Calm n’ Scents: An aromatherapy and metaphysical store looking to expand
By Colin Graf
SARNIA – First Nations’ spirituality, Eastern mysticism, and a good dose of money-minded entrepreneurship are the ingredients that Aamjiwnaang citizen Janelle Nahmabin has mixed to create a sweet-smelling, successful business venture in Sarnia.
Nahmabin, 31, has owned and operated the Calm ‘n Scents aromatherapy and metaphysical store in central Sarnia since Oct. 2016. While under the previous ownership the store focussed heavily on East Asian spiritual practices along with the aromatherapy medicines, Nahmabin is adding more and more items and writings about First Nations’ traditional practices.
She has created smudge kits with sweetgrass, sage, and cedar and hopes to introduce the wider Sarnia community to smudging. “Some of our smudge kits have items from other cultures who also have smudging traditions. We want this to be a ‘go to’ box where everyone can learn about smudging,” Nahmabin says.
At first, Nahmabin was reluctant to make any changes at the store, not wanting to offend the previous owner, who taught her “a wealth of knowledge” in the aromatherapy area. Still today, most bath and body products are still made on site from the old recipes.
As time went on, encouraged by friends, the young entrepreneur knew she had to “make some switches to reflect who she was. Now she sees the store as a “meeting place between East and indigenous spiritualties”. “It’s certainly a shift,” she says about bringing more and more Indigenous items in.
Running the business has been part of Nahmabin’s life story in reconnecting with her heritage. “I was brought up in a Christian home and appreciated all the lessons and morals I got from that upbringing, but at the same time I felt so disconnected from who I actually was. I wasn’t actually connected with my culture at all,” she explains.
As a child and teen, Nahmabin describes herself as being “sort of similar to a lot of young First Nation women – I had a lot of self-esteem issues.”
“I was that injured girl who wanted to be disconnected from her culture, who didn’t want to be a part of anything.”
At one point she decided she didn’t want to be “that person” and learned to tell herself affirmations each day. “It’s almost like a switch in your brain; creating an attitude of gratitude,” she recalls.
Once Nahmabin started finding her identity by rediscovering her culture, she found a new side of herself. She made some good friends who were shaman and became her teachers.
Another special influence was her grandmother Carol, a medicine woman who knows “all the roots, berries, and barks that help us heal ourselves; that sacred knowledge that has been passed down through generations,” she tells Anishinabek News.
Even as a mostly-disconnected child, her grandmother would take her into the bush with a video camera to keep a record of what they found. Today those lessons are helping Nahmabin run her business.
She feels a close link with the metaphysical side of the store, with the books and learning materials about positive thinking, and affirmations. “I understand all of that, why I’m supposed to be here. I do believe every single thing happens for a reason.”
“In the midst of seeking out this place (Calm ‘n Scents) I made a decision that I would go for anything I wanted fearlessly and that I was worth it. Everything sort of clicked into place,” she says.
With funding from the Tecumseh Community Development Corporation at the neighbouring Aamjiwnaang First Nation and a great group of supportive friends and family, Nahmabin took the plunge into running her own business.
Today, she is pushing her story forward in other ways as well, such as motivational speaking and establishing a summer market at Aamjiwnaang. The market, to be held on July 22 and Aug. 19, will allow citizens of the First Nation to buy, sell, or trade items of their making, anything from moccasins to jams, Nahmabin says. She even has a vendor booked who makes ceremony bags, and, of course, Calm ‘n Scents will have a booth as well.
Also in the works is a second store in London, ON. Planned to open within the next two years, the London store will be run by Nahmabin’s sister, Neesa, a trained pharmacy assistant who is working to combine First Nations’ medicine with aromatherapy.
This summer, Nahmabin will also be holding classes with her grandmother on traditional gathering practices. They will teach what to look for in the bush when people are looking for medicinal plants and how to prepare the plants by making them into a tea or salve. After finishing the class, to be held at the Aamjiwnaang community centre, the community greenhouse will be open next door so participants can purchase some of the medicinal plants and take them home for their own gardens.
Also on offer, she is planning public classes on First Nations’ culture for people who are not indigenous but “feel the pull” of the culture. Although she was concerned if it would be a good idea to share traditional knowledge and items such as sweetgrass outside of her community, after consulting with elders, Nahmabin decided “these are important tools for everybody.”
“Why should a non-native not be able to understand that spiritual connection to the sweetgrass,” she wonders.
The new focus on First Nations in the store has brought in local indigenous, and has also brought something of a shift in the age of clientele, Nahmabin says, with more younger visitors in their 20s and 30s than before. She credits some of this to advertising on social media.
Nahmabin also has a unique connection with Anishinabek News. “The first dollar I ever made,” came from this publication, in payment for a cartoon strip she created to help people learn Anishnaabemowin. “I was very impressed with myself as a young girl who was getting a cheque for something I loved doing,” she remembers.
Today, running the Calm ‘n Scents store and pursuing her own dreams is part of Nahmabin’s plan to raise her three daughters conscious of the Law of Attraction, and unafraid to shout out their gratitude “surrounded by our language and our culture.”