I Don’t Want to Glow Up, I Want to Come Home

A return to Vancouver—and to the version of wellness that doesn’t need to be seen to be real.

The first week I was back in Vancouver, I walked past a new sauna club with a waitlist out the door and a sign offering “cold plunge content creation packages.” A ring light was set up beside the ice tub. Everyone looked stunning. And I wanted to scream.

It wasn’t judgment. It was heartbreak.
This city has always had a wellness reputation—turmeric lattes, ocean dips, Whole Foods before it became a meme. But after seven years away, living abroad, deepening my work in ceremony, somatics, and spiritual practice, I came back to a wellness culture that felt eerily hollow.
Shiny on the outside. Bone dry underneath.

It’s not that I’m above it. I’ve worn the matching sets. I love a good Pilates session. I still enjoy many of the rituals people post about. But what I’m witnessing isn’t depth—it’s branding.
A curated aesthetic mistaken for a healing path.

Wellness has become something we perform, something we post, something we sell.
And in that process, it’s lost its pulse.

You can see it everywhere.
The wellness personas: the cold plunge girl, the sober curious girl, the skin-cycling girl, the soft life girl, the hot girl walk girl.
Each one wrapped in beige, drinking matcha, optimized to the point of disembodiment.

We’re not tending to ourselves—we’re marketing ourselves.
And what I grieve most is that in chasing this aesthetic ideal, so many women begin to flatten the parts of themselves that are most alive.
The joy. The grief. The appetite. The softness. The wildness.

We’ve swapped embodiment for branding.
We’ve replaced healing with optimization.
We’ve mistaken curation for intimacy.

And I say this not as a critic, but as someone who has been walking the path of embodied healing for most of my life.

I sat in my first ayahuasca ceremony at eleven.
Drank her medicine at fifteen.
I’ve trained in somatics, feminine healing, and holistic health.
I’ve sat in hundreds of ceremonies.
I’ve cried, screamed, shaken, prayed, unraveled.
I don’t come to this conversation from a place of spiritual superiority—but from devotion.

Because the version of wellness I know doesn’t fit into a TikTok loop.
It doesn’t sparkle.
It doesn’t always make sense.

It’s slow.
It’s deeply relational.
It often doesn’t look good—but it feels honest.

Wellness, in its truest form, is not something you buy.
It’s not something you can stack in a morning routine.
It’s a felt sense. A returning. A listening.

And what hurts most about today’s wellness culture is how it erases the roots of what it’s borrowing from.

Breathwork, saunas, herbal medicine, ceremony, cacao—all of these practices come from Indigenous, ancestral, and land-based traditions.
And while access and sharing can be beautiful, what we’re seeing now isn’t reverence—it’s extraction.
Sanitized rituals. Brand-safe spirituality. Cultural tools turned into consumer goods.

When something sacred becomes trendy, its soul begins to dissolve.

I’ve been thinking about all of this as I begin offering in-person feminine somatic workshops again—specifically for the female nervous system.

And I’ll be honest. Sometimes I wonder… will anyone get it?

There’s no ring light. No curated photo wall. No beige tote bag to take home.
Just a room of women breathing.
Feeling.
Returning.

It’s not aesthetic, but it’s real.
It’s not content—but it’s medicine.

This is the version of wellness I believe in.
The kind you carry in your body, not your brand.
The kind that lives in lineage, not lifestyle.

It’s not about being more polished—it’s about being more present.
It’s not about hacking your cycle—it’s about living in rhythm with it.
It’s not about glowing up—it’s about growing down. Deep into the tissue. Deep into the soul.

This is the part that rarely gets shared:
Wellness doesn’t always look like a transformation.
Sometimes it looks like a quiet, sacred return to what’s been there all along.

And as I move back into this landscape that’s changed so much, I keep asking myself: Where do I belong in all of this?

Maybe not in the trending audio, the fit check, or the top-tier supplement stack.

But I belong in the in-between moments.
The messy. The sacred. The still.
With the women who are tired of the noise and hungry for the real.

Because true wellness looks like:
• Saying no and not spiraling
• Feeling safe in your body—not just talking about it
• Moving because it brings joy, not to earn rest
• Crying on your bedroom floor and not editing it into a Reel
• Resting without guilt
• Letting softness return to your belly and calling it holy

Wellness isn’t about how you look.
It’s about how deeply you listen.

And if your body has been aching for something more—something less polished, less performative, and more true—you’re not crazy.
You’re remembering.

So I’ll leave you with the question that’s been echoing in me since I landed back on this soil:

Are you chasing a version of wellness that looks good online—
or one that actually feels good in your bones?