Our Story

There's a farmhouse in Ängelholm, Sweden, that's been in my family since the 1850s. When I found it, I was chasing my great-grandmother.

Petoria had changed her Swedish name upon immigrating to the U.S. and died giving birth to my Grandma Otea, who spent a lifetime wondering where her mother had come from. Thanks to the internet and DNA testing, I was able to trace Petoria to a hamlet in Ängelholm. I booked a trip for my teenage daughter and me — the pilgrimage Grandma Otea never got to make. I wanted simply to breathe the air Petoria had breathed.

On a whim the month before our trip, I messaged our Ängelholm Airbnb host, mentioning Petoria's name, farm, and parish church. I'd hoped for a local tour guide. Instead, twelve hours later, she messaged back that she'd found my cousin. A search that had outlived Grandma Otea's long life had ended in half a day.

One hundred and thirty years after Petoria crossed the Atlantic for “Amerika,” my daughter and I drove across the Öresund bridge to Ängelholm. My cousin Gun ("Goon") drove us in a dusty old Volvo to the farmhouse our shared great-great-grandparents built in the 1850s — still standing, still in the family. Surrounded by cousins we'd just met, we shared roast beef, rye bread and apple tart. The whole day moved at the pace of fika.

My experience in Ängelholm changed me. It restored my family to me, and it restored me to myself, and reopened my access to joy. An instinct for unhurried joy lives in certain Swedish words we lack in English: fika, pausing for coffee and something sweet with friends, and mysig, a cozy, unhurried, contented moment. In their language is permission for unearned joy.

I'm now deep into midlife, having spent decades being useful and responsible, taking care of everyone before myself. I rarely gave myself a moment to feel joy for its own sake — not as a reward for productivity, not as another self-improvement task. Joy, just for breathing.

Inspired by the land and people, I began tinkering with face oil recipes, blending sea buckthorn and cloudberry, the superfruits common around Ängelholm. Then I found a partner who could finish the blend I'd started, and I brought their oil to my bedside table. Applying it to my skin became an evening ritual, a moment of pleasure just for me. I cared less about these ingredients' famous nutritive claims than about how this exquisite liquid gold felt on my skin. Gone is my era of trying to improve and anti-age myself. In its place, permission for pleasure I can feel.

I began sharing these oils with my friends, who loved them as much as I do – and now I'm sharing them with you. I hope they give you a few unhurried minutes of pleasure that's yours alone. I don't share this to fix anything — not about myself, my friends, or you. I'm sharing it for what I realized in Ängelholm: a pleasurable moment in your day is why we're alive at all.

I like to think my great-grandmother Petoria would recognize what I've brought to life, and love it as her own.