whole life living. After you spend some time engaging with the brand online, you may start to see a glimmer of something precious underneath the luxury candles and linen sheets. Some have called it authenticity, while others choose to revere it as intimacy. At its core, HAUME is built on the idea that more than anything, we all need to give and receive humanity in order to see our true selves. I’m just a woman trying to be the kind of adult her inner child deserved to feel safe with.

Sometimes, I wish I had a more intriguing and poignant story to tell, but the truth is that I got tired of only being the version of myself that my mother had the capacity to cultivate. I had to hide the parts of myself that craved above and beyond what she accepted as beautiful or successful. My bedroom became a haven for my truest essence…a place where I could be alone to expand and elevate my surroundings without having to worry that I would make anyone feel excluded or less than. It’s where I learned I could control how I felt, how my day went, and how my life shaped up because my room was an intimate conversation between my history and my hope.

HAUME founder, Antoinette Arrington, shares a personal note on the practice of self-investment and care, demonstrating how the two are deeply seeded into the lifestyle and decor brand’s mission.

Antoinette Arrington curating an at home dining experience for close friends

“Massages and facials are nice, but the key to self-care is time. You have to be willing to stop what you’re doing and be still.”

The point is not to heal like you’ve never been hurt. Instead, become aware of what it looks and feels like to accommodate that tender and traumatized part of you to prevent re-injury. Broken souls and broken bones are no different. Rest, elevate, stretch, and take your time.

Antoinette Arrington, HAUME founder and podcaster of “I Talk to Myself Sometimes” on Spotify and Apple Podcasts

I will forever and always offer conversations, goods, services, and experiences for women that want to raise that bar in their own lives and welcome them HAUME with open arms.

The most important lesson life has taught me is that I am all I own. I can’t control what other people do or think or feel; it’s simply not my business. However, what is my business is the effort I make every day in choosing how I want to feel, with no regard to anyone else. That means that I am solely responsible for how I do and don’t show up in my life. Sure, self-care has been a buzz phrase for the last couple of years, but I’m sure that most count it as a trend and then find something else to do when the fun wears off. Self-care? The real deal is the kind of care you get in the ER. It’s that triage room where you sit naked and grateful that you made it this far after suffering through an agonizing 12 hours in the crowded waiting room, too broken and sick to garner the energy to leave, yet too scared and egotistical to stop yourself from thinking you’ll leave just to spite everyone that says you need to stay and wait your turn. It feels like trying to describe your pain to the nurse who has seen too many of “you” in her neverending shift to care. It’s the frantic jolt you feel when your vitals aren’t normal, and you realize that you knew something was wrong, but you are relieved because someone outside of the fog you’re in can see it too. Now your pain has permission to be real and you don’t have to go back out there…and be invisible. It’s being willing to go lay on that lone gurney in the hall for another five hours alone clutching your stuff in a plastic bag, hoping that the relief is imminent. Just as quickly as the doctor finally arrives, they leave and the recovery — your recovery — is on you. What you do going forward is going to determine whether or not you have to come back.

Massages and facials are nice, but the key to self-care is time. You have to be willing to stop what you’re doing and be still. Look around and see if the space you’re in — if the people, places, and things — actually serve to inspire you towards the life you want to have. Take accountability for how things came to be and lead the charge in changing it, unapologetically. The point is not to heal like you’ve never been hurt. Instead, become aware of what it looks and feels like to accommodate that tender and traumatized part of you to prevent re-injury. Broken souls and broken bones are no different. Rest, elevate, stretch, and take your time.

House Beautiful Live Better 2022 Award-Winning candle care set and limited edition candles sold through HAUME

It was important for me to start with candles and the candle care kits as a way to introduce light, care, and time into people’s home atmosphere. As often as I share some of my deepest memories, I am also imploring my community to purposefully make time to go inward and put themselves first. Investing money in tools that require you to devote time to care for a candle is the welcome mat for many to begin the rites and rituals that translate to the permission they give themselves to get comfortable turning that intention on themselves. Historically and culturally, Black women have been denied that practice most adamantly by other Black women. Somehow, pain, lack, and struggle have molded the very light and (low) bar that is our cultural worth and identity, and seemingly anything that rises above it to meet our basic human needs for care, compassion and courtesy is “bougie,” “uppity,” and us thinking we are “better than” everyone else.

I will forever and always offer conversations, goods, services, and experiences for women that want to raise that bar in their own lives and welcome them HAUME with open arms.

The realization that others won’t just take my word for it and do what I say…they are going to do what I do. I have become a mirror and sometimes, that comes with a bit of pressure to break my stride and perform instead of keeping my pace and creating from the gut. Applying for grants to grow my team has shown me a few things about who will really get behind the vision because they understand the mission behind the company versus those that are still too sensitive to face the truth of why what I’m doing is necessary. It’s been a journey towards my own practice in patience, faith and timing.

Joyous portrait of Antoinette Arrington captured by Kaye McCoy

Stay in touch with Antoinette Arrington via her podcast “I Talk to Myself Sometimes” – Available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts