Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Stephanie Lee Jackson. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Stephanie Lee, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Let’s jump right into how you came up with the idea?

Practical Sanctuary emerged when my art career, my massage therapy business, and my personal life collided.

For more than two decades, I was a committed Starving Artist. My ‘real’ jobs served to keep the lights on so I could paint. Along the way I founded a couple of alternative art spaces (one in San Francisco, one in New York), lived in Mexico for three years (low rent, amazing culture), and discovered a second vocation as a massage therapist. In addition to learning the nuances of color, light, composition and aesthetics through art, working as a massage therapist helped me understand how stress affects the human body. Through living in many places and starting small businesses, I experienced how the place you are living can either drain your energy, or recharge your spirit.

Then a perfect storm, in the shape of the 2008 recession, blew me out of the art world. My daughter was born just as the economy melted down; the art market vanished overnight. I was paying rent on my credit card when my car dropped its transmission on the NJ Turnpike. My family moved to Philadelphia, and I walked away from an art world that didn’t love me back. To pay the bills, I had to get serious about learning business skills.

A couple of years later, one of my massage clients admired some of my paintings, and asked me to do a custom design on her staircase. I told her, “No, I’m not making art anymore.” She replied, “I’ll write you a check for a deposit.”

I said, okay.

As we worked together on her stairs, we talked about our lives, travels, visions, relationships, struggles. We listened to music and drank wine. I realized that putting together this five-dimensional puzzle–my client’s personality, her vision, her space, her temperament, her colors–was what I was born to do. Why spend my time creating objects that pile up in my basement, when I can create spaces that allow the people I love to thrive?

As time progressed, I discovered another superpower–understanding sensory sensitivity and neurodiversity. As a quirky person, I’ve always been drawn to other quirky people. Turns out, a lot of those people are highly sensitive or neurodiverse. Most spaces are not set up for highly sensitive people to feel comfortable or function well. It’s obvious to me what needs to be done in order to make those spaces accessible to all.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

Practical Sanctuary, Sensory Interior Design, creates spaces which allow highly sensitive and neurodiverse people to thrive. We work with clients who may have special needs children, chronic illnesses, sensory sensitivities, or relationship challenges that spill over into their living arrangements. Our clients call us ‘space therapy.’

Unlike most interior designers, we don’t aim to make money by selling our clients a lot of stuff at a markup. We work with you to identify your health concerns, sensory issues, logistical struggles, and relationship pain points, and look at how your space might be adding to those problems. Then we help you adapt your space so that it supports your authentic creativity, regulates your nervous system, and facilitates happy relationships.

This could mean: changing a layout to create better boundaries, and a more efficient use of space. It might mean choosing color palettes that speak to your soul and give you energy. We might mitigate noisy acoustics, which are causing stress to sensitive hearing, or adapt lighting for sensitive eyes. We have helped many clients navigate the logistics of international moves, working to prioritize what to take and what to leave, and how to make the process as enjoyable as possible. When our clients have neurodivergent children, we may bring in an occupational therapist to help us discover what design features can help you and your child feel comfortable and self-regulate unique nervous systems.

We offer remote or onsite design consultations, and workshops for private clients and businesses.

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

My mission is to bring an understanding of neurodiversity and sensory sensitivity into the design of every new architectural or space redevelopment project. Right now, universal building standards do not take sensory accessibility into account, the way ADA guidelines account for physical accessibility. Most schools, hospitals, businesses and public meeting spaces are functionally inaccessible for a significant percentage of people.

For spaces to be sensory accessible, they must be designed so that people with non-typical nervous systems can hear, see, focus, regulate and navigate without overwhelming discomfort. This means taking things like acoustics, lighting, texture, visual chaos and emotional privacy into account, and providing a variety of options for people with different sensory needs. It can also mean building a certain amount of flexibility into the way the spaces are set up and used, such as moveable walls, adjustable lighting, and access to nature.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative?

I love making money. Money is awesome. Whenever a client pays me for a job well done, I dance around the room, singing “Yay! I love getting paid to help people!”

But I cannot pursue money if it’s not aligned with my values. If I’m required to do a job that doesn’t make sense to me, that’s exploiting me or the people around me, that’s geared toward profit without purpose, I can’t make myself do it. In many of my previous jobs I’ve been the person who called the papers when the chief executive was acting shady, stood up to bullies and petty tyrants, and refused to follow policies I didn’t think were ethical.

Which meant that I was fated to be self-employed, even though I never thought of myself as an entrepreneur.

For a lot of years, I thought of my career as a failure, because I barely made a living working three jobs to survive. Then when covid came along, I realized that I’d spent the last thirty years developing skills that were crucial during times of uncertainty, isolation and social change. Maybe my inner compass isn’t as broken as I thought it was.

And I think that when you get in touch with your inner voice, even if you don’t think of yourself as ‘creative’, your compass isn’t broken, either.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://practicalsanctuary.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/practicalsanctuary/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/practicalsanctuary/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephanieleejacksonpracticalsanctuary/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@PracticalSanctuary/featured
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/practical-sanctuary-philadelphia
• Other: Join our Sympathetic Magic tribe: https://eghi.practicalsanctuary.com/sympatheticmagic

Image Credits
Stephanie portrait: Photo by Amaris Hames, https://www.amarisphoto.com/ All other scopyright Practical Sanctuary, by Stephanie Lee Jackson