Hi, I’m Leilani. I am a wife, a mom, entrepreneur, hairstylist, health enthusiast, passionate researcher, modern day hippie and well I guess I am adding blogger to that list. I wear a lot of hats. You may be asking yourself why on Earth I am starting a blog with all the other things I have on my plate? As I said before I am a mom and a passionate health enthusiast. In the salon and on my social media pages I share my love of clean living, healthy recipes and all thing kids. This blog is my streamlined way of bringing together all that information, the recipes I’ve created, my favorite products and sprinkle in our little family.
Now a little bit about us. My husband, Shane, and I have been best friends since we were in high school. At 18 we started dating and 18 years later here we are with two children, Maverick and Olivia and one on the way. There has been so much life lived in that 18 years. Really that could, and should, be its own blog post. For now I will give you the cliff notes version. Shane and I met in high school. Freshman year English to be exact. We both always had a crush on one another, but God knew what he was doing when he kept us from dating until we both matured. Right out of high school Shane joined the Marines. We got engaged and we’ve been together ever since. There were quite a few training missions and even a deployment that kept us apart, but they say absence makes the heart grow fonder. I really could not imagine experiencing the adventures we have with anyone else by my side. Shane served his contract in the Marines, then we finished college at Long Beach State, we bought and renovated multiple homes, traveled to 20+ countries, opened multiple businesses, but the greatest (and most challenging) thing we have done is become parents. We bought our latest fixer upper in Huntington Beach in 2018, just a few months before I got pregnant with Maverick. We started renovating right after we purchased it and kept going until just before I had Olivia in January of 2022. We love doing projects in our home. We enjoy finding ways to improve the functionality while keeping it aesthetically pleasing. We also bought a 1960’s house so there was a lot of work to be done.
My journey toward health.
I have been working on this blog post on and off for at least a year. I outlined the things I wanted to write about, but for the most part this space has sat empty until today. My journey to conscious living has been a long road. It’s daunting trying to think of a way to condense it in to a paragraph or two. Bear with me as I try. Looking back to my childhood, my family has been plagued with all types of health issues. I never thought much of it as I had the privilege of having my great grandparents around until I was in my late 20’s and early 30’s. When I truly started diving deep into the world of health I realized much of what my family has dealt with stems from inter-generational trauma, mindsets around food, and estrogen dominance just to name a few. When I was in my late teens, I began having all sorts of weird health issues. Cystic acne, writs that swelled and froze up, went from maybe 1-2 cavities to like 10, gut issues, heart burn, sinus infections, etc. I could not figure it out. I thought these were all normal things. I did what most people do, I addressed the symptoms. I wore a brace on my wrist, got my cavities filled with metal fillings (yuck), and took medications to mask the various symptoms I was having. It’s hard to pin point what helped me open my eyes. It wasn’t one exact moment. It was a culmination of things. In part it was me just being a stubborn and curious. It was me not accepting the fact that when I brought it up to my doctors they had little answers or just prescriptions or tests they wanted to run. In 2012 I got certified to become a yoga instructor and began really falling in love with travel. Being involved in the yoga community taught me to be present. Which is something, looking back now, I don’t know if I had ever been. I was constantly doing and checking things off my list (hello trauma response.) I remember having constant sinus infections and some of my fellow yogis teaching me about a Neti pot. I had no idea what that was. Don’t you just go to the doctor and get a prescription for an antibiotic?! Shortly after becoming a yogainstructor, Shane and I took a trip to Ireland. After eating all the potatoes and drinking all the beer, we came home and I wanted to shed a few lbs. When I came home I did the Arbonne 30 days to healthy living program. The program is basically an elimination diet with a detox element to it. After completing the challenge and reintroducing foods like dairy and gluten I started to notice how it affected me. From that moment it has been a cascade of research and shifting things in my life constantly to help me be the best version on myself. This has not only been a physical transformation, but after having kids a mental and emotional one as well. We are constantly on a journey to learn more bout what we can do to raise emotionally resilient children and this includes paying attention to the things that we all put on, around and in our bodies.
If I am being honest, I never thought I would be writing a blog. In fact, my grandma told me once to start a blog. I kindly laughed her off when she suggested it me. She had it all thought out, with an outline of the things she thought I should talk about. Even though I laughed at her for suggesting I become a blogger, it got me thinking about how I really should compile all of the things that I love to share. Last year we lost my grandma to cancer. It was unexpected and fast. As I was going through all of the texts and photos we had sent one another I found the text she sent me about my blog. It reminded me that life is short. With that reminder came inspiration to find it in me to put pen to paper and start this blog.
So here I am, a busy mom of almost 3 kids, business owner and now aspiring blogger. Thanks for following along on my journey.
