What Happens When Women Gather With Purpose
Some rooms just do something to you.
That's the only way to describe what happened when Jade Bloom Team Member Jenn and Jade Bloom Co-Founder Stephanie attended a recent Sunshine Community event here in Utah. Sunshine Community is a local women's empowerment group, and on this particular day, the speaker was someone Stephanie had been eager for Jenn to meet for a while. Her name is Lavanya. And she did not disappoint.
First, a little about Lavanya
Lavanya Mahhat's story is the kind that stops you in your tracks. She grew up in India, entered an arranged marriage, and then moved to a completely different country to build a life. From that foundation, she opened not one, not two... but twelve restaurants. She founded a nonprofit that teaches culinary skills to immigrants and refugees, giving them a marketable trade and a foothold in a new place. And she created a program called Own Your Shift, designed to help people cut through the noise of external expectations and find genuine clarity in their purpose.
She came to Sunshine Community with some of the women from her program, and watching them light up while she spoke -- that quiet pride of "that's my mentor" -- was something Jenn said she won't forget anytime soon.
The way she speaks
Here's the thing about Lavanya that's hard to put into words. She isn't loud. She isn't performative. She speaks softly, genuinely, from somewhere deep and settled inside herself. Jenn described sitting there thinking, "I can hardly hear her," and yet leaning all the way in, not wanting to miss a single word.
Stephanie said it best: listening to Lavanya was like a blanket for the nervous system.
Calm. Grounded. And somehow, quietly empowering at the same time.
The moment every woman in the room raised her hand
Lavanya shared something during her talk that landed hard. She talked about growing up with a deep sense of abandonment... and then building her success story by staying busy, staying useful, taking care of everything and everyone. Sound familiar?
She realized at some point that in all of that giving, she had abandoned herself. Her own sense of worth. Her own knowing.
And when she asked the room if anyone else had experienced that? Every single hand went up. No hesitation.
It's one of those moments that feels both painfully personal and completely universal at the same time. Because so many of us, especially women, have been handed a story that says our value lives in how much we give to others. And somewhere along the way, we quietly stop giving that same grace to ourselves.
Lavanya's message isn't that giving and serving are wrong. It's that we can't pour from a place we've abandoned. Real generosity, the kind that actually fuels something, comes from women who know themselves. Who have done the quiet, sometimes uncomfortable work of coming back to themselves.
Finding the power in your own story
What struck Stephanie most was how Lavanya talked about our individual life experiences. Every single person in that room has a different story. Different hardships. Different detours. But the thread that connects us all, she said, is that we each have the capacity to find power in what we've been through. Not to be a victim to it. Not to let it diminish us. But to let it fuel the life we actually want to build.
That's not a small thing. That's the whole thing.
Why community like this matters
At Jade Bloom, we talk a lot about health. About what we put in and on our bodies. About creating a home that feels like a sanctuary. But true wellness has always been bigger than a product. It lives in the moments of honest conversation. In the rooms where women show up for each other without an agenda. In the speakers who share so generously from their own scars.
That's what Sunshine Community creates. And it's why events like this one are woven into how we show up as a brand. Because we genuinely believe that connection is part of the medicine. That when women gather with intention, something shifts -- in the room and in each woman who was there.
A note on essential oils and nervous system support
If you left reading this thinking about the ways stress and self-abandonment show up in your own body, you're not alone. One of the most accessible tools we offer at Jade Bloom for nervous system support is aromatherapy. Grounding oils like Frankincense, Vetiver, and our Wellbeing blend are beautiful companions for the kind of inner work Lavanya was describing. A few drops in a diffuser while you journal, sit quietly, or simply breathe can be a small but meaningful act of coming back to yourself.
Because you deserve to be tended to, too.
Final thought
Jenn left that room more whole than when she walked in. Stephanie did too. And if Lavanya's message resonates with you the way it did with them, we hope you'll find your own room full of women who show up like that.
They're out there. And so are you.
Want more real conversations about wellness, intentional living, and the things that actually help? Subscribe to the Jade Bloom blog and follow us on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok or tune in for the Health, Healing & Happiness Podcast for what's coming next.
