Creative entrepreneur Ri Turner knew exactly what she was doing when she named her wellness brand "for the healthy hoes." The initiative has spawned merch, a community, and a podcast that is all about healing through the safe space of community. In a world where the wellness space can seem sometimes Lilly white and accessed by few due to differences in race, privilege, status, and money, "for the healthy hoes." speaks to the everyday human and makes the journey to healing accessible to all.
At 31, the Arkansas-based creator is all about health being wealth, but also about not needing money or a certain status to be well in life. For Ri, it's wellness, but keep it casual, and that is something we can get behind.
The seed of her online presence was planted in her college days, where Ri says she first fell in love with the process of video content creation. "As I continued to grow and evolve, there was a pivot in my content," she tells xoNecole. "This ultimately led me to creating a podcast where I share pieces of my journey and just have everyday conversations that I would otherwise be having with my partner or myself. What I do for a living isn't a surprise or shock to me at all. I've always known since I was super young that I would somehow connect with the world on a larger scale and build community. I am beyond grateful."
Ri Turner
Courtesy of Ri Turner
As a creative, podcaster, and wife, Ri's online presence is centered around the pillars of consciousness, health, and wellness. If she isn't sharing her perspectives through relatable chats on her "for the healthy hoes." podcast, she is sharing snippets of her life through reset vlogs on her YouTube channel and day-in-my-life videos where her peace radiates through the screen. Ri admits that self-care transformed her life, and it is a message that she shares through the content she produces. Through the gems she has collected in her healing journey, she hopes to connect and help with the healing of others.
In this installment of xoNecole's Finding Balance, we chat with the wife and podcaster about how she spends her mornings, navigating uncertainty, and cooking as the ultimate form of self-care.
Q: How has practicing self-care helped you become a better person?
A: Practicing self-care has completely transformed my life. Simple things like eating well, daily movement, and meditation has helped me get through so many obstacles and challenges. These practices completely changed my perspective on how to approach life. Instead of suppressing my feelings and running away from myself, I now feel everything and embrace all of me with open arms. This has truly allowed me to begin to be the best version of myself.
Q: What is the best advice you could give your younger self on how to navigate your 20s and 30s?
A: F*ck up. Learn from it. Grow from it. Don't force anything at all. Just flow. Embrace the change. It's all part of the plan. Everything is going to work out.
Q: At what point in your life did you understand the importance of pressing pause and finding balance in both your personal and professional life?
A: Breaks are so so so important. It took me a minute to realize it, probably only about a year or two ago in the midst of grind culture. Everything and everyone around us tells us to grind, work, be busy 100 percent of the time. But doing anything, even something you love ALL THE TIME and without breaks, can cause so much burnout.
It'll have you second-guessing if you really love this thing that you thought you loved so much. When in all actuality, all you needed was to press the pause button for a bit. I do not play about my breaks. When I come back from taking a pause, I'm so inspired, refreshed, and ready to work. And that's the point.
"When I come back from taking a pause, I'm so inspired, refreshed, and ready to work. And that's the point."
Q: What is a typical day in your life? If no day is quite the same, give me a rundown of a typical work week and what that might consist of.
A: No day is the same. But my work week typically looks like brainstorming and finding inspiration (this could be from my lived experiences or even Pinterest) as well as tons of recording content for my podcast and socials, editing, meetings, working on partnerships with brands, working on designs, or even shipping out orders. Some weeks my workload is heavier, and sometimes it is lighter. I appreciate both!
Q: What are your mornings like?
A: Mornings are my favorite part of the day. I wake up before anyone else in my home does. Before I do anything, I meditate for 5-10 minutes and express gratitude for what I do have and for what's already mine that I cannot see. Lately, I've been going on runs (such an amazing feeling). After my run, I make a smoothie, shower, and get ready for my work day.
Q: How do you wind down at night?
A: Believe it or not, cooking dinner is part of my wind-down routine. Cooking is so relaxing and can really be a meditative experience if you allow it to. After I eat dinner with my family, I do my skincare routine (which is like 2-3 steps) then I like to read and spend time with my family. This usually looks like us all being in the same room, engaging in casual conversation while still all doing our own thing.
Q: When you have a busy week, what’s the most hectic part of it? What techniques or tools do you have in place to maintain your sense of self amid chaos?
A: Although I do many things all on my own, like filming myself, editing, etc., none of it is actually challenging for the most part because I've been doing these things for so long. It becomes challenging when my workload increases, and it seems as if there isn't enough time in the day to complete my tasks. What has really helped me out with this a ton is planning. I have always loved planning and writing down my daily/weekly to-do lists. I would be lost without my planner.
Additionally, just taking one step at a time and tying not to think about everything that I have to do because when you think about every single task [at once], it can be super overwhelming. And I find that I actually get nothing done at all because I was trying to do everything. So definitely just focusing on one small thing at a time, and if I'm unable to work through my entire list today, that's okay. I can get to it tomorrow.
Q: Do you practice any types of self-care? What does that look like for you?
A: Self-care can be such a vague term, especially with the up-and-coming popularity of wellness. Although I love things like skincare, my favorite self-care practices are things like meditation, yoga, journaling, cooking myself a wholesome meal, drinking plenty of water, or even writing a love letter to myself.
Q: Oftentimes, when we hear talk about love languages, it is how we give love to others. What is your self-love language, and how do you give that to yourself?
A: I think my love languages are words of affirmation and acts of service. I've had to re-wire my brain because there used to be so much negative self-talk up top. I've made it a priority to speak really nice to myself and just be gentle with myself- which is ultimately words of affirmation. I also love to cook for myself. I believe that this is one of the highest forms of self-love. When you intentionally carve out the time to make sure that you are consuming nourishing meals, that's a form of love that can't be matched. These are two main ways I show self-love and show up for myself.
"When you intentionally carve out the time to make sure that you are consuming nourishing meals, that's a form of love that can't be matched."
Q: When you are going through a bout of uncertainty or feeling stuck, how do you handle it?
A: I simply take a step back. This allows me to look at things from a different perspective and remember why I even started in the first place. Going back to my "why" has gotten me through so much uncertainty and helps me see the bigger picture.
Q: Lastly, how do you define "balance" in your life? What does that look like to you in an ideal world? What does that look like in reality?
A: Nothing in this world flows without balance. Balance is defined by the Oxford Dictionary as "an even distribution of weight enabling someone or something to remain upright and steady." I couldn't agree with this definition more. Not only in the physical sense but also in the literal sense. Without the necessary amount of balance, not much is stable. This is why when I'm overworked or inconsistent with my spiritual practice, my mental health begins to spiral.
Balance to me looks like taking care of your mind, body, and spirit first so that you can effortlessly show up in this world to positively impact those around you.
For more of Ri, follow her on Instagram @riturnerr and listen to new episodes of the "for the healthy hoes." podcast here.
Featured image courtesy of Ri Turner
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Skylar sees things differently. At the time, she was shooting content on her iPhone. Temi came into the picture with a new perspective, an understanding of tech, and, eventually, a camera. “He doesn't give himself enough credit,” Skylar says. “He wasn't just my tripod. He wasn't just standing behind the camera and going ‘click.’ He was giving advice. He was giving me insight to how I could look at things from a different perspective. And I was like, 'Oh, he’s an artist.' I think it was maybe a heartbeat of that kind of energy of like, ‘Baby, can you take this picture?’ And it turned so quickly into, we're partners. We can work together in a way where we're advancing each other's creative thinking.”
The pair often says they’re two sides of the same coin. Skylar is an Aquarius. She attended art school, paints, and loves poetry. She’s more than happy to let the couple’s management firm and agency, Kensington Grey, handle their admin work. And, she loves to sleep in. Temi, on the other hand, wakes up early. He’s a Virgo. He loves a to-do list and regularly checks in on the couple’s brand partnerships spreadsheet to make sure everything is on track.
Because his storytelling was steeped in his love of technology, he didn’t always think of himself as a creative person. “Where I [am] the dreamer who wants to pluck things out of the sky and spend all day with my head in the clouds, Temi [is] so good at grounding me and helping me figure out how to make things make sense on paper. We just work together in such a complimentary way,” Skylar says.
It’s been more than six years since Brooklyn-based couple Temi and Skylar started dating, and nearly four since they cemented their working relationship. On TikTok and Instagram, the couple’s travel, fashion, and home content regularly rack up hundreds of thousands of views. They’ve worked with brands such as Coach, Aesop, Away, and Liquid IV, bringing their vibrant perspectives to every campaign they execute. Still, nearly two years since both Temi and Skylar committed to full-time content creation and creative directing, the couple says their romantic connection remains their priority.
“We told each other we would much rather go back to full-time jobs and preserve our relationship than to be full-time freelancers, barely getting a night's rest [and] barely kissing each other because we're so busy shooting,” Skylar says.
Working from home can make it hard to separate work from personal life for any entrepreneur. It can be even more challenging when your business partner is also your lover. Temi and Skylar had already used couples therapy as a tool to help them effectively communicate with one another. When they ran into challenges while working together, their therapist helped them set physical boundaries to help combat the issues.
"We told each other we would much rather go back to full-time jobs and preserve our relationship than to be full-time freelancers, barely getting a night's rest [and] barely kissing each other because we're so busy shooting."
“It actually took us doing very specific physical things to create boundaries between work and play in our relationship,” Skylar says. “So, for instance, we will only have conversations about work when we're out of bed or we're at the table or in the office. Initially, when we started, we had to light a candle to say that, 'Okay, this is a space where we're connecting, we’re not talking about work.' We needed really hard boundaries at the top. And then it became a little bit more organic.”
The boundaries have been crucial to implement, especially because the couple began working together so naturally. When the pair first met, Skylar was NY-based a social strategist for BuzzFeed and was using content creation to drive business to her lingerie company. She was shooting her own content. Temi was working for Microsoft in D.C. He’d recently traded in his DJing equipment for a camera. “I've always loved taking pictures,” he says. “Even when I was a kid, my African mother would wake me up at 3:00 a.m. [during a] party, and be like, 'Come take the family picture.'”
Growing up, Temi says he watched his parents support each other and be the true definition of partners. He knew he wanted the same for his own relationship. But, the couple also wanted to make sure they were being financially responsible. The pair didn’t quit their traditional jobs until they’d saved up two years' worth of their cost of living. And, Temi received his Master of Business Administration from New York University with the knowledge that it could either help him advance in his corporate career or be applicable to his business with Skylar.
Temi and SkylarCj Hart @hartbreakToday, they say their working relationship is more of a “quiet dance.” They still implement some of the boundaries they learned in therapy, but they also lean into their natural strengths and deep love for one another. When we speak, Temi has planned a date for the couple to see Princess Mononoke in 4K IMAX and added it to their Notion so they can factor it into their busy schedules. “I fully plan to date for the rest of my life,” he says.
Skylar says the couple doesn’t just wait for date nights to check in with one another, though. This often happens in the mornings, after Temi has made her peppermint tea and poured himself a cup of coffee. When they ask each other how they slept, she says, it’s not just a “nicety.” It’s a genuine question meant to foster connection.
“A lot of it happens during the day in the midst of work. We'll stop and we'll hug. Or we’ll slow dance in the kitchen,” she says. “Sometimes it's hard to set a whole date night when you have 7,000 things going on. So, we must grasp these moments and check in when we can. And I think it's become so organic to us that I actually didn't even realize how often we do it. But all day long, we're like, 'Are you good? I felt like your energy shifted,' because we're best friends, we just know. We just feel it happen.”
What’s better than being in love? Building wealth while doing it. Watch Making Cents here for real stories of couples who make money moves together.
Featured image by Cj Hart @hartbreak
