The Day I Closed My Shop and Opened My Soul. A Confession from Skiathos

My name is Katerina, but everyone in town just calls me Rina. I’m 57, I own a small linen shop tucked away in the backstreets of Skiathos Town—just three cobbled turns past the Papadiamantis house, behind the pink bougainvillea that creeps like gossip across the walls. I opened it when I was 29, thinking it would be a side gig. I never expected it would become the stage for both my stubbornness and salvation.

Let me take a deep breath and tell you something I’ve never told a tourist, not even the ones who come every summer and bring me olive soap from their own country. I shut my shop for an entire year. Not because of COVID. Not because of war. But because I fell into something darker and heavier than Skiathos’ winter skies—an emptiness that hummed between my ribs and made me hate the sound of bells.

It started after my daughter left for university in Thessaloniki. You’d think I’d be proud. And I was. But I was also furious. At whom? Myself, mostly. I realized I’d spent so much of my life pleasing everyone—folding other people’s linens, listening to their stories, even picking up their children from the port when the ferry was late—that I had forgotten what I even wanted for myself. I felt like a badly written novel. Beautiful cover, no plot.

I told my cousin Lena, who runs the tavern near Megali Ammos, that I was taking a break. She told the priest. The priest told my mother. Within three days, the whole of Skiathos was sure I’d had a breakdown or, worse, run off with a Swedish windsurfing instructor. The truth was far less glamorous. I sat in my grandmother’s old house in Kastro, with no internet, no TV, just the howling Meltemi and my demons.

Kastro, for those who don’t know, is where the old town used to be—perched like a bird on the northern cliffs of Skiathos. They built it high to hide from pirates, back in the 14th century. Sometimes I think we’re still hiding, only now it’s from ourselves.

I read. I cooked. I watched ants. I cried. I dug up old letters from my grandfather, who was once a schoolteacher and a failed poet. And one day, while watching the sea foam fizzle at the edge of the rocks, it came to me with the force of an island storm: I didn’t need to run the shop like a business anymore. I could run it like a soul kitchen. A place for people who wanted to talk. Or not talk. Or sit and smell lavender water on linen that had been dried in the Aegean sun.

When I reopened the shop, I didn’t tell anyone. I just unlocked the door one May morning and hung a sign that said: "Come in if you have something on your heart. Or just need a good pillowcase."

The first person in was Yiorgos, the man who delivers the mail. He sat down and told me his wife had left him for a dance teacher from Athens. I gave him tea and a new towel. Then came a German woman whose son had died. Then a teenager from Volos who wanted to be a painter but whose father ran a car rental place. They cried. I listened. Or sometimes, we just folded towels together in silence.

Skiathos is loud in the summer—jet skis, beach bars, champagne dreams—but underneath, we are an island of listeners. We don’t rush. We stare into your eyes a little longer than you’re used to. We believe in philotimo, the idea that even small gestures hold dignity. That helping someone fold a shirt properly could be a kind of blessing.

I still sell linens. But the receipts don’t matter anymore. What matters is that people leave lighter. That sometimes they come back, years later, to say thank you for the tea and the quiet.

I’ll give you this, if you ever find yourself on this green, pine-scented island:

• First, don’t underestimate the people who run small shops. We know everything. Who’s pregnant, who’s cheating, who’s secretly writing poetry. But we’re also the ones who’ll hold your secrets if you need us to.

• Second, go to Kastro alone. Leave your phone. Let the silence speak.

• Third, ask for what you really need. Not what’s on the menu. You’ll be surprised how often someone says, “I have just the thing.”

• And finally, give your life space to break, just a little. Sometimes, a cracked jug pours better.

Skiathos is more than beaches and bars. It’s a place that holds the old ways between pine needles and salt. And if you listen carefully, you’ll hear them call you home—even if you didn’t know you were lost.

With love from the island,

Rina