The Simple Magic of Being Alive

Over the past year and a half, I have gotten to have four separate life-changing experiences and when I distill them into the lessons learned and how I have integrated moving forward, it all comes back to truly feeling the magic of being alive.

Last February was my 11th wedding anniversary and we decided that my toddler could handle a sleepover with his grandparents.

Joe and I went out for really good food, and then we went home to play and experience.

I went into the experience with the intention of falling back in love with myself, and Joe went into the experience with the intention of helping me see myself.

There were a lot of really intense moments throughout the night, we probably stayed up till 4:00 a.m., but not only did I truly reach my intention of falling in love with myself again, there were just so many moments of joy and laughter.

And after the experience, I knew I wanted to bring more of those moments into my everyday life.

We got another opportunity to have a kid free overnight in August last year. We took my car, went and got lost in the woods, and just got to spend the evening wrapped up with each other and nature.

There was laughter, and joy, grounding and pleasure… my takeaway from that experience was that there is magic to be had in the return to nature.

Magic to be had in the return to our animal selves.

I knew moving forward in life, the lesson I wanted to integrate was the reminder of connection. Connection to my family, connection to my partner, connection to nature… and that this is part of the distinct magic of being here in the human experience.

For my birthday last year in November, my sister kept the kids overnight and my parents took Joe and I to an immersive music experience.

The lights, the music, the people were all working together to create this extraordinary environment.

I went into this night with the intention of just being me.

And what that looked like was moving my body in ways that felt good, dancing without a care in the world, unapologetically asking for whatever it was my nervous system needed in the moment, and just feeling it all.

Laughter, movement, joy, and freedom were what I brought home to integrate into my everyday life.

Dancing and singing while I cook dinner is now almost a daily occurrence.

The most recent overnight without the kids was for our 12th anniversary. We had another great dinner, and we went home to just be ourselves.

I went into this experience with the intention of feeling alive.

We played Rock Band, we danced around the bedroom, we played with food… but I also cried, I got disappointed, I had a stomach ache at one point… and this experience just really opened my eyes to what it means to be alive.

We are here to feel it all.

And sometimes it’s not pleasant… but the magic is in the balance.

For all of the uncomfortable feelings, there are just as many possibilities for the incredible ones.

Every time we’ve gotten a chance to have an overnight without the kids, we are reminded of all that we are. Life has the potential to wear you down and you can lose yourself in the daily grind… but it is the ultimate act of self-care to remember to find your joy, your gratitude, and your sensations.

And at some point, it clicked…

This was never about the experiences themselves.

It was about what they showed me was possible.

That feeling of being fully alive… of laughing, moving, feeling, expressing…

that wasn’t something outside of me.

It was something I had simply stopped accessing in my everyday life.

And once I saw that, everything shifted.

Because it meant I didn’t need to wait for the right moment, the right setting, or the right circumstances to feel that way again.

I could start creating it in my life now.

Sitting with these lessons, I realized that I want to help others find these moments in their own lives. Find the space to awaken to the moment, to drop into sensation, and to experience the magic of being alive.

Ecstatic was born from that intention.

It is a tea blend designed to bring you back into your body—circulatory, lively, and supportive of movement and sensation.

An offering that reminds your body of what it already knows how to feel.

A way to come back to yourself in the middle of your everyday life.

And from there, I wanted to take it a step further.

I wanted to create a space where you don’t just think about this… you actually experience it.

Embodied Expression was created as that space.

A place for you to move, breathe, play, and be fully in your body.

We’ll begin by sharing Ecstatic together, and then move into guided somatic movement and breathwork.

From there, you’ll be invited into play—music, bubbles, scarves, movement, laughter… whatever expression looks like for you.

 And from that space, you’ll create your own custom tea blend designed to remind you of the feeling.

Not just what you think you need…but what your body actually experienced.

Because at the end of the day…

you were never meant to just work, sleep, and repeat.

You are here to feel.

Laughter, sadness, anger, pleasure, joy, love…

these are your birthright.

You just have to remember to make space for them.