It feels like it’s taken me an eternity to boil it down. Really it’s just been 30-something years. (No way I’m updating this About page every year, so feel free to just take a guess.) I’ve gone down so many career paths that are worlds apart, trying to figure out what that thing is that I’m made to do. Turns out I was asking the wrong question. It was never about what I’m made to do, but who I’m made to be.
When I look back I realize that, regardless of the job I held or the activities I was involved with, all along I was trying to make things better. What I would call more beautiful. I wanted everything I touched to be a little different, impacted because I left a meaningful mark on it. I’ve tried to do this in my time in the performing arts world, as a mechanical engineer, a researcher/editor, in various administrative roles, as a worship leader, singer/songwriter, teacher/speaker, coach, homemaker, and wife. I’m pretty positive I didn’t succeed every single time, but it’s always what I was aiming for.
The idea for a blog has been inspired by the season my husband, Nathan, and I are currently in. We’re from Atlanta, but we’ll be spending the next year or so as traveling nomads (which started in August 2020). I plan to capture tidbits from our travel, as well as share stories and thoughts about life and what I’m learning along the way. For me, many times that ends up coming out through some type of art, so I’ll share that too.
I hope you feel welcome and inspired here. I also hope that you allow yourself to feel the full spectrum of depth and lightheartedness that I do while writing it all.
A little travel. A little life. A little art.
Hopefully a lot of beauty.
(Read on below for the inspiration of the blog name!)
Beauty is not perfection – it’s meaning. It’s not a flawless surface, but a fearless depth. It’s pleasing to the eye only because it was first pleasing to the soul.
Lauren Settembrini
Inspiration Behind the Name
The name Trailing Beauty holds a double meaning since the word “trailing” can refer either to something ahead of you that you’re following, or to something following behind you. I just sort of got lucky that the idea of trailing also works well with our traveling season of living as nomads! And that the domain name was available, let’s be real.
So – Trailing Beauty it is! I want to challenge myself to both always be on the lookout for beauty, but to also leave it everywhere I go.
I know the word ‘beauty’ is risky to use because there are so many interpretations of what it is, especially in today’s culture. If someone describes something or someone as beautiful, many people think it means flawless, glamorous, pleasing to the eye, and not necessarily a true reflection of reality.
But I want to recapture what I believe beauty really is. Beauty is not perfection – it’s meaning. It’s not a flawless surface, but a fearless depth. It’s pleasing to the eye only because it was first pleasing to the soul. It reflects the truest reality without ignoring the swirling mess that so often lies beneath.
It’s actually everywhere, but it’s easy to get distracted and miss it if we’re too busy. Or if we’ve just limited its definition to a tiny sliver of the culturally accepted version. Whenever we do see it, though, it can remind us of what’s good and true and more expansive than us. That we’re meant to be connected, not only to one another, but to a grander story.
So that’s what I want this space to be. Somewhere to share my little piece of the beautiful, albeit sometimes messy and painful, journey that we’re all on together. My hope for anyone who lands here is to invite you to join me in the journey of learning to view life as a place where beauty can both always be found and can always be left in the wake of living.
If you find yourself inspired to look for or leave behind beauty in your own journey – share it with #trailingbeauty.
