There's a room in my house in Sechelt where time disappears.
I put on some indie folk, low and easy, and I start pouring. No clock. Just a goal — today I'm making X candles in Mossy, or Woodsy, or whatever scent is calling me. The wax melts, the fragrance blooms, and for a little while everything is exactly as it should be.
That's why I started Twig.
I wanted to get involved in my community. I wanted to test abilities I'd never had the chance to explore before. And I wanted to build something around a passion I'd carried quietly for years — fragrance, and everything about the West Coast that makes me feel at home. Even the rain. Especially the rain. It's always comforted me, that grey softness that rolls in off the water. I wanted to bottle that feeling and give it to other people.
What I didn't fully anticipate was everything that comes after the pour.
The part nobody talks about
Starting a business alone is lonely in ways that are hard to describe until you're in it.
You make something you're genuinely proud of. You photograph it, write about it, post it, and then — you wait. And the silence that follows is its own kind of challenge. No marketing team. No budget for ads. Just you, your phone, and the slow, humbling work of trying to get people to notice something you care deeply about.
I'll be honest: I compare myself to big brands. I look at their Instagram feeds, their polished websites, their thousands of followers, and I feel it — that gap. It's discouraging sometimes. Building an online presence without a team behind you is genuinely hard, and anyone who tells you otherwise is either very lucky or not telling the whole truth.
Getting traction — real traction, not just likes from people who already love you — takes longer than you think.
What keeps me going
Two things, mostly.
The first is the people. Friends, family, and strangers at the local market who pick up a candle, smell it, and light up. That reaction — the pause, the breath in, the "oh wow" — never gets old. It's the whole reason Twig exists.
The second thing is stubbornness. I don't hit a goal and move on. I obsess. I circle back. I find a way. It's not always pretty but it's who I am. Right now my goal is 1,000 Instagram followers. I'm not there yet. But I will be.
Why I'm telling you this
Because if you're also building something small and handmade and deeply personal — and it's taking longer than you hoped — I want you to know you're not alone.
Twig is six weeks old. We're hand-poured in Sechelt, BC, shipped across Canada, and built entirely by one person who loves the smell of rain and refuses to quit.
Let outside in.