The Road That Led Me Home: A story about slow magic, muddy hands, and the art of listening to quiet dreams.

Confession #777:

Whistle & Page didn’t begin with clay.

It was seeded quietly in 2014 — an idea, a name, a whisper of something handmade and heartfelt. But it truly began to grow over the next few years, with moss and pebbles. Terrariums tucked inside glass domes and fairy gardens lit by tiny solar lanterns. I was elbow-deep in soil and succulents, building miniature worlds for weekend market stalls, cradling a newborn in one arm and a watering can in the other.

Pottery came later. I was already drawn to it — the weight, the stillness, the way earth could be shaped into something useful and beautiful — but with a baby in my arms and a hundred tiny things tugging at my time, I didn’t yet have the space to surrender to such a demanding, majestic, ancient craft.

Not yet. But even then, I knew clay was waiting. And one day, I’d come for it.

By 2017, I was serious about pottery. Not hobby-serious. Life-serious. The kind of serious that looked like late nights with notebooks and glaze tests, immersed in stoneware, watching YouTube demos with coloured pencils in hand. The kind of serious that carved itself into your bones.

I was lucky enough to learn from some truly brilliant artists at my local art gallery. Walter, Elsa and Katherine — they were my sensei. They taught me things I still carried in my hands years later. I missed that place more than I could say.

Monica was the first person I met there — quiet, wildly talented, a sculptor with a gentle fierceness I admired instantly. Esmé became my bosom friend, the one who still kept me grounded, still knew when I needed to be talked off a ledge or nudged toward the wheel. Debbie and Amorette — both hilarious, sharp and warm — kept me laughing through every misfired glaze and collapsed bowl.

And then there was the café, the beating heart of that space. Hans and Rose — both artists in their own right, both brilliant. Hans, not only a gifted chef but a phenomenal potter. And Rose... I loved everything about her. Her spirit. Her style. Her utter dedication to her craft and her people.

When we eventually left town, we left them all behind.

But their kindness came with us. Their reassurance. Their belief in the path I was choosing. The way they made space for me in that little world. Pottery people really are the best people.

Then spring brought with it my birthday — a day wrapped in surprise and a spontaneous road trip to faraway places, where I was told to choose anything I wanted from the Old Bus Depot Markets in Canberra. Ryan had secretly scoped out a pottery stall in advance. I wandered through the maze of makers and paused at a table covered in the most beautiful ceramics. A jug caught my eye — baby blue, with deep red and navy pooling like dusk on water. It had a graceful handle and that unmistakable handmade magic that told you a real person had made it. It felt… special. I chose the jug.

I had no idea that Ryan had planned for me to find it. No idea he had orchestrated the whole day. But that wasn’t the real gift. He said, “We’re going to meet the potter.”

He wanted me to see a working studio. To meet the maker. To feel, just for a moment, what this life could be like. The real gift wasn’t the jug — it was the hope of it all. A future that suddenly felt achingly possible.

We kept driving, past nameless towns and leaning fences. The air got cleaner. The sky opened. And eventually, we stopped outside a red barn nestled between paddocks and the kind of quiet you could feel in your bones. Two border collies, one black and the other a glorious chocolate, trotted up like old friends. There were alpacas. Chickens roaming. Rolling hills. A warmth that wasn’t just the sun.

I stepped out of the car and said, without thinking, “This is it, Ryan. This is where I want to be. This is where I want to live out my days.” He sighed and smiled, “I’ll add it to the list.”

Susan greeted us — the potter who made my new jug — and I was in awe. Of her. Of the barn. Of the rhythm she had built. I was already soul-deep in my own pottery practice by this point, but now the fire was lit. I was scheming. Dreaming. Wondering how I could cheat the system. Find a way out of the rat race. Make a living doing what I loved, with my hands in the earth, with this feeling in my chest.

The seed was planted.

We drove home, but I was different. I went back to work on Monday, but I wasn’t really there.

During the nights, as the house slept, I continued to watch pottery tutorials like they were masterclasses. I paused, rewound, took notes in coloured pencils like I was back in uni. I said no to generic videos and started seeking out specific techniques. The coil-built forms. The trimming methods. Glaze chemistry. My notebooks filled up. My hands ached. And I felt alive.

I poured myself into pottery. Obsessively. Joyfully. It became the tether that pulled me through the day. The meditative repetition, the infinite learning, the grounding ritual of earth and water and fire. It was enchanting. Like coming home to a part of myself that had been waiting all along.

Pottery became my refuge. My sanctuary. My spark. I had found my ikigai — the intersection of what I loved, what I was good at, what the world needed, and what I could (hopefully, one day) make a profession.

Funny thing is… I had found it before. Year 7 art class, when I first touched clay. But this time it wasn’t just written in the stars. It was written in stone. (Pottery joke. You’re welcome.)

By 2019, Ryan’s job had him travelling more. My corporate gig felt like a treadmill on full tilt, full throttle — but I was holding on. I had invested in real gear. A banding wheel. A slab roller. A wheel. And tools for days. I told myself my job funded my dream, and for a while, that was enough.

It was hard juggling it all. Long days with 14-hour work schedules, door to door. Trying to raise a healthy and thriving toddler who you’d find asleep on the couch in front of the TV, while I silently wondered how many doughnuts had been consumed that day without my consent. And, I was judged. Judged for daring to invest in myself and my craft. Judged for taking the time to build a business. Some even went as far as calling me a bad mum. But I had a purpose that kept me upright — manifesting a better life for us.

Then Ryan called one night from the road. He couldn’t stay in town, he said — everything was booked — but he’d found a sweet little place in a village not far off. “I think you’d like it,” he said. “What’s it called, I’ll look it up?” I asked. But I didn’t wait for the answer. I opened the Domain app instead.

There it was. My house. The glasshouse. An atrium of a home with endless windows to frame the seasons. It was simple and humble, and had a fireplace and a garden and space for the baby, and the dogs and clay and quiet.

I sent it to Ryan. We talked. Dreamed. Budgeted. Couldn’t find a way to make it work. The bank said no. But then the stars aligned, and a guardian angel apeared (aka my incredible neighbour-friend, a dedicated banker, Elizabeth), pulling all the strings. And by the end of April… the deal was done.

We moved in on Harry Potter’s birthday (that’s significant because we’re super fans). Packed our lives into boxes and drove nearly 300 km inland. Left the city. Stepped into stillness.

And it was hard. The adjustment. The silence. The sudden space to hear yourself think. The world coming to a halt. But then came the breathing. The stretching. The exhaling. We felt lucky. Grateful. Rooted. We found our rhythm. We learned the birdsong. As winter turned to spring, the garden began to bloom, and so did Whistle & Page — finally rooted in the land it was meant to grow from.

We were home.

By mid-2022, after nearly a decade of hoping, dreaming, and wishing on every star I could find, I was pregnant again. And I didn’t think it was luck. I believed it was this place — this rhythm. The fresh air. The cool nights. The endless horizon. Drinking water straight from the sky. Looking up to see a galaxy of stars and that unmistakable streak — the Milky Way — reminding you you’re part of something vast and ancient. Hearing birds that seem to know your name. Mornings unfolding like soft fabric. Trees marking time more truthfully than any calendar. A body, after years of being “on,” finally exhaling.

One golden afternoon, we were nearly home — just eight minutes from our gate — when the gums caught the light in that impossible way, each leaf holding fire. The land was bathed in gold, the kind of light that makes everything feel like a sign. We rounded a familiar bend in the road, and something shifted in me. A quiet stirring. Like a whisper from deep inside.

I narrowed my eyes at the driveway ahead, one we had been driving past for years now. A memory, long tucked away, rose to the surface — that birthday, that jug, that barn.

I turned to the window, heart quickening.

Then I looked at Ryan, the pieces clicking into place, and said — half wondering, half breathless —

“Wait… isn’t that where Susan lives?”

That’s the thing about manifesting, isn’t it?

It’s not all stardust and serendipity. Not just breathless wishes cast into a starry sky — though there were plenty of those. It’s scribbled notebooks and quiet persistence. Long nights. Early mornings. Choosing the slow path, again and again.

It’s swapping Netflix for pottery videos, comfort for curiosity, dreams for to-do lists — and still, somehow, daring to believe.

It’s all the small decisions that felt like nothing at the time. The detours. The no thank yous. The not yets. It’s trusting that some future version of you is already living the life you’re shaping — and letting that be enough to keep going.

It’s doing the work and still leaving space for wonder. It’s saying yes to the house that makes your chest ache in the best possible way… before the door is even unlocked.

It’s the tiniest, quietest moments — the ordinary days, strung together like fairy lights — that slowly, imperceptibly, become something extraordinary.

And then, one soft afternoon in late autumn, somewhere between errands and golden hour, you glance out the window… and feel it land in your soul:

You called this in. You worked for it. You trusted. You built. This isn’t luck. This is alignment. This is full circle. This is yours.

Until next time,
Nawsheen, your friendly homebody artist from Murrumbateman.