Buzz Interviews Jennymelva & Maci of The Sun & her Moon Collective
Jennymelva and Maci, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
(Jennymelva) If someone had told me five years ago that I’d one day open a collective space for self-healing, I would just have laughed and brushed it aside. As a child, I grew up in a broken home. And at some points, I didn’t have one. I had to move from relative to relative, place to place. My childhood exposed me to trauma and this only carried on through my teen and my adult years. But five years ago, something shifted. I woke up one morning, looked at the mirror and I couldn’t recognize myself. I couldn’t understand how I had gotten to the dark place I was in. I knew that if I continued to let the trauma cycle through my life, I knew nothing would change. I didn’t know what would come, but I knew I had to change.
I finally found that I had the courage to build the life I’ve always imagined. I made the biggest decision of my life and jumped into the uncertainty. Leaving Murrieta, I took my kids with me and moved to San Diego. That is when self-discovery and deep healing work began. By releasing limiting beliefs, understanding shadow work and learning to reprogram my subconscious mind, I knew I always had a purpose in life to help others by sharing my truth and providing space for other human beings to self-heal. That journey led me to various mentors who remain important to my life today. Magic Is Real, by Lizzie Rose, guided me through energy healing. Yoga with Shawna inspired me to be the teacher that I am today.
That is when I found Maci Ousset, the co-founder of The Sun and her Moon Collective, who was also passionate about self-healing. I had randomly met Maci through a friend of a friend at an Oktoberfest celebration. We shared a wonderful conversation regarding our big dreams to help others. In the months following, and as I was starting to put my business plan into action, I regretted not getting her contact information because I felt we shared the same purpose—to help others heal themselves. Then we ended up walking into the same studio for our Yin Yoga Teacher Training. That is when The Sun and her Moon Collective really started to form.
(Maci) My journey has been marked by adversity, and each obstacle has made me who I am today. Being born and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana, my first adversity was losing my home and community to Hurricane Katrina. So, at nine years old, I learned the temporality of possessions. A few years later, when I was 12, my mom passed away from cancer; that’s when I learned the temporality of life. Fortunately, through these times of grief and confusion, I had karate to lean on. I studied under a sensei who taught me to be the best, and under his guidance, I got to do karate around the world. I wouldn’t change a thing about what the years of training did for me; although, my karate career did leave me with constant ailments and injuries.
Pain was my normal. The physical pain kept me distracted from my emotional discomfort, so I just kept it around. It wasn’t until I took my first yoga class in April of 2015 that I felt relief, physically, emotionally, and mentally. I began supplementing my karate practice with yoga and was kicking higher than ever, and I was moving through grief and anxiety gracefully. I went off to Argentina in 2017 to study abroad and was truly living life, feeling the best I ever had, and not worrying about a thing. Then, one early Tuesday morning my sister called to tell me that our dad passed away. I left Argentina a month early and there I was; 21 years old, with both of my parents passed, completely independent, and I had to decide.
Do I keep going? Really embracing this theme of temporality, I decided it was my time to make my dreams come true while I still could. With no ties to Louisiana, I headed out after I graduated from LSU with a degree in Spanish. I packed up my Toyota Corolla and moved to San Diego to be close to my sister. This is where my healing journey really kicked off because shortly after the move, I began suffering from anxiety that was manifesting in physical form. My chest was burning, I was experiencing intrusive thoughts, and my body ached in a new place every day.
In November 2018, I finally reached out for help and found a life coach. From there, everything began falling right into place. I started going to Yoga on Mission Beach, then found Yoga with Shawna and became certified in Yin Yoga, Breathwork, and Reiki; and started teaching yoga in April 2019. In the Yin yoga teaching training, I ran into Jennymelva again, and it was then that we knew we were meant to know each other. Little did I know, she had big plans brewing and wanted me to be a part of them. So, we got started! With no clients, no workshops, no equipment, we had nothing but a space and the two of us, ready to heal ourselves and to inspire others to unlock their own healing powers. So here we are, world, and we’re so excited to share our story!