We had plans. Big ones. We were going to do the ritual, drink the tea, say the mantra, get the download. Become the people our vision boards said we’d be by now.

Instead, the Universe had other plans. We got silenced by mushrooms, sucker-punched by a wedding, and the client exitus that made headlines.

Turns out, transformation doesn’t show up with a flower crown and a five-year plan. It arrives uninvited, flips your life inside out, and hands you a pile of mud—then dares you to make something beautiful.

This is how Cobalt + Capulets began—not as a brand, but as a reckoning. And these are the stories that shaped it.

THE TRIP THAT DIDN’T TAKE US ANYWHERE

We came looking for clarity. The kind that hits between dimensions and downloads. Instead, we got… stillness. Which, apparently, was the whole point.

The medicine had other plans.

We had charged crystals. Set intentions. Cleared schedules. We were ready to cry, purge, rebirth, and ascend (ideally in that order) with good lighting. Instead? We couldn’t move. For hours. Eyes open: reality. Eyes closed: technicolor Alice in Wonderland. Every time we tried to speak, it felt like swallowing fog. There were no profound downloads or cosmic conversations. Just stillness. And the void wearing sequins. And a very obvious message we didn’t want to hear:

Stop trying to control what the transformation looks like.

We were used to scripting our breakthroughs. But this was a reminder that expansion doesn’t always come with a narrative arc. Sometimes it just stuns you into stillness, so you can learn how to listen.

And that is one of the seeds where C+C was quietly planted. Not in what we said, but in what we couldn’t say. Not in our big ideas, but in the space between them.

THROWING OURSELVES TOGETHER

Pottery seemed interesting. A good distraction from the fact that we were trying to survive a year that felt like it was actively trying to kill us.

First, there was the wedding in London: black tie, open bar, a night that should’ve been joyful. Instead, it ended in an attempted assault that left us in a hospital across the world, explaining our trauma to a police officer who seemed personally offended we hadn’t prevented the whole thing ourselves.

Then came the breakup with The German, who seemed promising until his ex (who is no joke a stripper), told their daughter we were a whore (no shade to strippers). He just shrugged and called her “a lot.”

Oh, and then all our freelance clients let us go. Every last one. Like they coordinated it in a Slack channel we weren’t invited to.

So yeah. Pottery wasn’t a plan. It was a panic-click on a Groupon.

But once we got our hands in the clay, something clicked. We weren’t making a masterpiece—we were making a mess. Lopsided bowls. Slouching mugs. A tragic attempt at a vase that somehow looked like a haunted gourd. And yet, we kept showing up. Because for two hours a week, we got to shape something that didn’t talk back, didn’t disappear, didn’t ask us to be more palatable.

Clay is honest. It holds whatever energy you bring. It collapses if you force it, cracks if you ignore it, and responds best when you meet it with steady hands. So, we tried. We breathed. We softened our grip. We stopped trying to center everything perfectly.

Eventually, the clay held.

And we realized—we weren’t just throwing pots. We were re-learning how to hold ourselves.

THE OTHER REFRIGERATOR

There’s always a second fridge. Ours was in the garage, next to a dusty treadmill and a Costco palette of chicken broth. It hummed like a relic and smelled like fish sauce and forever. We weren’t allowed to open it unsupervised as kids (not because it was dangerous), but because it was sacred. That’s where the “real food” lived. The ingredients that couldn’t be seen by white friends without explanation.

It held the backup stock of everything: frozen dumplings, three kinds of soy sauce, an unidentifiable Tupperware that somehow knew more about our ancestry than we did. It wasn’t glamorous. But it was reliable. It fed every cousin, every celebration, every “You already ate? Come eat again.” That fridge taught us that survival didn’t mean scraping by. It meant being ready. It meant abundance, even if it looks like the United Nations of unnaturally flavored soda.

As kids, we were embarrassed. We’d apologize for the smells, explain away the labels, hide the weird stuff behind the acceptable snacks. But now? We’d give anything for the weird stuff. The steady hum is a reminder that love doesn’t ask to be understood. It just keeps showing up. Steady. Constant. Nourishing.

That second fridge was our first lesson in legacy. In quiet provision. In congruity that doesn’t need applause. It doesn’t sparkle. It doesn’t post. It preserves. And sometimes, that’s more than enough.

But when we look back, what stands out isn’t the drama or the downloads. It’s that we stayed. We didn’t look for an escape when the trip got still. We didn’t crumble when the clay cracked. We didn’t toss out the weird sauces or the stories that came with them. We stayed. And somehow, that steadiness became its own kind of meaning.

Maybe the point isn’t always to transcend, heal, or make sense of everything. Maybe it’s to notice what holds us. The body. The breath. The fridge no one talked about but everyone depended on.

This wasn’t a thesis. It was a series of moments that said: keep going. You’re more held than you know. And sometimes, enough is already here.