I've been in aesthetics long enough to know what a good appointment feels like. And I've watched enough women leave appointments feeling the opposite of good to know that something needed to change.

Not just in my practice. In the way our industry treats women altogether.

What I Kept Seeing

For years, I watched it happen over and over again. A woman would carve out an hour for herself, which, if you know anything about the mental load most women carry, is no small thing. She'd arrange childcare or skip her lunch break or feel vaguely guilty the entire drive over. She'd walk in, get checked in quickly, moved back efficiently, treated competently, and sent back out the door in under 30 minutes.

Technically, the appointment was a success. The treatment was done. The boxes were checked.

But she never really exhaled. She never actually arrived. She spent the whole time half-present, half somewhere else, already mentally running through dinner and homework help and the permission slip that needed to be signed before tomorrow. And underneath all of it, the quiet hum of a question she couldn't quite silence: Should I even be spending money on this?

I saw that guilt in so many of my clients. Women who gave everything to everyone around them and had somehow convinced themselves that an hour and a few hundred dollars on their own face was an indulgence they needed to justify. Mothers especially. The mental math they would do before every appointment: what else this money could buy, who else this time could serve, whether wanting to look and feel good made them somehow less devoted to the people they loved.

It broke my heart every single time. Because these women deserved so much better than an appointment that made them feel worse about themselves before they even sat down in the chair.

What Didn't Exist Here

Grand Forks has good providers. Skilled people doing good work. But what it has never had, and what I couldn't stop thinking about, was a space that treated the whole experience as something worth designing. A place where the care started before the treatment did. Where a woman could walk in carrying all of that weight and actually be given a moment to set it down.

A place that felt, from the very first second, like it was made for her.

Everywhere I looked, appointments were transactional. Check in. Treat. Check out. Nobody was building in time for a woman's nervous system to actually shift. Nobody was creating an environment so warm and considered and unhurried that she couldn't help but relax into it. Nobody was addressing the guilt directly, or giving her explicit permission to be there, or treating her investment in herself as something worthy of celebration rather than something to minimize.

I kept thinking: someone should build that. And eventually I realized that someone was going to have to be me.

What I Wanted to Create

I wanted a mom to be able to walk through our doors and feel, for the first time in a long time, like she didn't have to be anything for anyone. Not a scheduler. Not a caretaker. Not a problem solver. Just a person, being cared for, in a space that was built entirely around her comfort and her needs.

I wanted her to be greeted like she was expected and welcomed. Offered a drink before she even had a chance to ask for one. Handed a robe and shown to a lounge that felt nothing like a waiting room: warm and dim and quiet, with limewash walls and arched doorways and lighting that made the rest of the world feel very far away.

I wanted her to have 45 minutes before her treatment even began. Not because that's efficient, but because that's how long it actually takes for most of us to stop running and start receiving.

I wanted her consultation to feel like a conversation with someone who genuinely had her best interests at heart. Someone who would tell her the truth about what would actually help her and what wasn't worth her money. Someone who saw her as a whole person: her skin, yes, but also her hormones, her stress levels, her stage of life, the way she's been feeling lately and whether anyone has taken that seriously.

I wanted her to leave not just looking better but feeling better. Feeling seen. Feeling like she had finally found a place that got it.

And I wanted her to stop feeling guilty about any of it.

Because here is what I know after years of doing this work: when a woman feels nurtured and at home in her own skin, she shows up differently for everyone around her. More present with her kids. More patient with her partner. More herself in every room she walks into. Taking care of yourself is not selfish. It is one of the most loving things you can do for yourself and for everyone who depends on you.

Why Abōde

When I started searching for a name for this new chapter, I knew I wanted something that captured that feeling. Not a clinical name. Not a trendy one. Something that meant something.

Abōde. A place of belonging. A home.

The moment I found it, I knew. Because that's exactly what I want every woman who walks through our doors to feel, that this space was made for her. That she belongs here. That she can exhale the moment she arrives and not pick that breath back up until she's ready.

You are your home. And you deserve to feel like it.

What This Moment Feels Like

We are weeks away from opening our doors and I want to be honest with you: it's a lot. There have been moments in this process that were harder than I expected. More overwhelming, more uncertain, more vulnerable than building something usually feels.

But when I walk through that space and I picture the women who are going to come through those doors, the moms who haven't done something just for themselves in longer than they can remember, the women who have been dismissed by providers and are cautiously hoping this time will be different, the ones who don't even know yet what it feels like to actually receive care, I feel nothing but certain.

This is exactly what Grand Forks needs. And I cannot wait to show you it!

Abōde Skin & Wellness opens this May in South Grand Forks. Book your first visit at abodeskinandwellness.com or call us at 701-203-2060. We saved a spot for you.