When I was working on the logo for The Violin in Me, I didn’t just want something that looked nice on a screen.
I wanted something that felt like the inside of my life.
I eventually landed on a simple mark: a violin and a heart, intertwined. No brain, no extra symbols, just those two.
At first glance, it’s just a clean little drawing.
But for me, it’s a map.
The instrument I don’t know how to play
I’ve written this before, but it bears repeating: I don’t know how to play the violin.
I admire it from the outside. I’m moved by the sound of it. I’ve always felt like it’s the closest instrument to a human voice—shaky, fragile, beautiful, capable of cracking and soaring in the same breath.
The violin in the logo isn’t there because I’m a musician.
It’s there because it represents my life: an instrument I was given without clear instructions.
I never got a neat handbook for how to handle anxiety, how to stay present, how to love well, how to live with regret, how to be okay when things fall apart. Most of us don’t. We just get handed the instrument and pushed onto the stage.
The violin in the logo is that instrument. The one I’m still learning how to hold.
Why the heart, not the brain
Earlier versions of the logo included a brain. It made sense on paper: mind, heart, music. Mental health, emotional life, expression.
But when I looked at it, something felt off.
So much of my life has been run from my head: analyzing, overthinking, anticipating, rehearsing every possible outcome. My brain has been on overdrive for years, trying to keep me safe by predicting everything that could go wrong.
It’s not that the mind doesn’t matter. It matters a lot. But when I pictured what I’m trying to do here, on this site, I realized:
I’m not trying to strengthen the part of me that already shouts the loudest.
I’m trying to listen to the part that whispers.
So the brain disappeared from the logo. Not because it’s unimportant, but because this space isn’t about glorifying intellect or over-analysis. It’s about returning, again and again, to the quieter place beneath the noise.
The heart stayed.
The heart as the soundbox
On an actual violin, the hollow body is what lets the sound resonate. Without that space, the strings would still vibrate, but the music would be thin, almost inaudible.
The heart, in this logo, is that resonant space.
It’s the part of me that actually feels:
- grief that I’ve tried to outrun
- shame I’ve buried under productivity
- joy I rarely let fully land
- love that scares me because it means I can be hurt
For a long time, I tried to bypass all of that. I lived from the neck up—planning, fixing, managing, performing. If I did feel something, I usually rushed to explain it away before it had a chance to teach me anything.
Now, I’m slowly learning that if I want my life to sound like anything at all—if I want it to carry, to mean something beyond just “getting through”—I have to make room for the heart.
The logo is a reminder: the violin only makes real music when it passes through that hollow, vulnerable space.
So do I.
Living in tune with myself
The tagline for this site is “Living in tune with myself.” That line isn’t about being perfectly calibrated or perpetually serene. I am neither.
Being in tune, for me, means:
- noticing when I’m out of alignment
- admitting when something hurts instead of pretending it doesn’t
- honouring what I know is true inside, even when it’s inconvenient
- letting how I feel matter, not just what I think
The violin-and-heart logo is a small picture of that work.
The violin stands for action, expression, movement across the strings of everyday life—work, relationships, responsibilities, choices.
The heart is what those movements pass through. Without it, I’m just going through the motions. With it, even the imperfect, scratchy notes have meaning.
Some days I’m badly out of tune. I react instead of respond. I shut down instead of staying open. I lean on old habits that once kept me safe but now keep me stuck.
Other days, for a minute or two, everything lines up. I say the hard thing kindly. I ask for what I need. I listen instead of defending myself. I feel something fully without running from it.
Those moments are rarely dramatic. They’re the small, private victories nobody claps for. But inside, I can hear it: a clearer note.
A logo as a promise to myself
I know it’s just a mark. A drawing that will sit in the corner of a website and at the top of a page.
But for me, it’s also a promise.
It’s a promise to keep bringing my heart into the picture, even when my instinct is to disappear into my head.
It’s a promise to honour feeling as much as thinking.
To stay curious about what’s happening inside me.
To treat my inner world less like a problem to solve and more like an instrument to learn.
Some days I keep that promise better than others. Some days I don’t keep it at all. But every time I see that little violin wrapped around a heart, I’m reminded of what I’m trying to do:
Not to master life like a flawless performance.
Just to live a little more in tune with myself.
If the logo speaks to you too—if you see your own life somewhere in that intertwined violin and heart—you’re welcome here.
This space is for all of us still learning how to play the instruments we’ve been given.
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