My Search For Peace of Mind

The past six weeks have been some of the most challenging of my life.  Almost two months ago I expanded my spa from two rooms in a cottage building on Moorpark St. to six treatment rooms in the Times Square Center.   I’m a lucky girl to be growing and expanding a business that provides skin and body care services in this economy.  The move was exciting and our new space is gorgeous and luxurious!  We went through the typical growing pains the first week like having no internet service for three days, phone lines on and off because a certain humongous phone company screwed up our move order in every way possible.  But after a week we finally settled in and I was able to breathe and finally take it all in.    And then the proverbial you know what hit the fan when I woke up one morning literally less than two weeks after our move to a phone call from my kid’s school nurse saying that she was on the school bus with my daughter and the paramedics had been called…my 13 year old daughter appeared to be “on something.”   My daughter has always been an attention seeker and when my boyfriend and I jumped in the car and started down the 101 freeway toward the hospital, I prayed that she was making it up…that this was her trying to get my attention.  But she wasn’t.  My daughter had been bullied at school because she had made some poor choices.  She wasn’t doing drugs, wasn’t cheating on tests…but apparently she kissed a boy that wasn’t her boyfriend and one girl saw and decided to tell the entire 8th grade what a horrible person my daughter was.  “Horrible” is the PG version of what she was called by most of her so-called friends.   Weeks later, my daughter is okay, we found her an awesome therapist and she’s trying to figure out why she decided to numb out by taking a handful of ten year old Xanax she found in the medicine cabinet at my old house where her dad lives now.

I don’t remember a lot of the first few weeks in my new spa…somehow I managed to work on clients, find a therapist for my daughter, contact her school counselor and every one of her teachers to find out how something like this could happen…why I wasn’t notified per her 504 that her grades were dropping and she wasn’t focusing in class.  I felt like a horrible mom….did I miss something?  My daughter assures me I didn’t….  But working mom that I am, I can’t help thinking about all those horrific stories you hear about and everyone asks “where were the parents in all of this?” 

The irony in all this is that the name of my spa is Peace of Mind.  My job is to help other people look and feel their best…to educate them on making the right choices for their skin and body so they have peace of mind in their life.  But for those few weeks, I had none of that peace for myself. 

In retrospect, I learned a lot from those first few weeks and I’m still trying to make sense of it.  But what I’m learning is that Peace of Mind is a way of life….it’s not just about looking wonderful…it’s about being in touch with who you are and loving yourself for being human, flaws and all.   It’s about staying in the present no matter what life throws at us.  I can feel the way I do business changing…in a good way.  I envision weekly community meditation groups in the spa.  Group discussions about how to manage our busy lives.   Lessons to be learned from each other in our awesome community about how to find balance, how to find…Peace of Mind.

 Wendei Spale has been a licensed esthetician for more than 17 years and is one of the owners of Peace of Mind Skin & Body Care in Studio City.  Her clients regard her as an educator and they rely on her to help them decipher the many skin care products that are on the market.  Peace of Mind is located at 12215 Ventura Blvd. #110 in the Times Square Center in Studio City.  Visit them at www.peaceofmindskincare.com for more information.