BH Farm; A place for belonging by Tash Brooks
“I have learned the hard way that you cannot truly belong to anything if you do not belong to yourself first.”
When I picture Beverly Hills Farm, I see a long table. There are raw linen napkins and fresh flowers. There’s something warm and slightly burned in the center of the table that everyone swears is delicious. Of course it’s not always the food that’s the most delicious, but the togetherness. There are women I love, with mascara smudged from laughing and sometimes crying. There is good olive oil, imperfect sourdough, and joy. So much joy. No one is pretending they have it all together. In fact, there’s no pretending at all. That is the only rule. You are welcome to come as you are, but not as your highlight reel.
For a long time, I was a professional chameleon. I could read a room, adjust, soften my edges, dial parts of myself up or down so I could be the perfect addition - personally and professionally. People loved that skill in me. It made me easy and agreeable. But here is the cost that no one talks about: in order to fit in, the first person you betray and abandon is yourself. Before you know it you’ve built relationships, friendships, careers - an entire life where you’re never really seen. True belonging requires us to be who we are. Not a curated version. Not the version we think will be the easiest to love. When we change who we are so that others will stay, that is not belonging, that is fitting in. And fitting in is the greatest threat to belonging there is.
I think that we have gotten so confused about what it means to belong. We have siloed ourselves in echo chambers to feel connection and we have begun to qualify connection by whether we “hate” or “love” the same people or political candidates. Our attachments have become dependent on our ability to never really talk about anything personal or real. We’re trading in false goods and false ideologies. It’s counterfeit connection. It looks like closeness from the outside, but inside it is made of silence, performance, and swallowed words. And you know what? It’s bloody exhausting.
The question I keep asking: What does it mean to ‘belong’? To be seen? How do we hold space for other people who want to explore the many facets of themselves that can sometimes be diametrically opposed? Beverly Hills Farm was inspired and built around answering those questions. Beverly Hills Farm began as a little creative nudge that said: what if your love of beautiful things and your need for healing and belonging could be the same thing? This space is my personal experiment in what it looks like to belong to myself first, and then build a life and a community from that place. It’s a place where I let myself believe that it’s all possible.
Grief lives here too, quietly. Not only for people I have lost, but for the versions of myself I walked away from without a proper goodbye. The girl who tried so hard. The woman who stayed too long. The younger me who needed comfort and got criticism instead. I have been unrelenting and even cruel to her, many, many times. I have demanded perfection when she needed protection. I demanded performance when she needed reassurance. Beverly Hills Farm is where I invite all of those former selves back in. I set an extra place at the table for the overwhelmed twenty something, the tired new mother, the grief stricken sister and daughter and the high achieving fixer. I let them sit down, barefoot and forgiven, and I say, “You were doing the best you could. You deserved so much more kindness than I gave you.” BH Farm, in its own quiet way, is my ongoing apology and my amends. A softer voice. A slower pace. A home where I do not abandon myself when things get hard.
It is also friendship. It is the sound of Beau’s voice first thing in the morning when we do our daily check in. It is the shared thrill of getting a label right - finally. The quiet “I see you” when one of us is barely holding it together, and the sacred silliness of laughing over something absolutely ridiculous at midnight. Building this together is a reminder that collaboration can be nourishing instead of draining. That creating something beautiful with another woman can be medicine. And Beau has been that for me. She has been the medicine I never could have seen coming and healed me more times than I can count. She has been my north star and has restored my faith in female friendship many, many times over.
I am also very aware that this is not just about products. It is about values. Beverly Hills Farm is my way of voting for a slower, more conscious way of living. It is a gentle refusal of hustle as a personality trait. It is a bet that true luxury is not about price or status, but about how you feel in your own skin and in your own home. Calm. Connected. Alive.
Beverly Hills Farm is a home we are building in real time for ourselves and the other women who are unapologetically honest about who they are. It’s about a place of true belonging where every seat at the table is an invitation of compassion, friendship, courage, curiosity and a very deep desire for a life that feels as good on the inside as it looks on the outside.
- TB