through the ebbs and flows of life, water has always been currency of my wellness.
There I was, for 86 days, rowing across the vastness of Atlantic in a tiny boat… It took losing a desalinator to realize what a gift water was.
Being at sea and rowing through dehydration, hurricanes, and broken ribs may sound crazy, but it was a critical philosophical trial. It was then I created a relationship of commitment, surrender and resilience—and understood water to be the body to carry me through it.
What I didn’t know at the time: there was hurricane building within my own body.
At 23, I was diagnosed with early-stage breast cancer––on the very same side on which I’d broken my ribs at sea.
And although I had every modern treatment available to me, no one asked why my body had arrived at a destination of illness.
So, at 23, I stepped into the role of observer and challenger.
I thought of my body as the ocean, and asked myself…
How do I row out of this?
While I had access to healthcare, modern medicine wasn’t focused on my rest, movement, and nutrition.
Through learning and training to better understand different modalities of healing, I realized that they were all saying the same thing—only in different languages.
And if I used water as my vessel—as my TKTK—I could create a momentum in my body that would move me toward wellness.
As it turns out, creating that state of being was what I was destined to teach.
Drawing support from both Eastern and Western medicine, I started introducing my own lifestyle changes, which evolved into founding Nectar Juicery in Vancouver and rowing through a new challenge. I saw juice as a bridge to wellness, a gateway drug to healthy living.
But I wasn’t listening to my own body’s internal cues, pushing beyond its limits to achieve results that reflected confidence externally.
As it turns out—it wasn’t really about what I was building, after all.
It was about how I wanted to feel.
I realized something. That if we don’t know why we’re doing something—and what the true nature of our relationship to it is—it’s just another task on our to-do list.
I wanted to be well, not merely do well.
And if there’s anything that eighty-six days in a boat, a cancer scare, and building a business from scratch taught me, it’s…
With our mind and mental state, we can create infinite possibilities.
Including a reimagining of what’s possible between the realms of sick care, self care, and mental care.
When I closed the doors of Nectar Juicery and wrote Beauty Water in the months that followed, it was a testament to this knowledge and an homage to the power of plants to fuel commitment to our bodies.
It was how I found my way back to the water, the home that holds us all.
When we surrender ourselves to alignment with how we want to feel, our actions can support us.
The ultimate solutionist and eternal optimist in me journeyed back to my body.
Here I am.
Now, as a passionate advocate for the combination of water and alternative ingredients and plant medicine to optimize hydration, quell stress and activate longevity…
My vision.
To create a world in which, before taking action, we question how we want to feel. If we aren’t our own best advocates, who else will be?
Like water, we have no end destination or boundaries when it comes to our possibilities and potential.
The wellness industry is designed to help us “arrive” somewhere, but there is no destination. All you need is a relationship with yourself, so that you can tailor wellness to your own needs.
My mission.
Through writing, teaching and speaking, my mission is to awaken humans to learning how to create self-care beyond simply sick care –– so we can live well, tap into our zone of strength and alignment and empower each other to grow, succeed and create possibility together.
Wellness is an inside job.
–Tori Holmes