For most of my life, I wasn’t unwell. I want to say that up front, because so many wellness stories start with a diagnosis or a rock-bottom moment, and mine just doesn’t. I was totally fine. I ate whatever was fast, grabbed whatever shampoo was on sale, slept when my schedule allowed, and relied heavily on coffee when it didn’t. It wasn’t that I was actively neglecting my health - I just wasn’t paying attention. My body felt like a vehicle carrying me back and forth to work.
If you had asked me back then whether I cared about my health, I would have said yes without hesitating. But caring in theory and actually tuning in to what’s going on are two very different things. I never read ingredient labels. I gave zero thought to what was going onto my skin. I never once questioned why my brain felt like mud by three in the afternoon, mostly because feeling drained by mid-afternoon seemed like an inevitable part of being an adult.
It didn’t happen all at once
What shifted things for me wasn’t a sudden wake-up call. It was people. Somewhere in my mid-to-late twenties, a few new friends entered my life around the same time. Each of them approached wellness from a completely different angle. None of them were preachy or trying to convert me to their way of living. They were just doing their thing, and I happened to be paying attention.
The first was a friend who was quietly, stubbornly committed to eating organic. She didn’t lecture anyone about it; she just shopped differently. I remember standing in her kitchen while she unpacked her grocery bags and realizing I’d never given a second thought to where my food came from, what had been sprayed on it, or why her strawberries tasted like actual fruit instead of water. She’d hand me a piece of produce and say, “Just taste this,” and that was as far as her sermon ever went.
Around that same time, I met a guy who was big into paleo eating and really focused on gut health. This was long before gut health became a mainstream trend, and honestly, I thought it sounded a bit strange at first. But he talked about his digestion the way most people chat about the weather - like it was just an obvious factor in how the day was going to go. He was the first person who made me stop and consider whether my afternoon brain fog and constant bloating might actually be linked to what I was eating.
Then there was the friend who brought a gentler, more grounding perspective into the mix. She worked in the spa industry and treated self-care as something practical and necessary rather than a luxury. She was the one who convinced me to take proper Epsom salt baths instead of rushing through quick showers, and she got me looking at the back of my lotion bottles. Through her, I started paying attention to what my skin was absorbing. That eventually led to a firm boundary for me: I avoid personal care products made with petrochemical-derived ingredients, and that boundary started with her looking at my bathroom counter and raising an eyebrow.
A village, not a crisis
Looking back, I think that’s the main reason these habits actually stuck. If I’d stumbled into wellness through a health scare, I probably would have treated it like an emergency project - something to fix and immediately put behind me once things improved. Instead, it came through everyday connection. It was dinners at friends’ houses, conversations over coffee, and a bath salt recipe written on the back of a paper receipt. It felt less like following a strict regimen and more like stepping into a community that was already there.
It was also a slow process, which I’ve come to appreciate. I didn’t flip my lifestyle upside down overnight. I swapped one item, then another. I bought organic when it felt practical and didn’t stress about it when it wasn’t. I tried a probiotic. I started scanning ingredient lists, slowly at first, and then almost out of habit. Every small change made the next step feel natural. One day I looked around and realized my daily routine had completely transformed, even though I couldn’t point to the exact day things shifted.
What it looks like now
These days, wellness isn’t a list of tasks I cross off - it’s just how I navigate my day. I take a short list of supplements each morning, choosing ones I’ve researched myself instead of whatever product an influencer was paid to promote. I keep essential oils around the house for the bath, on my pillow, or just to make a long workday at my desk feel a bit more grounded. I eat in a way that keeps my energy steady, relying mostly on whole foods, cutting down on ultra-processed snacks, and noticing how my stomach actually feels after I finish a meal.
My skincare and body care routines are straightforward. I’d much rather rely on five products I know work well for me than twenty bottles gathering dust on a shelf. And those Epsom salt baths my friend insisted on years ago? They’ve become a regular habit. A couple of evenings a week, I close the bathroom door, fill the tub with hot water, and take that time for myself.
What ties all of this together is a holistic view of my body. I no longer treat my skin, my digestion, my sleep, and my mood as if they operate in isolation. Research suggests they’re deeply connected in all kinds of ways, and my own daily experience lines up with that. When one area drops off, the others usually feel it, and when I take care of the foundation, everything else becomes easier to manage.
Why I started writing about it
That brings me to why I launched this site. Over the years, I became the person my friends text when they have questions. What supplement should I look into? Is this face oil actually worth the money? Do Epsom salt baths really help? I found myself typing out long replies filled with research, links, and plenty of “here’s what I’ve noticed, but talk to your doctor first.”
Eventually, I realized I was doing all this digging anyway. I was reading studies, comparing product labels, testing things out, and tossing what didn’t work. Keeping all of that trapped in text threads felt like a wasted effort. Essence Vale is my way of being that friend for a wider circle - a place to share what I’ve learned, tell you honestly what worked and what fell short, and skip the high-pressure sales pitch.
I am not a doctor, and the content on this site is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any health condition or disease. What I can offer is genuine curiosity, plenty of reading, and years of personal trial and error in my own home. I’ll always be clear about what’s backed by research, what’s simply my own experience, and when I think the placebo effect might be doing the heavy lifting.
If you’re right at the start of this path - standing in someone’s kitchen and wondering why their food tastes better - you’re in good company here at Essence Vale. You don’t need a medical crisis to start paying attention to your body. Sometimes you just need the right people in your corner, and I’d be glad to be one of them.
