ISSUE NO. 01 | March 14, 2025

We're gonna call this an oh, spring opener, and when you step into this space with me, here, you're here as my guest. In Sanctuary. Thank you.

I consider this a time when we can pretend as though we are actually together, connecting, conversing, perhaps conspiring something great fun, delicious, healing, loving, silly, and wonderful that supports our lives, wellbeing, energy, happiness and those around us.

(The dog “Happy”, arrives at the most perfect time of creating this opener for you - for our few moments together.)

Welcome in and welcome out. Consider this an unedited unscripted moment of sanctuary and a candid conversation and exchange sometime funny, always authentic thoughts and suggestions, for welcoming yourself home, for deepening the connection with your true self and that of nature, and for an intimate sense of connection and community - you and me. 
Welcome to Sanctuary.

It's here that we'll talk about the things that I find curious - where we focus on living well and uncover, discover, recover the sense of Self and how you might entertain, nurture, nourish sanctuary in and around you.

So, for this issue, a quick story to punctuate the piece of letting go of nuance and getting on with things. If we're new to each other, I'm Annie Red Bird. Red Bird has been around since I was 5. Red Bird Design, then Red Bird Restorative Gardens, and now Red Bird & Co. (see the growth, evolution and expansion?) has been in practice since I stepped into the doors of landscape architecture graduate school in 1998. 
Simply, I've been doing the design thing for a while. A good, long while.

And I’m still learning.

Last year, the husband, son, dog, and cat and I embarked on a farmhouse remodel project, and you know those parts of us that we are calling back home to ourselves, embracing with love, getting to know and reconciling with (I think an Internal Family Systems, it's this idea of allowing that the Self to lead)? 


Well, when we embarked on this home remodel project, (I'll sprinkle in about that here and there for sanctuary inspiration), it ended up destroying a nuance. I rediscovered something quite powerful. 


We already know. We always know.

Remember being 8, and saying what you want to be when you grow up, and your Everything (that deep part of you YOU) was listening?

Take a moment right now, if you can. If you're in a good space, a little quiet corner, whatever, a little bit of thing sanctuary, and think about when you were eight. 
Think about what you look like, what you felt like, what you were doing, but moreover, think about when your friends, let's say, Gillian Clark did for me, did the Fortune Teller paper game kind of like fancy origami, revealing your fortune, if you want to be married, how many kids and such, your favorite color, and so on...

I distinctly remember what I was going to be when I grew up. 

A designer.

Specifically, an interior designer. No nuances.

Now, let me just square you on this one. What eight-year-old, growing up in San Jose, California, in the early 1970s, in the middle of middle-class knows anything about the interior design world?

It's true. 
My mom was extremely crafty and I helped her hang many a wallpaper, doing all sorts of home decor projects in that little house in San Jose. But I find it so very fascinating and I don't know that'll ever have the answer to the question of:

But how did I, that eight-year-old me know about the profession of interior design?

The answer to that remains a mystery. It certainly, as some of the mystics would say, was what I was encoded with when I came in when I landed here for Earth School. 


And yet, I hid from this specificity for 48 years.

I do know for heck that this farmhouse remodel project process brought me back home - that door to a specific knowing and trusting that I had only opened partially with near 30+ years of landscape and outdoor living design, styling, and architecture - it was open and so was a new season in understanding Sanctuary. 

The process of designing an interior sanctuary revealed to me how incredibly powerful the work, the personal work to welcome myself home was playing. I've said so many times in my consulting, design, coaching, and mentoring, that the process of design is so much more than creating a(nother) beautiful (or pretty) space. IT IS about welcoming yourself home. You ARE Sanctuary.

And there is no nuance in that is there?

For the first time, ever, that I can recall in my time on the planet, I can authentically say that I'm HOME.

The process of moving through idea and concept to terra firma was fully supported by what I (Self, Soul, the Everything of me) had rediscovered about what Sanctuary is for me - the feels, function, fixtures, finishes - AND who I am.

This process is vital in knowing home, in knowing Sanctuary. In my Sanctuary Garden Design Mentoring (coaching) packages we fully step into the magic of this process. (There are a few spots left for this season.)

When you earnestly and honestly make a plan - space - to welcome all the parts of you home, you not only create something special and uniquely you, you intentionally answer the yearning of Sanc-YOU-ary.

How is making space for yourself going? And what does sanctuary feel like when you do?

Thank you for gifting me your time.
Until next, take good care of your precious Self,

. . .

P.S. When you're ready for more Sanctuary in your life to be a beacon for peace, beauty, ease in the world, book your 20-minute complimentary Sanctuary Discovery Call and we'll chat about ideas and options to nurture and nourish more Sanctuary within and around you, for instance maybe bespoke design or design coaching and mentoring in a Sanctuary Garden Design Mentoring (coaching) package.

Many possibilities. Your world needs your peace in it, and you deserve sacred space that brings you joy and home to you.

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