078: Chemistry Girl: You Don’t Grow by Doing What You Know with Kimberly Taylor

Today I’m talking with potter, photographer, gardener, mother, and longtime friend Kimberly Taylor. Kim lives on a small island off the west coast of British Columbia, where she and her partner have built a home, studios, and gardens surrounded by the sea, trees, and a slower rhythm of life. We talk about how life and friendships change as we move through different seasons, from young motherhood and the early days of blogging to becoming empty nesters and choosing fewer, deeper relationships. Kim shares how those friendships have shaped her, encouraged her, and reminded her that we need women in our lives who have walked before us as well as women who are walking through seasons we have already known.

We talk about Kim’s creative journey and the long process of learning to see her own gifts. She shares how photography helped her see the beauty of the life she was already living, and how food, markets, home, gardening, and travel have all become part of the same way she notices and nurtures beauty in her life. Kim shares about creating rhythms and rituals that make space for creativity and about paying attention to how we are uniquely moved by the world around us rather than assuming we should all be inspired in the same way. Kim’s journey into pottery started years before she ever touched a wheel, but her practice really began with taking community center lessons, dreaming up pieces she wanted to live with in her home, and the simple desire to create. As she fell in love with pottery and grew her craft and business, glaze became the part of the process that intimidated and frustrated her most. Taking an intensive glaze chemistry course became a turning point; it not only gave ger the knowledge to make and fix her own glazes, but it gave her an entirely new confidence in herself. She discovered that she loved the precision and chemistry of glaze, but more importantly, she discovered that she was capable of learning something she had once believed was far beyond her. That confidence has changed what she believes is possible, giving her the tools to recreate colors and feelings she once could only imagine, and the courage to try, fail, learn, and adjust along the way.

This conversation is full of the importance of continuing to step outside our comfortable lives we can so easily create for ourselves, listening to what we need in each season, giving ourselves permission to change, and recognizing that what was right for us in one season may not be what we need in the next. I hope you walk away from this conversation more excited to do what scares you and more inspired to create a life that feels like you.