Originally posted October 15, 2019

Today I’m writing to you from a lovely little park. I’m experimenting with working outside the studio this month to plan, dream and visualize where I want Hechizo to go next year. It’s been really inspiring to work outdoors in nature and its helped me gain new perspective. In honesty, I’ve struggled the past few months with the concept of inspiration and abundance, despite designing and recently launching a very sincere collection focused on attracting and manifesting. I’ve felt conflicted about sharing but I feel like being candid about this year in case anyone else can relate and/or needs some encouragement along their path.

Hechizo is an extremely small team - it’s just me, Hali, the founder/ designer and my wonderfully talented assistant, Nicole. Occasionally my Mom, Denise, helps with various production roles and my bestie Nora helps with marketing and copywriting. We get a lot done in our organized studio but lately I’ve been feeling a nagging lack. I’ve hit what felt like a lot of professional brick walls this year, attending a few disappointing retail and trade shows and often felt like I was grasping at straws to keep the engine running. Adding to the unknown I also became pregnant at age 35 after only 5 months living with a man I fell deeply, whirlwind in love with. I made the decision to stop traveling for shows for the remainder of the year (which account for around 45% of our annual revenue) to focus on a healthy pregnancy and figuring out the next steps for my little family. Lot’s of responsibilities were piling up, my brain felt clouded from pregnancy and the quick gear shift in my business plan had a negative impact on our overall revenue. In translation, I was coming up short and felt like I was irrevocably messing EVERYTHING up.

For the past 5 years I’ve devoted all of my energy, time and every last resource to my business. After 10 years in Brooklyn working at a corporate job and then starting Hechizo in 2014, I moved my life and studio to Richmond, VA in Oct. 2017 to be closer to family. My business goal was to incubate Hechizo in a city with more affordable rent and manpower to fuel its growth. I found a beautiful sun-filled studio in the Scott’s Addition neighborhood that was big enough to house not only Hechizo, but work areas for my very creative father, brother and mother as well. To my total surprise and delight Jon, my great love, as well as Nicole, my assistant and first ever full time hire, both came into my life in the same week, a year almost to the day after moving to VA. Though making payroll can be a ton of pressure every month, having someone I truly trust to share the production workload led to my actually being able to enjoy nights and weekends off after years of 16-18 hour days, 7 days a week. It felt completely transformative. So I guess the extra life enjoyment led to a quick pregnancy ( sorry if TMI ;) I’m so overjoyed to become a mom and to parent alongside the man I love and know will be an incredible father. But I do feel like I’m steering two fast-paced ships with no GPS. This summer was a whiplash season of bonding and excitement in my personal life paralleled with a paralyzing fear that I’d begun to lose my grip on all I had worked for professionally.

I designed our new collection, Seedlings, from a place of truly knowing thoughts are things and that dreams should be planted like seeds. Despite being in a life season of major change, I know that practicing empowering thoughts and finding ways to reflect on gratitude for what’s presently great are the ways to water these dream seeds and watch them manifest.

I want to keep Hechizo going to I can show my daughter what it looks like to live a creative life (struggles and all!) I want to keep it going so I can actually enjoy living this creative life from a place of abundance. I’m sharing my dream seed here with you: I want to be wildly, spiritually, financially successful at it. Right now I think I’m on a journey of tearing down what was my life to make way for the harvest of all that I’ve planted. And I need a daily reminder that its’ all taking root. I thought maybe you could use a reminder that it’s happening for you, too.