Life, like craft, is a work in progress, and so am I.

Improvement isn’t optional, it’s tradition. For Black people, excellence has never been a luxury. It has always been a necessity. We’ve had to go further, work harder, and refine more deeply just to be considered for a fraction of the opportunities freely given to our white counterparts. That reality didn’t break us, it sharpened us. It taught us how to evolve, how to adapt, how to keep becoming.

Children of the Urf is built on the understanding that “always getting better” isn’t pressure, it’s inheritance. And “know what’s good for you” is both advice and reminder: to trust your instincts, honor your craft, and move with intention. These aren’t just slogans; they’re ways of living, ways of working, ways of seeing ourselves clearly.

I’m working to ensure that this brand is made up of tinkers and thinkers, people who work with their hands and their minds, who experiment, question, refine, and return to the work again and again. At its core, Children of the Urf is about shaping self-esteem, finding what brings people out of their shells. 

My time at Parsons School of Design was rooted in play, exploration, and self-discovery. Fashion, to me, has always been about identity and storytelling. In a space like Parsons, I stood out simply by showing up as myself. Add the audacity of being proud of who I am, where I come from, and the fearlessness to claim it, and making a statement became inevitable.

My life, especially my time in school, was defined by self-discovery, discipline, and refinement. I began millinery design during my thesis year, and what started as a component of a collection quickly became a pillar of my practice. Now, it’s a pillar of my life. Falling in love with this craft has been one of life’s truest delights. There’s always room to improve, that’s a given. At least I can admit it. What I’m building is rooted in my inner child, the part of me that still believes in fantasy, the version of myself not bound by the world’s limitations. That child still lives with me, and through my creative practice, I challenge what I’ve been taught about those limits. In honoring that voice, I’m carving out my own lane within the world of millinery, something honest, refreshing, and deeply true to me.

Right now, both the brand and I are in a special stage of becoming. As we engage with this dying craft, we’ve begun showing up in the few remaining spaces that still cherish it, and once again, we stand out. Like millinery itself, I enjoy flipping things on their head, seeing opportunities where others see constraints, and fully utilizing my perspective on the world. I view my Blackness as ever-expanding. Within the company, that’s where our point of view begins; where it ends is something still unfolding.

We’re finding our audience, and our audience is finding us, naturally, day by day, never forced. Each person who connects becomes part of the story. Every hat sold feels like someone taking a chance on me, a leap of faith we take together.

Children of the Urf is still becoming, just like me. Always learning. Always crafting. Always improving. And if you’re willing to grow with us, there’s a crown waiting for you.

The post Children of the Urf appeared first on Karjaka Magazine.

Joy is not always loud. Sometimes it arrives like sunlight, quiet, ordinary, and somehow enough to soften the sharp edges of a hard day. I used to think joy was something you found after you earned it, after the checklist, after the milestone, after the next accomplishment. Over time, I have learned something simpler and far more freeing, joy is something we can practice, and we can build spaces that help it find us.

When life has felt heaviest for me, I have returned to what is still available. Not the grand plan, not the perfect timing, just what is true in the moment. There was a season when I stopped asking, “What am I missing?” and started asking, “What do I have?” And my answer was the same every morning, I had the sun. The sun made me smile every single day. It reminded me that even in the darkest moments, light returns. That is not poetry to me, it is a pathway back to myself.

Staying rooted, for me, has always meant staying close to nature. Not as a luxury, but as a practice. A few minutes outside, a hand on the bark of a tree, the pause you take when wind moves through branches, these are small acts, but they recalibrate something in the body. They return you to your senses, they widen your breath, they invite your shoulders to drop. They make space.

That same intention guided a decision we made at Dr. Hauschka Skincare USA when we created our home office. In 2018, we bought an old church and reimagined it as a workplace built for openness, collaboration, and care. As the space transformed, I kept thinking about what it feels like to move through a day without a window, without a glance of the outdoors, without that simple reminder that the world is bigger than your inbox.

So, we designed the office so every person could see outside. Every seat has a window. Every person has access to nature with a single lift of the eyes. It is a small structural choice with a human impact. It says, “You belong here, and you deserve light.”

We also reclaimed and repurposed the old wooden pews from the church, honoring their history instead of discarding it. We used the wood to adorn our walls, a reminder that beauty can be carried forward, that what once held people in community can still hold us, even differently. That is part of what joy looks like to me, respect for what has been, care for what is, and attention to what might still become. It took a village to realize this type of vision, and I have to thank my dear friend and architect, Everardo Garcia. His guidance and intuitive skills reinforced the idea that we can imagine and create beautiful spaces for community and gathering.

This understanding deepened during a conversation I had on The Giving Garden Podcast with Dr. Emiliana Simon-Thomas, the Science Director of the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley, and one of the leading researchers on compassion, gratitude, and prosocial happiness. She said something that stayed with me, joy is not something we simply stumble into, it is something we cultivate through connection, kindness, and meaningful relationships.

We talked about The Big Joy Project, a global citizen science initiative that invites people to complete simple “micro acts” of joy each day for seven days. I loved that they made it small on purpose. As Emiliana explained, many approaches to happiness ask for a dramatic overhaul, but most people are already carrying full lives. The invitation is not to become someone else; it is to make a tiny swap. Seven minutes that might otherwise go to scrolling can become seven minutes of awe, gratitude, or connection.

She also shared research that challenged the culture of achievement so many of us are trained to follow. Happiness is not only about circumstances. A meaningful portion of well-being is shaped by what we do, how we behave, how we walk through the world each day. That framing felt like relief. It means we are not powerless. We have choices, even when life is complicated.

One of my favorite practices she offered was a “gratitude one, two, three,” say thank you, name what the person did, acknowledge the effort, then name the goodness it created. It can be a text, an email, a reflection while looking out a window. It is quick, but it changes the temperature of your inner world.

If I have learned anything as a leader, a mother, and a person still practicing her way towards joy, it is this, joy needs room. It needs the spaces between meetings, the light through a window, the walk that is short but honest, the moment you choose kindness when stress is begging you to rush.

Start where you are. Open a window. Step outside for three minutes. Send the gratitude text. Look for sunlight. Build one small corner of your day that welcomes joy in, then return to it again tomorrow.

To learn more about The Big Joy Project, listen to our podcast The Giving Garden Podcast on YouTube.

To learn more about Dr. Hauschka Skincare, visit drhauschka.com

The post Making Room For Joy appeared first on Karjaka Magazine.

It was the brightest time of my life. The temperature was always 72 degrees, the sun was always out, the sunglasses were always on, the commute to the ocean was one and a half songs. Everything around was yellow and blue, white and green, modern and not very sophisticated.

As you might have guessed, I lived in California.

Back in 2016 I lived in San Diego, hated it with all my existence: freshly arrived immigrant with lost self-identification and deep creative crisis, that’s what I was at the moment Aunt Caroline entered my misery and without asking permission claimed herself as my Californian fairytale godmother.

Maybe because she liked me at once, maybe because she was lonely too, or maybe because I had a Persian name.

As a fairytale godmother she had an abundance of fun things she would gift me with, trying to cheer me up from my dark as charcoal depression: old tango shoes so I’d return to dancing tango again, she taught me how to do coffee reading, she invited me to her watercolor Sundays to paint her roses. We would walk around her fruitful garden and talk for hours. The garden was truly remarkable, but its main treasure was something she had nothing to do with: a 40-year-old pomegranate tree. And that tree was damn fruitful.

The sneaky ways she included me in all those cheering activities and made me accept gifts was pure art.

One day she asked me to help her harvest pomegranates. As she was picking them up and putting them in the basket I was assigned to hold, she would talk:

“You know, if the apple in Abrahamic religions has always been associated with temptation, discord, forbidden pleasure and, after all, sin. In opposite, the pomegranate has been sort of an apple’s protagonist in the fruit world: a completely different symbology: it’s about life, love, prosperity, wisdom and beauty.”

I kept nodding enthusiastically, while the basket was quickly gaining weight.

“You see those crows? – Continued Aunt Caroline, – We won’t let them have all of those gifts. Did I tell you I bought this house for this tree? Oh, boy, put the basket down, it’s heavy! Come, I’ll show you my butterfly garden I made last month.”

On my way back home, she came out to the car with me, holding a box. She quickly put it in my trunk and disappeared in the green alley leading to her house.

I opened the box: it was full of pomegranates.

That’s the way she was.

A few days later I received the news that Caroline was leaving and our watercolor Sundays were canceled for a while.

I was devastated to a degree I didn’t expect: that was what was keeping me alive. Even though my watercolors were pale and lifeless as I was myself.

And one day instead of making another glass of pomegranate juice I took my watercolors and three fruits and painted them out of desperation.

It came out alright. But Caroline was happy when I sent her the paintings with a sad note: “I don’t think I’m doing a great job… But I had fun as you said I should.”

“It’s alright, my dear Daria, I’ll send you more pomegranates.”

And so she did.

And I kept doing my lousy job painting them, because this gesture put some sort of obligation on me that I accepted. I said: “I must paint”.

The moments I painted felt like home, but watercolor was bleeding. It made me nervous, and I was seeking peace.

So one day, I took out my husband’s grandmother’s copper set, and, among them, threw all kinds of beautiful things on a table, including the pomegranates.

But this time, I took the oils. I think I projected all the things I wanted to have and feel in life into that still life: thick darkness of velvet, its mystery and beauty, the things that have some historical value, and the fullness of the open pomegranate: the feast! The celebration that ends with the rising sun, with music, people, dancing, love and the feel of being home.

A week later I had a painting.

Time passed. I overcame my depression, left California, and began the life of an artist in far worse weather but a far more favorable environment: New York, New York.

It took me seven long years to emerge from that painting in human form, here, in New York City and stand before my very painting and realize this is how we have to be shown.

It was up until last September when I visited Sergei Parajanov’s museum in Yerevan, Armenia: the country with pomegranate as its main symbol. I fell in love with his movies after watching “The Color of Pomegranate”. The museum was created in his house packed with jaw-dropping art that he created when he was banned from cinema. And I thought that the way I imagined myself being reborn from the painting only scratched the surface of what full creative savage rebellion can look like.

Later that very year on my trip to Tbilisi, Georgia I walked on one of the old paved streets, and was telling my guide this story. We scrolled through some of the Parajanov pictures, and one of them was taken somewhere in Tbilisi.

All of a sudden, my guide laughed loudly.

“We just walked 5 feet next to this very spot.” – he said.

And I wanted to believe that our souls had a handshake. And the voice in my head threw a little memory from which it all started:

The post The Color of Pomegranates appeared first on Karjaka Magazine.

The Art of Getting Through The Sadness

Luckily I can usually stretch this version of myself through the holidays by swapping The Cranberries out for Wrapped in Red, and my lumberjack flannels for my Christmas Hidden Valley Ranch Dressing sweater and a steady rotation of holiday brooches. But then there’s Deep-Winter Me, the one who is irritated by the sound of people simply existing indoors, feels personally attacked by a delayed train, and is one sad song away from calling it a day at 4:48 p.m. Enter: Seasonal Affective Disorder.

Seasonal Affective Disorder is unfortunately abbreviated as SAD, which feels so unnecessary. It’s what happens every winter when the sun disappears. Your motivation follows it, and suddenly even small tasks like changing your bed sheets feel aspirational. The important thing to know is that SAD isn’t just a personality flaw, a weakness, or a failure of gratitude. It’s science. Real, peer-reviewed, lab-coat science. When daylight decreases, your circadian rhythm—the internal clock that tells your brain when to wake up, sleep, and feel joy—gets thrown off. Less sunlight means less serotonin (the “everything is fine” chemical) and more melatonin (the “cancel plans, lower expectations, and go horizontal” chemical). In short: your brain is doing winter exactly as designed, unfortunately without checking your schedule or emotional availability first. But before you resign yourself to accepting low-grade despair and feeling like a half-deflated balloon for three months, I’m going to lay out some helpful tools that are equal parts research and non-peer-reviewed entertainment masquerading as solutions.

Since all of us here believe in science (Right? Just checking), let’s talk Vitamin D. It’s one of the few things your body makes because of the sun. When sunlight hits your skin, it triggers a process that helps produce Vitamin D, which plays a role in everything from bone health to immune function to, crucially, mood regulation. The problem is that in winter, the sun clocks out early, shows up late, and spends most of its shift hiding behind clouds and tall buildings. Fewer daylight hours mean less sun exposure, which means many of us are walking around quietly deficient without realizing it. This explains why you mouthed “Unbelievable” when the Trader Joe’s line wrapped through frozen foods, despite knowing this is always the price of entry. Low Vitamin D levels have been linked to depression, fatigue, and the vague but persistent feeling that life is happening to you instead of with you. In short, Vitamin D is essentially bottled daylight, which we can all take every morning as a small nod to the version of ourselves who used to wake up happy for no reason. Is it a cure-all? No. Does it help? Yes. Is it humbling to realize your seasonal despair might partially be solved by a $12 bottle from CVS? Deeply.

Then there’s the Happy Lamp. I’m fully aware the Happy Lamp sounds stupid and fake. It sounds like something Gwyneth Paltrow would sell you for $400 and imply your sadness is a mindset issue, and yet, against all odds, it actually works. Light therapy lamps are designed to mimic natural sunlight, specifically the bright early-day light that helps regulate your circadian rhythm. When your brain gets that signal first thing in the morning, it knows what time it is, what chemicals it should release, and most importantly that it does not need to spiral before noon. Used consistently, a Happy Lamp can help reduce melatonin production during the day while encouraging serotonin, helping to enhance mood, focus, and the fragile sense that maybe, just maybe, today isn’t a total wash. I sit in front of mine every morning like a houseplant that’s been rotated toward the window: upright, compliant, and hoping for the best. I won’t lie, sometimes it makes me feel like I’m in an episode of Black Mirror—but if winter insists on depriving us of real sunlight, I see no shame in tricking my brain with a well-lit lie.

Now, these biological approaches are very helpful, but on their own, they’re not always enough to undo the season’s subtle character assassination. Winter isn’t just a biological event; it’s a psychological endurance sport. Which is why we have to give ourselves things to look forward to, and aggressively. Planning a trip, a dinner, a concert, or even a really good soup-night can actually change your brain chemistry. Anticipation boosts dopamine and serotonin, meaning your brain starts feeling better before the thing even happens. This is where my corny-ass personality comes in. If you know me, you know I love finding reasons to celebrate. This past summer, a group of Gen Z gays told me that the way I earnestly and fully commit to every holiday gives off “major camp counselor vibes.” While it briefly made me want to hurt their feelings, they’re not wrong. Do I construct an annual advent-style calendar for October with daily tasks like “Whisper a secret to the wind,” and forward it to 200 friends to get everyone in the Halloween spirit? Yes, I do. Did I spend $100 on leg warmers, a body suit, and a dance belt to dress up as Jane Fonda for seven Pride-themed fitness classes that no one asked for? Duh. If you’re wondering why I’m like this, I have two answers. One: I’m a Midwesterner with a Pisces Sun and Leo Rising. Two: It works. If the world is going to be dark and cold, I’m going to be festive out of spite. Put that on my headstone. My candles are lit, my seasonal playlists are queued, and I will absolutely be making monkey bread for International Women’s Day “just because.” Joy does not need permission.

If all of that fails, you can always pull out the big guns: make out with someone. I won’t cite a study for this one, but kissing releases dopamine, oxytocin, and endorphins, all chemicals that tell your nervous system you are safe, desired, and alive. In a perfect world, this would be someone you burn bright for, someone you’d like to take to the Monet exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum and then rip all of their clothes off. If that person is still hiding from you, the good news is this doesn’t need to be someone you’re going to marry. Maybe you’re on the dance floor and you don’t even know their last name, or which diva they’d defend in an argument. Sometimes you just need a reminder that you exist in a body, and you’re not just exclusively living inside your thoughts. Winter is long. Touch helps. If a lip collaboration feels too far away or too vulnerable, I like to move furniture. Changing your physical environment gives your brain novelty, which is another serotonin cheat code. Suddenly, you’re not depressed, you’re interior designing. You’re not spiraling, you’re Marie Kondo refreshing energy and sparking joy. Is it possible that I’ve just pushed my sadness six feet to the left? Sure. But honestly, it looks a little better over there. 

The post Seasonal Affective Disorder: A Survival Guide  appeared first on Karjaka Magazine.