Indie: I didn’t start in beauty. I’m a CPA, but eventually I realized that I didn’t love accounting anymore and I left to spend more time with my young kids. I got into the clean eating movement and built a 750 square foot greenhouse in my backyard, and I was selling edible flowers, microgreens, and starter plants to local restaurants and greengrocers. I had so much calendula and lavender growing that I didn’t know what to do with it all. 

My sister announced she was pregnant in 2008, and — because I’m Type A — I decided to make some products for her son and unveil them at her baby shower. Everybody loved them and told me I should start a line of natural baby products. And I was like, “No way I’m doing that.” Clean beauty really wasn’t even on the scene back then.

I truly believe that the universe sends you signs, and I wasn’t listening to them. That same year, I had been diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis, which is a degenerative autoimmune disease. And about five months after that diagnosis, I started to lose vision in my left eye. I told my doctor about it on November 4th, and he sent me to get a scan right away. He called me forty-five minutes later to tell me to come in, and when I pushed him on it, he told me it was a brain tumor.

That was the most powerful day of my life. I started driving and didn’t call anybody, and during that 15-minute drive to the doctor, I realized I’d spent the previous 37 years as a passenger in my own life and not an active participant. I said to myself, “I don’t know what’s happening. I don’t know what this is about, but something incredibly powerful is going to come from it. I need to allow it to unfold, and something miraculous is going to happen.” I just knew it in every fiber of my body. It was a gorgeous fall day in New York, and my life just came into technicolor. I realized that from that day forward, I was going to be fully present every day, live with purpose, and be passionate about the life I’m living. I’ve kept true to that.

Over the next few months, I saw a number of specialists up and down the east coast, and they all told me, “There’s very little we can do. We don’t know what this is. It doesn’t look like cancer, but you probably have about six months to live.” And I would say, “Thank you very much, but I don’t think so.”

When I asked my neuroendocrinologist how this was possible, he told me, “We’re seeing more and more of these things tied to the environment.” I was like, “Dude, I eat organic out of my own greenhouse. What are you talking about?” And he said, “Well, the environment is what you surround yourself with. What do you put on your skin?” That was my awakening. I realized in that moment that I was going to create a line that was safe, effective, and looked gorgeous on a shelf. I wanted to educate and empower people to make mindful choices. I knew it was my purpose.

When you’re given six months to live, you get to decide how you’re going to live it. I decided I was going to find a doctor who would tell me something different, and in the meantime, I was going to do all the research I could and start formulating. I found a doctor who said, “I’ll do surgery, but there are a lot of risks,” and I said, “I don’t care. I’m dying. Let’s go.” He performed surgery on April 22nd, 2009, and when I woke up, I was able to see completely. The doctor said, “We got everything — welcome to the rest of your life.” And I literally have not stopped since that moment.