Fay­ola Fras­er

For more than 15 years, Shari Win­ches­ter has been telling sto­ries vi­su­al­ly.

As a graph­ic de­sign­er by train­ing, she has built a sol­id, 15-year ca­reer in graph­ic de­sign and al­so ex­pand­ed her cre­ativ­i­ty or­gan­i­cal­ly in­to fash­ion and cos­tume de­sign, where she has spent the last decade bring­ing char­ac­ters and con­cepts to life. Win­ches­ter is al­so a wife and moth­er of two, roles that, like her work, de­mand her en­er­gy, de­vot­ed pres­ence and con­stant care. A lover of colour, tex­ture and trav­el, her cre­ative jour­ney places vi­brance and evo­lu­tion at the core, and she has re­cent­ly tak­en her tal­ents in­to a new field with the cre­ation of her self-care jour­nal, Root­ed.

Root­ed came in­to be­ing par­al­lel to Win­ches­ter’s per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al growth, where she strug­gled with the chal­leng­ing weight that many women know well. She was car­ry­ing mul­ti­ple roles with­out pause, mov­ing from task to task, rarely stop­ping to check in with her­self. A turn­ing point came in Ju­ly 2025, when she trav­elled to Chi­na for a sem­i­nar. Along­side an­oth­er work­ing moth­er, they were both jug­gling Trinidad-based jobs, check­ing in with their fam­i­lies and at­tend­ing the day-to-day events of the pro­gramme abroad. The ex­pe­ri­ence raised a mir­ror to her­self, and she saw the re­al­i­ty of how much Caribbean women of­ten car­ry - pro­fes­sion­al­ly, and per­son­al­ly - with­out ever ful­ly stop­ping. Up­on her re­turn home, she came to the re­al­i­sa­tion that she was deeply burnt out. Ex­haust­ed in body and spir­it, she re­alised that she had some­thing to give.

The jour­nal that would be­come Root­ed be­gan as a per­son­al life­line. Writ­ing and de­sign­ing the jour­nal was a pas­sion project and an out­let, a qui­et space where she could process her burnout and be­gin to breathe again. “Women don’t have space for our­selves,” she re­alised, “es­pe­cial­ly Caribbean women, who of­ten feel guilt around rest­ing or treat­ing them­selves well.” The cul­tur­al in­her­i­tance of “al­ways do­ing” be­came ap­par­ent to her. The burnout she was feel­ing could be traced back gen­er­a­tions, re­mem­ber­ing the ways her grand­moth­er, who served end­less­ly, nev­er stopped, and saw in her­self that even mo­ments of rest were ac­com­pa­nied by self-crit­i­cism.

Root­ed was thus born from a sim­ple de­sire to help her­self and, by ex­ten­sion, help Caribbean women pause. Win­ches­ter want­ed to cre­ate some­thing “by us, for us, that was fa­mil­iar and com­fort­ing, some­thing Caribbean in spir­it, en­com­pass­ing the val­ues we hold dear, and ul­ti­mate­ly still hon­est, warm and ground­ed.”

“I cre­at­ed Root­ed be­cause I know what it feels like to car­ry so much that you for­get your­self,” she said. The jour­nal ho­n­ours cul­ture, mem­o­ry, evo­lu­tion and emo­tion, of­fer­ing a com­pan­ion for mo­ments when women want to slow down, lis­ten to their in­ner­most thoughts and find peace in who they are be­com­ing.

True to her en­tre­pre­neur­ial spir­it, Win­ches­ter de­cid­ed to pub­lish the jour­nal and share it with oth­ers. Us­ing her graph­ic de­sign skills, she de­signed and il­lus­trat­ed the en­tire book her­self, de­spite not con­sid­er­ing her­self an il­lus­tra­tor. It be­came an ex­cit­ing new cre­ative chal­lenge. From scratch, Root­ed was writ­ten, de­signed, man­u­fac­tured and pub­lished lo­cal­ly in on­ly five months, and she brought it to life in De­cem­ber 2025.

The jour­nal is struc­tured in­to six chap­ters, each with thought­ful prompts such as Where is my safe space? And what makes me feel ap­pre­ci­at­ed? It al­so in­cludes re­flec­tive quotes, con­clu­sions for each chap­ter, and colour­ing pages that in­vite calm and play. One quote that res­onates deeply with Win­ches­ter reads: “Joy is not in things, it is in us;” and “still­ness is where clar­i­ty be­gins.” For her, Root­ed filled a space that didn’t ex­ist with a goal to re­frame and un­learn “gen­er­a­tions of neg­a­tive self-talk,” re­plac­ing it with gen­tle af­fir­ma­tions.

While Win­ches­ter ad­mit­ted that even through this process of heal­ing her burnout, she hasn’t mas­tered the bal­ance be­tween rest and re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, she knows its im­por­tance. The phys­i­cal man­i­fes­ta­tion of stress over the past year made that clear. Even cher­ish­ing the pre­cious small mo­ments where she wakes up ear­ly to sit qui­et­ly by her­self, or sim­ply be­ing still have be­come acts of self-preser­va­tion. “If we [as the women in the house­hold] are not okay, nei­ther is any­one,” she said, a nod to the metaphor of putting on your oxy­gen mask be­fore oth­ers.

Re­ceiv­ing an over­whelm­ing­ly pos­i­tive and grate­ful re­sponse from women who said the jour­nal is ex­act­ly what they need­ed has been deeply heal­ing, Win­ches­ter said. She feels that Root­ed fills a long-emp­ty space. How­ev­er, one of the most mean­ing­ful mo­ments of feed­back came close to home. As she wrapped up the book, her 15-year-old daugh­ter, a stu­dent at Holy Name Con­vent, watched in awe as the process un­fold­ed, from con­cept to com­ple­tion. At the launch, she told her moth­er how proud she was and ex­cit­ed­ly shared the jour­nal with her friends and their moth­ers. For Win­ches­ter, this mo­ment was not on­ly a proud one for her, but ce­ment­ed the im­por­tance of mod­el­ling rest, cre­ativ­i­ty and self-worth for the next gen­er­a­tion.

Look­ing ahead, Win­ches­ter en­vi­sions Root­ed as more than a jour­nal. She is plan­ning to cre­ate spaces and places for women to ac­tive­ly use the jour­nal and build com­mu­ni­ty amongst them­selves. Ever buoyed by her en­tre­pre­neur­ial spir­it, she al­so wants to ex­pand the jour­nal’s reach, tak­ing it through­out the Caribbean and in­to the di­as­po­ra. Though she once wor­ried her fo­cus might have been too niche, she is now as­sured that the unique­ness of the Caribbean woman’s ex­pe­ri­ence is enough to car­ry the jour­nal for­ward.

Root­ed is Shari Win­ches­ter’s love let­ter to women like her­self, women who de­serve gen­tle­ness, com­mu­ni­ty and the free­dom to fi­nal­ly rest.

Root­ed can be or­dered on the web­site (https://neon­ness.co/jour­nal) or pur­chased at 36 Cor­ne­lio, and will be avail­able in­ter­na­tion­al­ly via Ama­zon soon.