A Life Full of Adventures, Detours & Beautiful Chaos
Hi, I’m Sheryl. I’ve always been a little nostalgic.
My mother was always crafting or sewing—making gifts and little things simply to give away to friends, family, and sometimes even complete strangers. Looking back, those moments when she had some big project and needed my help—what seemed suspiciously like child labor at the time—left a lasting impression on me.
She taught me something I don’t think I fully understood until much later: there is something incredibly meaningful about creating or designing something with your own hands and sharing it with someone else.
My life has never followed a perfectly straight road. It’s been filled with adventures, unexpected detours, new beginnings, and plenty of roadblocks and heartache—but also beautiful chaos.
I was born and raised in Southern California and have lived everywhere from the Midwest to the South. I spent two years serving with the AmeriCorps Emergency Response Team, traveled across the country, explored national parks and monuments, and eventually built a career in nursing.
My husband and I met while serving in AmeriCorps and have now been together for almost 17 years. For years, we took long road trips, traveled whenever we could, and planned trips around vacations, favorite bands, and rock festivals. I eventually started working travel contracts as a nurse.
Then, in my early 40s, I finally became a mom to two amazingly wonderful little humans.
And suddenly, I wanted to hold onto things a little tighter.
Not just the big milestones, but the ordinary moments too.
Life was different. We were raising kids and buying a home. There wasn’t much time anymore for spontaneous road trips or big vacations. Life became a chaotic mix of being a mom, nurse, wife, and whatever other hat I happened to be wearing that day.
Yet I wanted my kids to someday look back at something that may have seemed completely ordinary—or maybe like a hot mess at the time—and say:
“Oh, I remember when…”
Eventually, we decided to take a chance with our two young kids and take a few travel nurse contracts again—but this time, we traveled as a family.
A last-minute assignment change brought us to Cape Cod.
We fell in love with the island from our first encounter—the beaches, the strong sense of community, and everything island life had to offer. So we sold our home down South, gave up travel assignments, and decided to make Cape Cod our permanent home.
Along the way, I realized I had collected much more than photographs and souvenirs.
I had collected pieces of our story.
Some were tied to big adventures and places I never wanted to forget. Others lived in the smallest things: a random photograph, a handwritten note, something my kids made, a ticket tucked away in a box, a leaf from the Smoky Mountains sealed in a baggie, or some tiny object that probably means absolutely nothing to anyone else—but can bring an entire memory rushing back.
The memories were there.
The problem was that they were everywhere.
They were sitting in bins and totes that followed us from house to house. Photos were buried among thousands of pictures on my phone. Keepsakes were tucked into drawers and boxes.
To anyone else, it probably just looked like *stuff*.
But to me, there were stories attached to those things—stories that existed mostly in my head, with no real connection between the memory, the photograph, and the physical pieces that belonged to it.
And life with kids certainly wasn’t slowing down long enough for me to organize it all.
Because life with kids isn’t perfectly posed.
It’s dirty messes, a million calendars, never knowing what day it is, and piles of laundry that somehow reproduce by the hour.
I started looking for a way to connect all those little breadcrumbs of our lives—the photo buried on my phone, the leaf sitting in a plastic bin, the story I still remembered, and the keepsake I couldn’t bring myself to throw away.
But I also wanted a way to capture a new memory while I was still in the middle of the chaos—something quick enough that I could return to it later and give that memory a more permanent home.
As I began designing those pieces for myself, I started wondering:
How many other people have memories scattered everywhere too?
How many photographs are buried on phones?
How many meaningful little things are sitting in boxes?
How many stories are attached to those things that only one person knows?
And how many ordinary moments are happening right now that we’re certain we’ll remember forever?
Our photos stay buried on our phones. Keepsakes end up in boxes. And the little details we swear we’ll remember begin to fade.
True North Market grew from the belief that those moments deserve more than that.
It’s about creating ways to hold onto the pieces of your life that mean something to you—through hand-designed journals, meaningful keepsakes, memory collections, and personalized pieces created around your own stories.
And sometimes, there isn’t already a keepsake attached to the memory. That’s why you’ll also find thoughtfully curated pieces that can become part of a new adventure, tradition, milestone, or ordinary day worth remembering.
It wasn't just about preserving my story.
It’s about giving you ways to preserve yours.
Not because every moment needs to be perfectly documented.
Not because life needs to be perfectly organized.
And definitely not because every memory is picture-perfect.
Because a life doesn’t have to be picture-perfect to be worth remembering.
Start where you are. Or start where you’ve been.
Not every moment needs to be preserved.
But the ones we choose to keep? They deserve a way to quickly preserve them and leave a place to come back to.