Lumalia’s debut memoir, Blooming Upside Down, is out now!
Lumalia’s debut memoir, Blooming Upside Down, is out now!
This is the story no one will tell you on social media and why I’m retiring as a “wellness” practitioner, and other news for Celebrate Again.
(Click audio below to listen instead)
I thought I was ready to lead through the liminal spaces this year, but the truth is, I had an initiation first.
So few business owners talk about their failures, what went “wrong,” or their perception, or even maybe the world’s perception of wrong.
It seems the business world, and well, most stories are saturated with the stories of what went right. We’re obsessed with how it all worked out. We all so desperately want a relief from our perception of suffering. And it seems so much of our world too believes we have to suffer to change (that whole philosophy is something I’m deeply against…more on that another day)
Instead of the stories of the journey, the roads we took to get there, the roads we’re still on, and maybe that’s why no matter what, I keep coming back to being a living memoirist is one of the greatest honors, because I’m alive here with you today, December 2025.
A year ago, I decided I needed a radical change in my life; I needed support, I needed anything to be different. So I took some brave steps, I called in help and support from others, and while I’m a big fan of living more in the ways of a tribe, being in community with others, what I ultimately found was I needed a lot of heartbreak to remind me that the voice I’m always aching to hear from is my own.
One of my teachers noted that it’s odd that we cannot see ourselves. Our eyes are on the outside; we need each other to see ourselves. We need to experience life together, we need to be heard, and reflected back, and this year I tried to buy that, buy my way into a community I was hoping could see me, into support that could reflect back what I’d forgotten, and the heartbreaking truth I found after one day at an event that I would hoped changed my life , was that it’s always been me all along.
I’d forgotten who I’ve always wanted to be, who I’ve always wanted to become, kept getting clouded by who I thought I had to be. (Sound relatable?) What title would be acceptable enough to my soul and marketable. I was near landing on the title coach when something in me rattled, fist pounding as if I finally heard how deeply I’d put myself back in a cage I had sacrificed so much to get myself out of so many of them.
When I got sick in 2016 and closed my beloved wedding photography business, I became a permanent patient, three to four doctor office appointments for a week, a specialist, a therapist after one another, trying to figure out why at age twenty-seven my body was seemingly crumbling. Yet in that year, I lasted a month before trying to open a fine-art business, then began yoga teacher training. Year after year, I gave myself new titles, new schemes to become, thinking maybe I could find my place again. I could be of some value while I healed.
“I just want to be paid while I heal,” I remember telling one of my coaches at the time. Her reply was “me too.”
And it’s then I wish I had seen it, the heartache in saying that, my value didn’t come because I healed, or figured out how to heal. This wasn’t the hero story following the Joseph Cambel story arc everyone seems to know as the perfect campaign for marketing your life. I was not on script, and thank god, my soul had something bigger.
It seemed after nearly a decade of trying to run a wellness business with a backburner photography business keeping me truly afloat, I was drowning. But really, my soul was begging me to pay attention to my heart.
Deep in that decade, I wrote my first book; those two years and the last six months were among the most joyful of my life. Going deep, letting the synchronicities land, feeling it all fall into my lap, the title, the cover, the layout, the organization, my editor, a beloved mentor writing the forward, everything just flowed.
Meanwhile, my “wellness practitioner” title always seemed like an imposter, and well, because it was an identity I was wearing to survive my healing journey, to find a place I could be seen past “someone sick.”
I was not meant to be the girl who “found yoga, then teaches everyone how it saved her life.”
No, I’m the girl who went into the cocoon and found a layer deeper.
I’m not here to teach you anything.
Not how to save your life.
Not how to make sure you do it right.
But rather to tell you the truth of my life, to see what I pay attention to, to dance with it, invite you into that choreography of life, and let magic be made in the living, not in the following.
You see, there is a new paradigm we’re birthing, and it is the end of gurus and teachers and the birth of the sovereign humans. Remembering wisdom isn’t something knowledge can buy; it is only experienced, lived, and remembered.
My role has never been to cultivate wellness but to spark aliveness. This divine remembering can only happen when I finally stop trying to fit into any model of success and start leading with my life, following my aliveness day by day, dancing in the magic of it, and daring to tell you, there too is a path for you.
I thought I was here to teach how to exist in the liminal space. Still, the truth is no one can truly teach on life, we can only live inside of it, share of our discoveries, our loves, our passions, our desires, and hope that in doing so it will activate a circuit in you that was once deadened when your grandmother told you to stop crying and awaken the heartbreak, awaken the grief, awaken the love, awaken the passion so you remember you did not just come into this precious body to get lost, you came here to experience it all.
So today, I’m laying down asking for short cuts, ways I can cut time in half, and letting myself marinate in each moment knowing I’ll be lead exactly where I’m meant to go and my passion will turn on it’s fire when the road is ready to be set ablazed by what I’m here to explore, never able to trutly be contained in any words, book, photos, story, but only felt, known, cherished, and remembered.
What this means for you. All places will be closing around here as I birth new homes for my work to live. So if you’ve been sitting on a workshop, joining the membership, or the retreats, hop in before those doors close soon.
In 2026, Celebrate Again will be changing to a platform of remembering, a place of discovery, field notes, and media I create in exploring life
as a passionate lover poet first,
a great explorer,
and beauty hungry artist 😉
I come with deep sensitivities I claim as my superpowers,
a mother to three amazing tweens/teen
an adoring wife to the man of my dreams
living life full,
messy
mundane
and absolutely magical.
I hope you’ll continue on this journey with me. I’ll be opening up spaces where you can go deeper in my creations and writings with me, see behind the scences, and peak inside places that social media cannot in the 1.5s attention spans.
Celebrate Again will become more like an online journal, with columns on specific topics and a subscribers-only section where I’ll share more tender, longer-form writing, videos, and photography that will not live on any social media platforms.
2026 will also mark a rebirth of Blooming Caverns, my in-person experiences, with some shifts in in-person workshops toward more dancing (with zero experience required) and imagination than somatics and wellness. Here we’ll play together and create together, hopefully a lot in nature while also creating art…think photography, short films, yes, with you as the featured guests.
(It’s always been my greatest desire to see everyday people on the big screen, and my town, Portland, OR, is the perfect place for this magic!)
My hope is to put the final touches on my next memoir, sharing the true wild romance story of going from a heart-wrenching divorce to meeting my soulmate in a socially “unacceptable” amount of time. It’s scandalous. It’s magic. It’s heartbreaking. It’s raw and human. (Get a taste of my memoir work in my first book here.)
I cannot wait for her to be in your hands.
In the meantime, sign up for any online workshops you’ve been sitting on or the Self Care membership. Doors to these will be closing and changing in the coming weeks.
Got questions, musings, or notes for the editor? I love to hear from you. I read and reply to every single email that comes my way.
Living an beautiful life begins with romanticizing yourself. Find what self love muse will spark your passion.
Keeping you from deep connection with yourself and the intimacy you desire.
Introducing Back Home in my Body: 5 Biggest Beliefs Keeping You From Powerful Self-Trust & the Intimacy You Desire
An online workshop now on replay for only $11
What if the unknown wasn’t something to wrestle… but to flirt with?
👉 Read how I did this one Friday morning and had a quickie (and join the 3-day exploration )
