On Light & Home
The first red leaf always feels like a secret whisper carried on the wind: change is coming. I’ve always loved the summer; it symbolizes a freedom from responsibility that holds me down for the rest of the year. I loved to dance in the summer sun as if time itself would slow just for me. Autumn brings with it a new kind of warmth, one that’s cultivated and tended. It’s a warm fire, crackling and popping quietly, and the golden light that spills over the hearth.
Growing up, the fireplace was a symbol of comfort. There was a magic that came over the living room when it was lit, a feeling I still experience even now as an adult. With lights out, a comforting movie on the television, and the fireplace lit, my childhood home glimmers. I used to sit by it for hours on a blanket. I don’t remember what spells I weaved there, just that it was a magical place for me as a child. It still is for me as an adult. That’s what hearthlight is to me—a threshold between a mystical world and the comfort of home.
Something is soothing about sitting around a fire. The scent of pine, the crackle, a billow of wind, the little embers taking flight up the chimney. These are core memories, these nights by the fireplace with my parents. So many of my core memories begin in that glow, with family gathered around the fire.
Fires burn bright, then fade, and so do the chapters of our lives. This summer’s chapter has ended. And so it brings with it the end of my journey at Tiffin University. My final grade has been posted, and there is no other class in the queue for me. Closing out my final coursework tabs felt like closing a door for good. I am finished. But it won’t quite be real until the diploma comes in October. It’s during this transitional period, when the leaves turn and fall, that I felt a shift in the wind as well, for myself.
As the others dash toward school, I transition away from it just as autumn transforms the world. The hearth is where we gather in the cold, and autumn is the season that calls us toward it. Every ember rising into the night sky feels like a leaf falling — nature’s reminder that change is constant.
I want to curl up at home and welcome this new season and this new phase with an open heart and mind. I’ve learned a lot through my journey as a first-time author and student of the publishing business. There’s a lot I wish I had done differently as I launched myself as an author, and for a while, I was convinced I couldn’t change. But in this transitional period between graduate school and the next journey, I realized something important: reinvention isn’t just possible — it’s necessary. Just as fires die and are rekindled, we too must burn and begin again. Just as the trees shed their leaves, I’m shedding an old name, an old skin. That’s why I’ve chosen to rename not only my newsletter, but myself.
This is me placing a new name at the hearth: Teresa St. George. And this hearth, this light, carries not only my name but his.
In honor of my loving grandfather, John St. George. A mischievous man, he lived a life of adventure, basking in his hobbies. He made jewelry, developed his own photos, and tended the garden when Grandma was too old to do it herself. One year, we had so much rain that his backyard flooded, so he took daily photos and called it “Lake St. George”. At 77 years old, he decided to go back to school, not to get his GED but to get his diploma. He enrolled in public school and attended classes. He even spoke at his graduation. He loved strawberry milkshakes.
I wish I could remember what Grandpa looked like in the firelight. He was always glowing in his own way; he didn’t need the magic of a hearth to wear a halo. I can remember his blue eyes, though. And I can still remember the sound of his voice. He was the gentlest, kindest man I’ve ever known.
Autumn is a season of letting go and gathering close, of leaves falling even as the hearth burns brighter. As I step into this new chapter, I carry both the lessons of what has passed and the promise of what is yet to come. When I think of hearthlight now, I see not just the fires of my childhood or the embers of my own reinvention, but the glow of legacy, and the warmth passed from my grandfather’s hands to mine. This season, I carry his fire forward. Change isn’t just happening in the world around me; it’s happening within me. This fire I tend is more than memory — it is the spark of who I am becoming. And I am ready to burn bright.
