Diary of a Nail Tech

Privilege a word we fling too easily. This entry unravels the idea of privilege — not as money, status, or access, but as the deep, soul-level inheritance we carry. The joys, the griefs, the absences, the ache, and the unseen choices made long before we arrived. A reminder that what looks like luxury from the outside is often something far more ancient — a contract, a calling, a cost. Music from #...

This episode isn’t about difficult customers or salon etiquette — it’s about the quiet rudeness we’re trained to absorb, and the holy art of saying  no  without softening it. There’s a man in a café, an eccentric hotelier with his tomato-ketchup doctrine, and the moment I realised that what people call “rude” is often just a boundary spoken clearly. This one’s about sovereignty, self-respect, and...

In this entry, The Nail Tech opens the door — just a crack — on the moment someone read what was never written for their eyes. Not anger, not outrage, but something stranger: the quiet recognition that fate doesn’t only show itself in love stories and synchronicities. It shows itself in ruptures too. This episode explores privacy, boundaries, and the intimate work of writing the truth before you’r...

A lifelong habit, a hidden comfort, a tiny act of rebellion. In this entry, I look back at the years I spent nibbling my own hands — and what that small ritual was really trying to say. It’s about shame and soothing, saliva and spirit, and how the very thing that once betrayed me taught me how to hold others with compassion. Music from #Uppbeat https://uppbeat.io/t/dominique-charpentier/la-cave

What does a car test have to do with the tests of the soul? In this entry, a Saab, a peacock, and a small red griffin become unlikely teachers in the art of taking back the keys. It’s a story about engines and instincts, the quiet power of saying  no , and the moment you realise you’ve been steering your own road all along. Music from #Uppbeat https://uppbeat.io/t/dominique-charpentier/la-cave

If you’ve come looking for spider-removal tips, you’re in the wrong parlour. This one’s about the webs we weave — the invisible threads that hold the house, the heart, and the stories we spin to keep ourselves safe. A dream, a message, and a spider with something to say about how to carry the world a little lighter. Music from #Uppbeat https://uppbeat.io/t/dominique-charpentier/la-cave

In this entry, The Nail Tech returnzs to the child who saw too much — the one who made secret promises on the way to school, whispering to her unseen companion. It’s a story about imagination mistaken for madness, awareness before there was language for it, and the promises we make as children that shape the way we raise our own. A meditation on freedom, sensitivity, and the fine line between what...

A cottage found me - a fifteenth-century dwelling with crooked beams, witch marks, and alchemical symbols carved into its walls. A house that had lived through the Dissolution, the Reformation, and centuries of weather, waiting for another traveller in her own dissolution to arrive at the door. Music from #Uppbeat https://uppbeat.io/t/dominique-charpentier/la-cave

In this entry,  The Snake Scales , The Nail Tech descends into the underworld — or rather, a Camberwell cellar — to repair the skin of a giant serpent sculpture. What begins as a simple act of restoration becomes a sacred practice of silence, shedding, and self-repair. Amid the ghosts of the Young British Artists and the hum of strip lights, she finds what she’d been craving all along: devotion, s...

In this ascent, the mountain isn’t made of rock or ice — it’s made of memory. A journey that began with a talk by Ben Fogle and became an inner pilgrimage spanning years, dreams, synchronicities, and love letters that refused to die. From a red velvet jewellery box to a bench by the sea engraved with a message, this is the climb of a lifetime — the slow, sacred rise toward reunion, revelation, and...

In this entry, The Nail Tech returns to a lifelong dream — her grandmother’s house in flames — she traces how that fire became a map for her life. What once felt like destruction revealed itself as devotion, as refinement. This is a story about learning to sit with the heat of transformation, to listen for what’s being released, and to find the quiet light that never burns out. Music from #Uppbeat...

In this diary entry, The Nail Tech opens the door — literally — to two Jehovah’s Witnesses and a far older conversation about belief, blood, and the body. What unfolds isn’t an argument, but an invitation: to hear beyond doctrine, to listen for the hidden language of Gnosis — the knowing beneath the words. It’s a story about symbolism, misinterpretation, and the mischievous holiness of being alive...

From the folded notes of childhood to the love letters that never found their way to a postbox, this entry traces a lifetime of ink and longing. The Nail Tech reflects on the sacred act of writing — how the letters we write, send, or save become vessels for the parts of ourselves we couldn’t yet speak. And how sometimes, decades later, those unsent words finally find their way home. This entry is...

In this entry, The Nail Tech traces the art of listening to life itself — through misdirection, through silence, through the maps others draw for us. A story about making space, collecting signs, and learning that sometimes the only compass worth following is the one that beats beneath your own ribs. Music from #Uppbeat https://uppbeat.io/t/dominique-charpentier/la-cave

What if the dragon was never meant to be slain? In this entry, The Nail Tech meets her own Dragon — not in myth, but in the rain. A story of fire, freedom, and the fierce grace that comes when we stop fearing our own power. Music from #Uppbeat https://uppbeat.io/t/dominique-charpentier/la-cave

In this diary entry, The Nail Tech tells the story of Sheila — an unexpected visitor who arrived twice, unannounced, at the Parlour door. What begins as a chance encounter with an eccentric woman from the tarmac becomes a lesson in divine timing, self-trust, and the mysterious ways the world answers when we finally start listening to our own map. This is a love letter to the Sheilas of life — the...

There comes a moment when your voice no longer wants to explain itself. In  The Nuance of Rejection,  The Nail Tech sits with the ache of being unheard — by others, by herself — and the strange grace that follows when you finally stop fighting to be received. What begins as heartbreak becomes a vow: to hear herself first, to honour the quiet, and to make solitude her sacred listener. This isn’t a...

They call it a crisis. The Nail Tech calls it consciousness. In this episode of  Diary of a Nail Tech , we peel back the myth of the midlife crisis — that tired narrative of decline — and reveal what’s really happening beneath the surface: awakening. This is where politeness meets its limit, where the hinge comes off the door, where madness becomes another word for clarity. Speaking from the nail...

In  The Within , traces the quiet thread between Julian of Norwich, the medieval mystic who dared to speak of love in a time of fear, and her own modern ministry at the nail table. Through churches, dreams, and the art of listening, The Nail Tech discovers that devotion doesn’t always wear a collar — sometimes it wears an apron and holds a brush. Music from #Uppbeat https://uppbeat.io/t/dominique-...

What if vanity wasn’t a sin, but a homecoming? In this episode of  Diary of a Nail Tech , The Nail Tech revisits a life of ill-fitting choices — marriages, clothes, identities — and the moment, in a Lithuanian changing room, when everything finally aligned. Through vintage fabrics, ghost songs, and sacred mirrors, she redefines vanity as devotion — and dressing as an act of remembering who you are...

In this episode of  Diary of a Nail Tech , a reflection on twelve years behind the nail table — a temple of touch, a quiet apprenticeship in the art of listening. Through stories, hands, and silence, The Nail Tech explores the hidden alchemy of the everyday — how polishing a nail can become prayer, and how true hearing begins beneath the noise. Music from #Uppbeat https://uppbeat.io/t/dominique-ch...

In Marrakesh, amidst the noise of spice and scooters, The Nail Tech meets a toothless guide who mirrors twenty-five years of forgetting — and remembering. What begins as a simple detour becomes a revelation about trust, direction, and the invisible maps we follow. The Corner  is a meditation on thresholds — the moments where we pause, hesitate, and find ourselves led astray, only to realise we wer...

The Coffee Lesson In this entry, I explore the hidden lessons in the everyday — and how life sometimes shows up as a living allegory. Inspired by one of my favourite childhood stories,  The Tiger Who Came to Tea , I share a personal journey of energy, devotion, and the quiet art of self-respect. Through coffees, conversations, and the mirrors of another’s world, I learned what it truly means to pa...

What happens when the past knocks — not to haunt you, but to free you? In  The Gap Box , I return to the relics of my one true love, to the ache and the alchemy of remembering. This is my final coursework in devotion — and the beginning of a different kind of love story. Music from #Uppbeat https://uppbeat.io/t/dominique-charpentier/la-cave

What if gossip was gospel? What if beauty work was prayer? Diary of a Nail Tech: Sipping from My Own Goss-Spell  reimagines the everyday ritual of the nail table as an altar of becoming — where silence speaks, stories soften, and the sacred hides beneath small talk. From bitten nails to blind drawings, this is a journey of alchemy: turning shame into sovereignty, chatter into ceremony, and silence...