Luminous Rose

Twelve years ago today, I lost my mom.

In astrology, twelve years is one Jupiter cycle. A complete revolution. The planet of expansion, wisdom and new beginnings returning to exactly where it was the day she left.

It feels significant this year in a way it hasn't before.

Because something has completed.

My mom and I had a complicated relationship. But what I know now — standing at the age she was when she believed her time had passed — is that I have spent this Jupiter cycle becoming someone she never got to meet.

She couldn't break through where she was.

I have.

Not perfectly. Not without pain. But I have spoken when I was afraid. I have built something when I was uncertain. I have refused to stay quiet when everything in me wanted to shrink.

In my birth chart I carry her Mars — her iron will, her conviction, her fierce refusal to be silent ~ conjunct the very foundation of my birth chart. She is literally written into my bones.

As a child I would feel the weight of that.

Now I feel the gift.

Wherever she is, I can feel what became of the seed she planted. The elderberries. The plants. The iron fist she handed me that I learned to open.

I am still learning. But I am no longer waiting for permission to begin.

To my community — thank you for witnessing this journey. You give me permission to be human in this work. And I hope in return I give you permission to be exactly where you are in yours.

Healing isn't a straight line. But it is real.

And sometimes it takes one full Jupiter cycle to feel it. 🌹

Phenoxyethanol is everywhere. This is a preservative used extensively in 'natural' skincare.

Cleansers, serums, moisturizers — even products labeled “clean,” “natural” and “botanical.” And most women have no idea what it actually is.

Here’s what a trained formulator knows:

✦︎ Phenoxyethanol is synthetic.
✦︎ Not plant‑derived.
✦︎ Not botanical.

It’s made by reacting phenol (petroleum‑derived) with ethylene oxide (a known carcinogenic gas). The final ingredient is considered safe at low levels — but the origin story is nowhere near the clean image the industry sells.

And it often hides under names like:
✦︎ 2‑Phenoxyethanol
✦︎ Ethylene glycol monophenyl ether
✦︎ Phenoxytol
✦︎ Rose ether (the most misleading one)

Why is it everywhere?
Because it’s cheap, effective and sounds less scary than parabens.

That’s marketing — not formulation.

What formal training teaches (that marketing doesn’t):
✦︎ The EU caps it at 1% for a reason
✦︎ It can irritate dry, sensitive and mature skin
✦︎ It’s a sensitizer — irritation builds slowly over time
✦︎ It’s almost always paired with ethylhexylglycerin, which increases both efficacy and irritation

No one is calculating the cumulative exposure when it’s in everything you use daily.

My stance as a formulator:
𝗜 𝗱𝗼𝗻’𝘁 𝘂𝘀𝗲 𝗽𝗵𝗲𝗻𝗼𝘅𝘆𝗲𝘁𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗼𝗹 — 𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝗯𝗲𝗰𝗮𝘂𝘀𝗲 𝗶𝘁’𝘀 𝗲𝘃𝗶𝗹, 𝗯𝘂𝘁 𝗯𝗲𝗰𝗮𝘂𝘀𝗲 𝗜 𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗺𝘂𝗹𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝘄𝗼𝗺𝗲𝗻 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗱𝗿𝘆, 𝘀𝗲𝗻𝘀𝗶𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗺𝗮𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲 𝘀𝗸𝗶𝗻. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗲𝘅𝗮𝗰𝘁 𝘄𝗼𝗺𝗲𝗻 𝗺𝗼𝘀𝘁 𝗹𝗶𝗸𝗲𝗹𝘆 𝘁𝗼 𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗰𝘁 𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗿 𝘁𝗶𝗺𝗲.

The real problem isn’t the ingredient.

It’s the dishonesty around it — the natural‑washed language, the “botanical” branding, the quiet ingredient list that doesn’t match the loud front label.

Your skin deserves better than that. 🌹

There’s a part of entrepreneurship we don’t talk about enough:

What it feels like when someone takes pieces of your early journey and tries to build themselves from it ~ without ever acknowledging you.

What it feels like to be unseen in the very places you poured your heart.

❤️‍🩹 It’s a strange kind of grief.
❤️‍🩹 A strange kind of anger.
❤️‍🩹 A strange kind of invisibility.

I’ve experienced this.

Someone stepping into my origin story and acting as if they discovered it themselves.

Someone wanting access to my knowledge, my training, my process… but never wanting to recognize the years I invested to get here.

For a long time, it felt like a threat. (Some days it still does.)

Now I understand it's a wound.

💔 A wound around being unseen.
💔 A wound around being unacknowledged.
💔 A wound around watching a chapter of my story walk away in someone else’s hands.

This year, I’m RECLAIMING MY story.

I’m reclaiming the path I carved with my own hands and heart.

My own authenticity ~ the part of me that is completely mine.

I’m reclaiming the identity I built through training, mastery and evolution.

I am just now learning how to accept myself fully.

I am learning what it means to practice radical self‑acceptance ~ to stand in who I am without shrinking, without apologizing, without letting anyone else define how I began.

And I’m choosing to stand fully in the businesswoman I’ve become ~ one I built on my own, because of who I am.

If you’ve ever felt erased or overshadowed, I hope this reminds you:

🌹 Your story is yours.
🌹 Your growth is yours.
🌹 Your mastery is yours.

No one can ever take that from you.

I grew up surrounded by plants.

Not as a brand story. As a way of life.

Every summer as a kid I would harvest elderberries and make jelly. It was just something we did. Something that felt natural and right and completely ordinary at the time.

Little did I know those same elderberries would one day become an extract in my skincare formulas.

Plants were medicine in my world before I ever knew what a skincare brand was. I made herbal tinctures. Then soap. Then I started asking bigger questions.

Why was I still buying from large skincare brands when I knew — genuinely knew — I could make something better? Something more honest. Something made with actual human health in mind rather than a marketing brief.

So I got trained. Formally. Rigorously. Under European cosmetic standards that make US requirements look like a suggestion.

Luminous Rose wasn't born in a lab funded by investors or a factory churning out thousands of units a day. It was born from a lifetime of believing that plants heal — and that you deserve to know exactly what you're putting on your skin.

I built this for my community. Women who are done being sold mythology. Women who want to actually trust what's in the jar.

Honesty matters to me personally. Deeply. So why would I ever offer my customers anything less?

Big skincare never had this story.
They couldn't buy it if they tried. 🌹

Someone just unsubscribed from my email list today with a very specific reason: "Your emails are annoying. Too much boo-hoo-hoo and whining."

And I didn’t give her a free product.

Here's what I was apparently whining about:

✔ The fact that brands call synthetic compounds "plant vinegar-derived" and "coconut-derived" to make you feel good about what you're buying.

✔ The fact that every water-based skincare product requires preservation — and most brands won't tell you that honestly.

✔ The fact that I've spent ten years training under European cosmetic standards so that every ingredient in every Luminous Rose product is exactly what I say it is.

If that's whining — I'll keep whining.

Some emails find exactly the right people. Some find exactly the wrong ones.

Today I found out which one she was.

Safe + Effective Natural Skin Care | Luminous Rose At Luminous Rose, our plant-based products are formulated and handcrafted to strict European standards so you can glow with confidence from safe skincare.

I'm certain you've seen ads for that "Norwegian" skincare brand with the founder on her farm — the one that sells out 2,000 jars and gives away cars.

Here's what they don't put in the ads:

It's a $100M+ marketing operation based in Austin, Texas — not Norway. The warehouse is in Florida. The founder? A character. A $100M operation with warehouses on three continents — who's actually making the product? They run multiple Norse-themed brands off the same supply chain and openly brag about it on their own website.

The whole thing — the farm, the scarcity, the intimate founder story — is a sales script dressed up as a woman who cares about your skin.

Women spend $80–120 on this brand thinking they're supporting an artisan.

When I say "I make every product by hand in small batches" — this is actually true — it now sounds exactly like what a $100M factory also says.

They've devalued my most authentic differentiator by faking it at scale.

I built Luminous Rose because I couldn't stomach this industry anymore.

My name is Maria. I formulate every product. I make every product. By hand. In-house. In the US. When I say small batch, it means I ran out of hours that day — not that a fulfillment warehouse in Florida throttled the inventory.

You deserve to know who is actually touching what goes on your face. 💚

💖 I'm one woman with a lab, a conscience and 10 years of botanical research.

That's the whole story — no mythology required. ༄˖°.🍃.ೃ࿔*:･

In 2025, the FDA recalled acne products from La Roche-Posay, Proactiv and Walgreens after testing found elevated levels of benzene — a chemical linked to leukemia and other blood cancers with long-term exposure.

But here's what most people don't know: benzene isn't added to these products on purpose. It forms when benzoyl peroxide — one of the most common acne-fighting ingredients on the market — breaks down over time, especially in heat.

That recall may be old news. The ingredient concern? Still very real.

This is something I thought about deeply when formulating my Acne Relief Gel. I didn't want to build a product that traded one problem for another — breakouts for something potentially worse down the line.

So instead of benzoyl peroxide, my formula relies on:
🌿 Willow Bark — a natural source of salicylic acid that gently exfoliates and unclogs pores
🍋 Grapefruit Peel Oil — antibacterial and brightening
🌱 Bamboo + Aloe — to calm, heal and reduce scarring
✨ Niacinamide — to fade post-acne marks and strengthen the skin barrier

And every single ingredient is listed. No "fragrance." No fillers. No guessing.

Clean, effective acne care — without the compromise.

Formulating effective skincare is part education, science, creativity and intuition. I spend a tremendous amount of time on research and development. Most often a formula will begin months if not a year before it makes its way to you.

My formulations are never just put out to you without careful consideration. My formulas are not found on Pinterest or blogs but rather from hundreds of hours of training and research by me. They are built from the ground up~ utilizing safe ingredients.

Behind the scenes, there is testing. These tests include stability, microbial and challenge. It is my responsibility to think how you may use the product and where you will store it. After I have personally tested the product for quite some time, I then recruit a team of individuals who also help test the final product.

All of this comes into play before this thoughtful creation makes its way to you.

There is a responsibility in the way I formulate. Transparency and trust are at the core~delivering the best product with the best results. ❤

I was raised to equate worth with work — I had this belief that if I’m not pushing nonstop, I’m failing.. if something felt easy, I must be doing it wrong. Those beliefs run deep and they’ve shaped so much of how I’ve shown up in my life and business.

But midlife has a way of pulling you into the in‑between — the liminal space where the old identity dissolves and the new one hasn’t fully formed. And this is where I am today. There’s something shifting in me.

𝐈’𝐦 𝐢𝐧 𝐦𝐲 𝐜𝐥𝐨𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐒𝐚𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐧 𝐬𝐪𝐮𝐚𝐫𝐞, the midlife checkpoint that arrives in our 50s. It’s a reality check transit — the kind that asks, “𝑾𝒉𝒂𝒕 𝒂𝒎 𝑰 𝒂𝒄𝒕𝒖𝒂𝒍𝒍𝒚 𝒅𝒐𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒘𝒊𝒕𝒉 𝒎𝒚 𝒍𝒊𝒇𝒆?” It marks the beginning of the third act, the moment where you take stock of what has worked, what hasn’t and where you want your story to go next. ⋆⭒˚.⋆🪐 ⋆⭒˚.⋆

I’ve spent years feeling responsible, trying to prove myself, trying to keep everything going. The woman who did all that… she kept me alive. She built this business from scratch. She carried so much. She got me here.

But choosing who I get to be in the second half of my life means letting her go — not with rejection but with gratitude.

She was necessary and powerful.
And now, she’s ready to be released.

So this summer, I’m choosing differently.

♥︎ 𝐈’𝐥𝐥 𝐛𝐞 𝐨𝐩𝐞𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐒𝐚𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐝𝐚𝐲, 𝐉𝐮𝐧𝐞 𝟔, 𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝟏𝟎–𝟐 𝐏𝐌.
♥︎ 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐧𝐞𝐱𝐭 𝐝𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐌𝐘 𝐒𝐓𝐎𝐑𝐄 𝐰𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐛𝐞 𝐨𝐩𝐞𝐧 𝐢𝐬 𝐉𝐮𝐥𝐲 11.

𓍢ִ໋🌷͙֒ 𝐌𝐲 𝐨𝐧𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐞 𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐢𝐬 𝐀𝐋𝐖𝐀𝐘𝐒 𝐨𝐩𝐞𝐧 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐚𝐯𝐚𝐢𝐥𝐚𝐛𝐥𝐞.

This isn’t me stepping back.

It’s me stepping into alignment — into a space that honors my energy, my evolution and the woman I’m becoming.

If you’re feeling your own midlife reorientation — the subtle shift in who you’re becoming — I hope this speaks to you.

♡ We’re allowed to soften.
♡ We’re allowed to choose differently.

PS. If you are in your own midlife shift, reach out! I offer in-person and virtual astrology appointments! ⋆°.☾⋆.ೃ࿔*:⋆