Over the last 2 months since our move to Oregon, I've been processing a lot of heaviness and uncertainty. This processing has included many physical symptoms such as total body pain and aches, crying fits out of nowhere, and the overwhelming feeling like I made a huge mistake waking me up midway through the night. I’m now in a position where I’ve felt a good chunk of my feelings and am ready to talk about them. Many of you have been so curious about what things are looking like for me and it’s time I give you a proper update.

our last morning walk around our Beachwood neighborhood; this is the first spot we met Josie.

At first, this physical manifestation of growth was scary and I thought I would cope by numbing it out like I have done in the past. The difference is that my instinct to numb it out was pushed aside by the invitation to go through my process to heal. I finally have space, time, and the full freedom to do so here in Roseburg. My nervous system isn’t constantly on high alert because of my influencer neighbors not respecting quarantine curfews while packed like sardines in a congested Hollywood neighborhood. Seriously, leaving LA felt like leaving an apocalypse because of the 10+ helicopters surrounding our neighborhood, the 50+ cops lining the freeway entrances, and all the surrounding businesses I loved coping with loss. Many small business owners cleaning the shattered glass from break-ins during the looting and riots. History was being written as I cried during my 12-hour car ride (which happened to be #blackouttuesday) with my puppy in the backseat, my sister driving closely behind with a car full of our plants, and my husband patiently driving all of our possessions in a U-haul.

Not being able to hug anyone goodbye and give my clients one last treatment is probably what killed me the most.

Roseburg has been quiet, not hellishly hot, and barely affected by the pandemic with a small number of cases. It’s been surreal but I know the invitation to move here was for more than just relocation of my business. It’s an invitation so I can have the freedom to feel again. Process the old wounds that may or may not be my own. Which as an empath is always something I have to assess as I can often take on the trauma of others if I’m not careful with boundaries. Something that was important but almost impossible to fully develop in LA.

The last two months I have been unpacking my life and reflecting on my time in LA and other places I’ve lived in that led me to this small, conservative town in Oregon in the middle of an election year while there are civil rights protests going on throughout our country, and still in worldwide pandemic. I have wanted to journal more but quite frankly, it’s been hard. It feels like a weird glitch in our simulation and one day I’ll just wake up to how things were or how I expected them to be. Where I’m at now is just a reroute right? Well, yes it is and many of us are embarking on a path that we never would have expected back in January.

I came across this photo from the humble beginnings of TSC taken around 6 years ago right when we first moved. It brought me back to a place where I remembered the difficulties that come with the terrifying choice to start my own business. I started my practice in LA from a place of survival with a severe case lack mentality, meaning I had no self-worth or done any work on my own energetic and monetary value. My health was fragile, my money was non-existent (paycheck to paycheck living), and I had no idea if anyone would want a different way of caring for skin. At that time, I was 27 and STILL hadn't found a like-minded work environment that focused on skin health and education but rather burning out its employees for less than minimum wage.

The heaviness I'm unpacking hardly has anything to do with having to start over here in Roseburg. I know I can start over as I've done it before, many times. It's more so releasing the constant pressure and influence of the LA wellness community had on me. Which in hindsight, I realize how extremely toxic it has been. I would spend thousands of dollars to keep up with the clothes, diet culture, and other lifestyle "necessities" designed for ladies that don’t look like me at all. I’m a woman with curves, fluctuating monthly in my weight due to a chronic illness that was only diagnosed in the last few months I lived in LA, I’m an immigrant, I don’t have a trust fund or a husband who funds my business, and my energy level was below empty regardless of my caffeine intake (due to adrenal fatigue as I would find out numerous times in LA).

It’s really hard to admit this, but I have never been more ashamed of my body than when I was in LA. Whether I was hosting, participating, or simply attending a social gathering with other people in “wellness” I often left crying, exhausted, and confused. I clued into my anxiety about these gatherings when I would consistently get the same physical symptoms no matter what the event was for:

First, I would lose my voice, which to me meant my throat chakra was shutting down. Unable to speak my truth or speak at all.
Second, I would bloat EVERYWHERE which caused all of my clothes to not fit well. The best part of any of those events would be when I could change into sweatpants and take off my bra once I arrived home.
Lastly, I would immediately feel the need to have a glass of wine, smoke some weed, and/or binge on food once I was out of those environments - soothing and numbing myself from the interactions that made me feel vulnerable or like I’m not good enough.

Needless to say, I vibrated at a very low frequency a good portion of the time. The times where I felt like I was thriving was when I got a lot of rest and alone time. And also when I got to see my clients one on one. I practiced radical intuition with clients who trusted me too. But to have a business in your home while fighting an undiagnosed chronic illness and managing a social media presence was just all too much. How I managed for so many years is because I am lucky to have enough people who believe in me around to support me.

Now that I'm out of LA, I realized that I have an opportunity to rediscover who I am and what my personal values are. A lot of that starts with ownership of my complicity and taking the time to do the work. At a glance, my social media feeds looks like all the other white cis-woman in wellness feeds out there. It’s pictures of me captured to look like I have it all together when in reality most of my photoshoots were mid-endo-flare and completely exhausting for me. That’s also why I only shoot content with my friends who know I have a limit on posing and smiling. My only hope is that my intentions with the captions attached to these pretty pictures were heard and seen for what it was - which is all from my heart.

I’ll do better to showcase my true values throughout all my platforms and to keep working on bettering myself moving forward. Looking back, I have to admit that there are two main reasons why I became even just a little successful during my 8 years in LA.

1st; I worked hard to give the best facials of my life which attracted a clientele of people seeking the custom, more holistic support I was developing.
2nd; I’m a white cis-woman who came up during the white women in wellness movement in LA. Which if you know me, you know that's one reason why I stopped doing events and associating myself with certain brands/people. Nothing against them personally, but this “movement” perpetuated the clear discrimination against BIPOC in the wellness and beauty industry. It felt disgusting to be apart of, and I’m still trying to unlearn the toxicity I have been fed and then regurgitated out.

I’ve earned things both the right way and the wrong way. Especially when it came to being interviewed for certain publications, I felt like I was deemed an “expert” in fields I was still a student of. All because of how the journalist or publication felt they wanted to portray a fraction of the information I provided. It’s very clickbait heavy manipulation which bothered me so much. I had so much to share but wanted to be grateful for even being featured. Especially without the help of PR or a business manager to help me get out there.

For so long, I felt like success had to look like a large Instagram following, monetization on all social media platforms, and being booked out for several months. None of those things actually aligned with what was going on with me health-wise (both physically and emotionally). Having a big platform forced me to put content out without really developing a full opinion on some topic. It started to become a journal for me to brain dump ideas into; which is cathartic but not always the best approach for a sensitive person like me. It opened me up for lots of scrutiny and criticism. People would take one post and decide who they wanted me to be instead of seeing it as just a part of my whole scale of knowledge/experience. It never allowed me to develop a richer voice on a variety of topics. Instead, I exhausted myself because I thought I had to - bad boundaries with myself once again.

Taking a hiatus last year was the most self-care I had given myself in my life. It was extremely difficult for me but I have never fully returned to the momentum I had before, and I’m so grateful for that. My growth on social media, sales, and even with building a new clientele might be stagnant but I need the slowness right now. Sometimes when I think of the number of people whose eyes are on me, I get overwhelmed - so why would I feel the need to work for more. Instead, I want to focus on what I do have and how I can make a change here. My goal is to just breathe a little bit of life within myself and let that show up in my work. Roseburg has given me the opportunity to do that and LA has taught me that I am capable of success. I just have to redefine what that looks like for myself and my business. I honestly just want to be me and help others become comfortable with themselves as well.