Our Story Part 2: Family Ties

As told by Laura

I was just finishing up my internship in Hawaii when Lindsay called.

“It’s time to open our wellness center!”   

It was an ambitious venture, but our parents gave us the tools we needed to begin our journey.

We were raised by a driven, entrepreneurial father who did everything against the grain. He taught us that school is important, but not as important as real world experience. He taught us to get our hands dirty, to sweat, and to work hard.  We didn’t spend much of our young life with dad, after our parents separated, so it was imperative to him that the time we did have together would be spent learning life lessons and skills that he believed to be invaluable.

We grew up with mom.  She was a young, courageous mother of three who really stepped into her power after our parents divorced. Today, as parents of little ones ourselves, we can fully appreciate the challenges she moved through during these years.  

Mom had an incredible knack for creating fun, finding joy, and filling our home with laughter.  We spent almost every dinner around a table together, sometimes with friends, sometimes just us four.  She showed us how to find joy in gathering and being together and she knew how to set the scene whether for a birthday, holiday, or a party.  We gleaned from her the importance of making every detail count.  She is in the small things that make a huge impact in any of the spaces we have created or events we have held – the magic fairy dust!

During the trials of our teenage loves and heartaches, our mom gave sage advice and always held space for our shit.  As we grew older, we each cultivated a deep friendship with her.  We genuinely enjoyed planning trips and spending time together and we always knew time spent together meant tons of time laughing, good discussions, cold wine, hot coffee, and everything in between. 

Mom taught us how to find joy, and how to have fun. She showed us how to laugh at life, to not take things so seriously. Mom taught us about the importance of friendships, community and family, of creating a space to gather and celebrate. She taught us to sing and dance and laugh through life. Toward the end of her life, she taught us the power of hope, strength, courage and bravery.

We would not be the women we are today without our mother. And we channel her beautiful spirit daily, especially when we’re together. 

After our time together at Hippo, Lindsay and I meandered on separate paths. I went on to study Spa Therapy and Holistic Nutrition in Toronto and later moved to Hawaii to work at a cancer retreat center. Lindsay completed a bachelor's degree in fine art and spent summers landscaping and food prepping in vegetarian restaurants in Ottawa.  

The call of island life brought Lindsay back to Turks and Caicos in 2007, to help with our dad’s development on a small private island there.  Wherever we were, we always came back to the basic skills and tools we gained and aligned with, finding ways to keep wellness in our daily lives.

In 2008, I joined Lindsay on Ambergris Cay and we created Ocean Rise Wellness Center. It wasn’t our first time working on this remote island, which Dad bought in 1994, and where our brother Michael worked on his first building project with the initial development phase of the island.

Lindsay and I each lived there for a year as teenagers, while it was still a wild, uncharted island, working hard, helping our brother and dad to build and maintain the first roads, utility building, and our family home.  In those early years, we worked without power and running water.  We learned to flush a toilet with a bucket of seawater, to begin and end our days with the sun, to use the freshwater we collected sparingly, and to fish on weekends for the week ahead. We experienced a life deeply connected to the natural environment around us, shaping us in ways we are still discovering today.  

When I returned in 2008, and we began what would be our first entrepreneurial endeavor together, Ambergris Cay was very different.  The island had become a luxury destination with the longest private international runway in the world!

Our wellness center offered daily yoga classes and spa therapies, and we curated our first holistic wellness retreats here. This was the catalyst to our future endeavors together.