Vancouver Island · British Columbia

Welcome home.

This is a peaceful house — a from-scratch kitchen, a garden that’s finally ours, lessons at our own table, and ordinary Tuesdays worth treasuring. I’m Harriet. Come in, look around, and stay as long as you like.

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A sunlit farmhouse kitchen with ceramics, fresh bread, and a gingham tea towel on the oven rail

The Peaceful Home

The life we built instead.

This is the whole point of the house. Ordinary days — a from-scratch kitchen, lessons at our own table, a garden that’s finally ours — done peacefully, on purpose. The chaos was cut out so that all of this could exist.

The Kitchen

From-scratch meals, a kettle that is always on, and a table nobody has to earn their seat at. This is the meal my kids ask for every week — and the room where our house feels most like itself.

At our own table

Homeschool Days

Lessons at our own table, at our own pace, in our own peace — a baby on one hip, the girls learning beside me. In the house I grew up in, calm depended on one person’s mood. In ours, nobody has to flinch at a door.

A woven basket of garden tomatoes, zucchini, and herbs on a wooden table beside linen and gingham

The Garden

The first garden that is actually ours. What we’re planting this year, what the island weather allows, and what it means to grow something slowly, in the open, that nobody can take away.

Vancouver Island

Island Life

Ferry mornings. Quiet beaches in the mist. Rain on the roof and wood on the fire. We came to this island with one duffel bag and almost nothing else. Now it’s the place our children will remember as home — the after, still unfolding.

“This is what peace looks like on an ordinary Tuesday. I treasure boring.”

Harriet · Vancouver Island

The Collection

Things from this house.

A small shelf, made slowly, of the things this home actually runs on — my name on them, because this home is mine. Seven pieces to start. No more than this house needs.

A sandy beige tea towel with a navy gingham border draped over the rail of a cream farmhouse range

The Signature Tea Towel

The towel that lives on my oven door. Gingham, like the ones my kitchen deserved all along, with my name on it because this home is mine.

The gingham is printed, not woven — said plainly, because that’s how we do things here.

$28 · or two for $48 Coming soon

A natural canvas apron with navy ties hanging on a brass hook in a sunlit kitchen

The Apron

The apron I actually wear, with my signature stitched where I can see it. For ordinary Tuesdays and everything they stand for.

$58 Coming soon

A matte sandy-beige journal on cream linen beside a cup of tea and a pencil

The Naming Journal

For the woman naming it at her kitchen table. The ten patterns, the questions that helped me, and room to write your own way clear.

$24 · hardcover $32 Coming soon

A lit scented candle with a cream label on a wooden table against a deep navy wall

The Peaceful Home Candle

Evenings in this house end soft. Vanilla, a wick, and the day put down gently.

$34 Coming soon

A natural canvas market tote with a navy gingham panel, standing on a wooden market table

The Market Tote

Built for the market, the library, and a garden that finally gets to be ours. Carries more than groceries.

$36 Coming soon

A framed print with a navy gingham border reading 'This is what peace looks like on an ordinary Tuesday.' hanging above a wooden sideboard

The Tuesday Print

My favourite sentence, framed for the wall I cook under. This is what peace looks like on an ordinary Tuesday.

$49–69 by size Coming soon

A folded cream crewneck sweatshirt with a small embroidered signature, on beige linen beside a stack of books

The Quiet Crewneck

No slogan. Just my name, stitched small, on the sweater I wear through homeschool mornings.

$68 Coming soon

First to know

The collection opens to the letter first.

When these are ready, the women at my table hear about them before anyone else. That’s the only launch plan there is.

Join the Letter →

Made to order, one at a time, when you ask for it — no warehouse, no waste. If it isn’t right, tell us and we’ll make it right. — Harriet

The Letter

A peaceful-home letter, about once a week.

Something from our kitchen, the garden, the homeschool table, or the island — written the way I’d write to a friend. And when there’s book news, the letter hears it first. Followers are rented. A letter is a seat at the table.

Her Story

Raised to protect him.
Free to choose my family.

Three movements, told the way I tell them — the pattern, never the gore. What lives here is how it worked, and how it ended.

“We cut the chaos out so we could build this instead.”

If you were raised to protect the person who ended up hurting your family, this part of the house is yours. Start wherever you are.

Movement I

Since I Was Little

Nobody sat me down and taught me to protect my brother — I absorbed it, from birth. He could do no wrong; if he hurt someone, there was a reason, and if someone pulled away, they were the problem. One by one, everyone else was cut off or rewritten to me as a liar, until he was nearly the only family I had left. I called that loyalty. It was training.

Movement II

When the Veil Lifted

I knew on day one that moving in with him was wrong. I said so, out loud. We stayed anyway, until the weekend it turned violent and the spell finally broke. Seeing clearly didn’t happen in one moment — it happened slowly, and then all at once. Once I saw the pattern for what it was, I couldn’t unsee it.

Movement III

I Chose My Family

We left with one duffel bag, on a ferry, with our two little girls — and I would choose that bag again every single day. Choosing my husband and my children cost us almost everything we owned. It was still the cheapest price I ever paid. Our son was born here, on this island, into a quiet house.

You don’t have to be out yet to be welcome here. Seeing it clearly is the first step, and it counts.

The Manipulation Map

Was it manipulation?

Kept here, toward the back of the house, for the woman still in it. I am not a therapist, and this is not a diagnosis of anyone in your life. These are the ten patterns I lived inside, named the way I finally named them — with the question that helped me under each one. You don’t need all ten to be true. I had most of them, for years, and still called it loyalty.

No. 01

Raised to Protect Them

He could do no wrong. Nobody taught me that in words — I absorbed it before I was old enough to question it.

The question that helpedWho in your family was nobody ever allowed to question?

No. 02

Your Only Family, By Design

One by one, everyone else was cut off, warned off, or described to me as lying, jealous, or unsafe — until he was the family I had left.

The question that helpedIf you left them tomorrow, who would you have left — and who decided that?

No. 03

It Only Starts When You’re Alone

The interrogations and the pressure never happened in front of my husband. They waited until he was at work, and I carried them all day.

The question that helpedDoes it stop when a safe witness is in the room?

No. 04

Stories Carried Between People

He told me things about my husband that weren’t true, in a voice full of concern — so we’d be upset with each other, and never with the source.

The question that helpedWhat happens if you check the story directly, with the person, the same day?

No. 05

Terror by Night, Tears by Morning

Screamed at at night; comforting his tears about “family” by morning. The swing is the trap — you end up caring for the person who frightened you.

The question that helpedIf you wrote down just the facts for one week, with no apologies in between, what would the pattern show?

No. 06

Rewritten the Next Day

What I saw with my own eyes became “not what happened,” retold calmly in front of other people until I doubted myself.

The question that helpedDo you trust your own notes more than their retelling? Start keeping notes.

No. 07

Made to Carry the Threats

The worst threats against my husband were told to me first — so the fear lived in my body even when nothing was happening.

The question that helpedWho benefits from you being afraid all day?

No. 08

Made to Clean It Up

Delete what you recorded. Keep the official story tidy. Protect the people who hurt us. Complicity is manufactured — it makes you feel too involved to leave.

The question that helpedWhat have you hidden, deleted, or explained away to protect them — that you would never do for anyone else?

No. 09

Guilt as the Leash

“You’re splitting the family.” Stories carried to relatives. Demands passed through other people. The guilt is real — and it is also the leash, working exactly as designed.

The question that helpedWho actually split the family: the person who named the behaviour, or the person who did it?

No. 10

The Veil Lifts

Slowly, then all at once. I left with one bag, on a ferry, to start over. Seeing clearly is not failing to act fast enough. It is the act itself.

The question that helpedIf your daughter described your life back to you, what would you tell her to do?

The free guide

Was It Manipulation? — all ten patterns, in one place.

The full guide: the ten patterns I lived inside, the questions that finally made it clear to me, and what breaking free looked like for us. Written to be read in one sitting, at a kitchen table, maybe late at night. It’s the list I wish someone had handed me.

A quiet writing desk by a window — an open journal, a cup of tea, and a folded gingham cloth

The Book

I’m writing the rest of this story.

My husband told his side of it in his book, Defiance. Mine is the sister’s side: how the manipulation inside a family is built, how it is maintained for a whole lifetime, and what it finally took to break free.

It’s being written now — at this desk, in the quiet house, in the margins of ordinary days. When it opens, the waitlist hears first.

In the writing · Waitlist opens first

On Instagram

@harrietnikkhah

The account opens soon — the kitchen, the garden, homeschool days, the island, and the story underneath it all, one post at a time. Until then, the letter is where I write first.