our guest for episode 6 is maria vashakidze! maria is the owner and formulator of seagrape apothecary, a magical shop and community with the mission to turn self-care into a love affair! you can find them online at seagrapeapothecary.com and on instagram, facebook, and tiktok @seagrapeapothecary.

if you’re looking for direct links to more of the goodies we discuss in this episode, you can find them here:

• digital workshops: https://www.eventbrite.com/o/seagrape-bath-body-25365869801

• membership: https://seagrapeapothecary.com/pages/seagrape-babes-membership?_pos=1&_sid=ba709610c&_ss=r

• csw: https://seagrapeapothecary.com/pages/seagrape-subscriptions

• free newsletter: https://forms.aweber.com/form/68/1025401868.htm

each season we read a new book about witchcraft practices around the world with the #snortandcacklebookclub, with a book review by ash and the occasional guest helping us close out the season. this season's #snortandcacklebookclub read is babaylan sing back: philippine shamans and voice, gender, and place by grace nono.

take the fibre witch quiz at ashalberg.com/quiz. follow us on instagram @snortandcackle and be sure to subscribe via your favourite podcasting app so you don't miss an episode!

support future seasons of snort & cackle by joining the creative coven community.

transcript

snort & cackle - season 4, episode 6 - maria vashakidze

ash alberg: [Upbeat music plays.] Hello, and welcome to the Snort and Cackle podcast where every day magic, work and ritual intersect. I'm your host, Ash Alberg, a queer fibre witch and hedge witch. Each season we read a new book about witchcraft practices around the world with the #SnortAndCackleBookClub with a book review by me and the occasional guest helping us close out the season. Our book this season is Babaylan Sing Back: Philippine Shamans and Voice, Gender and Place by Grace Nono.

Whether you're an aspiring boss witch looking to start your knitwear design business, a plant witch looking to play more with your local naturally dyed color palette or a knit witch wondering just what the hell is a natural yarn and how do you use it in your favorite patterns, we've got the solution for you.

Take the free fiber witch quiz at ashalberg.com/quiz and find out which self-paced online program will help you take your dreams into reality. Visit ashalberg.com/quiz [upbeat music fades out] and then join fellow fiber witches in the Creative Coven Community at ashalberg.com/creative-coven-community for 24/7 access to Ash’s favorite resources, monthly zoom knit nights, and more. [End of intro.]

I am so excited for today's guest. I am here with Maria Vashakidze. Maria is the owner and formulator of Seagrape Apothecary, a magical shop and community with the mission to turn self care into a love affair. Hi Maria.

maria vashakidze: Hi! Hi, hello.
ash alberg: How are you?
maria vashakidze: I'm so good. How are you doing? Thank you for having me.

ash alberg: Thank you for joining. I am really stoked to have you on here because I just, I have been loving your shop from afar for a while now. And just like everything that you do there is delightful. And you've also, running a brick and mortar through a pandemic and pivoting as much as you've needed to is amazing, but then also within that, you've had some not pandemic-related shitty things happen and you've still managed to keep going.

Seems like you’ve got a really solid community that you've built, which is delightful. I'm excited for folks to hear from you and if they don't already know and love your stuff, then by the end of this, I'm sure they will be knowing and loving your stuff.

maria vashakidze: Ah, thank you!
ash alberg: Yes. Tell us a bit about you and what you do in the world.

maria vashakidze: Yeah. So my name is Maria Vashakidze. Y'all can practice that on your own. [Ash giggles.] So I'm currently Portland-based, but I grew up on the east coast. I'm a Russian Georgian immigrant, my family immigrated to New York when I was eight. And I run Seagrape Apothecary, it's currently in a physical location so our brick and mortar is in Portland, Oregon, but I have actually had the company for 13 years this year.

ash alberg: Oh, my goodness!

maria vashakidze: At this for a while, yes. I did this while I was in college.

ash alberg: That's so cool.

maria vashakidze: And yeah, I'm a painter. That's what my degree is in. So I'm a visual artist.

ash alberg: Everything is so pretty. [Chuckles.] All of your branding is always beautiful.

maria vashakidze: Thank you. Beauty is one of my values and I actually wasn't the person that did our branding. We can dive into the biz end of it but I enlist the help of a lot of artists. I'm really community-driven and oriented, and I love supporting other people and finding folks who are in alignment with my values and my aesthetics in the world and being able to support them so I actually work with a ton of really incredible artists.

And as a painter, I can't ever really settle on a design. So it's really good for me to ask for help. It's good to know when you need help, so what I do out in the world, yeah. I create herbal medicine, pleasure medicine. I'm really driven by plants and ancestral traditions and sweetness and beauty. And just pleasure, informs everything that I do in the world from art making to medicine making to community building. So that's me.

ash alberg: Amazing. I, yeah, like everybody needs to just go to your website and order things, but also just honestly, scroll your social media feeds because just the overall, everything feels so luscious and I'm actually, it's funny ‘cause I'm working on my next book right now and it's basically like a fuck you to COVID is kind of the subtext of the whole thing, but it's, that’s rooted in pleasure.

And we’re going to be doing like boudoir style photography, and it's going to be like lots of recipes and patterns and things, but I've been taking a lot of inspiration, like my mood board is full of a lot of your photography so that my photographer gets an idea because you do such a good job of making these 2D images feel so multi-sensual.

And obviously sensual in terms of sexy, but also in terms of actually feeling like you are in whatever the image is, like in that environment and surrounded by all these different textures and like smells and flavors. Food seems to feature really heavily in a lot of the photography.

maria vashakidze: So, both of my photographers are also Tauruses. [Both laugh.]

ash alberg: Amazing.
maria vashakidze: Shout to Drew and Nick from Night Flare Creative, thank

you. [Both laugh.]

ash alberg: Yeah. It's all, it's all so stunning. So I would love to hear about ... I think the other thing that I find really interesting about your biz is that you do a really good job of having a lot of really lovely sex magic. And it's not only sex magic stuff, but especially seeing the way that you navigate what is within the business world and like an industry that is frequently fucked over by different censorship laws and like payment processors often get cranky about witchcraft and sex-based things.

And especially with the amount of the queer-run sex shops I see just constantly dealing with things like shadow banning and with being blocked on platforms and things like that, the fact that you managed to consistently be like navigating those things and also herbalism often falls into you can get in trouble with different platforms, not even for legitimate reasons, just because it's like considered risky and I put that in quotes.

So I would love to hear about how you navigate that and ...

maria vashakidze: That’s a lot of questions all in one. ash alberg: I know, I'm so sorry. [Cackles.]

maria vashakidze: Don’t be sorry. It's so juicy, right? And we can spend all day talking about this.

Yeah. I think all of those kind of ways that we care for ourselves, which are like sexuality, magic, herbalism, plant medicine, all of those things, the government wants to be able to control. We know this to be true. Like, they don't want us to have the power over our own bodies, over our own medicine.

Especially when we have ancestral knowledge and are trying to lean into our own sovereignty. The government really tries to take that and because I've been in business for so long, I've definitely stumbled into that realm of censorship and being confused about why I can't say like, peppermint is helpful for headaches. Like you can say that, the FDA will come after you.

Yeah, it's been such a journey. I definitely, over the years, have made lots of mistakes and haven't ... have learned all of it by Googling it. I don't have a degree in business or anything like that, but I did use to work for a sex shop when I was in college and so a lot of the pleasure medicine that I'm creating is informed by that experience.

I spent about five years doing that and so I saw firsthand how difficult it was to share sexuality knowledge on social media, how difficult it was to use any processor to sell a sex toy, like how quickly processors would pull out from doing business with a sex toy store. And I worked for a really amazing feminist sex toy store similar to Sheba, which is local to us in Portland, Oregon.

And I know how difficult it is to like continuously have to shift and pivot because you're trying to keep up with what words are being shadow banned, how do we need to spell sexuality in a hashtag for our audience to be able to find us, what new kind of creative problem solving or technique that we need to lean into to be able to feature the products that we're actually selling to folks? It's very, it's disheartening.

ash alberg: Totally. It adds on so much unnecessary labor when running a business is already tricky. Like serving your customers is all ready a big enough job without then needing to be constantly doing all of this other labor for honestly like not good reasons.

maria vashakidze: Yeah. And I think, as witches too, like the number one priority is to make sure we're serving our community, that we're sharing the tools and knowledge and the conversations that are really important to be having through whatever we're experiencing in the world currently. And delivering that, figuring out how to deliver the medicine that we've got for the world is like a whole different job.

So not only are you working on making your medicine and presenting it to the world, hoping that it'll do, the hope, the good that you want it to do, but also then you have to figure out, how do I make sure people see the medicine and have access, right? There's a lot of gatekeeping that's done by the government in regards to magic, sexuality, herbal medicine, all of those topics.

ash alberg: Literally all the things that you do. I feel like it's been ... I don't, the pandemic has been shit. I do feel like those of us who run online businesses, if we've managed to survive, it's presented interesting opportunities that were not really maybe considered as viable before. And I'm specifically thinking of workshops.

Like you've had a history of running really incredible workshops in Portland, but as a result of the pandemic, like I've been able to take workshops that you guys have hosted through Zoom and it's, they're amazing. And I don't know if you've found that, like you've ... the shifts and pivots that you've had to make specifically because of COVID have helped you or have been more of a pain in the ass in some ways, or like, how has that kind of been?

maria vashakidze: Accessibility has always been on the trajectory and accessibility takes a significant financial investment unfortunately, and so that was always on the trajectory and I feel like the pandemic just escalated how quickly we got to where we were going. And obviously we're still not all the way there, but all of these integrations and apps came out through the pandemic that made it possible for us to loop in community from around the world.

That was always the goal, to hire instructors from around the country and around the world, which we've been able to do through COVID. Like hiring somebody to teach from Portugal while we are taking classes from all over the world is such an incredible gift. And I'm ... so I'm really thankful for that opportunity and I definitely always look for possibility in whatever the chaotic situation is, which we've experienced a lot at the store over the last couple of years.

We had a couple of break ins back to back. And so I always look for the opportunity and the chaos. And so being able to hire some of my favorite folks that I've only really met online and been able to watch online over the years has been such a gift.

I've been able to hire folks that I've met on the east coast that I'm like, oh, when am I going to be able to fly folks out to teach in person? And here's this opportunity to just connect with them over the internet and make their medicine and their wisdom accessible to our audience across the world.

It's truly a gift. And we also have queers joining us from all over the world being like, there's nothing like this here. I'm so thankful. Which is such a beautiful reflection to be able to offer a non-binary queer-informed tarot class for somebody in Ohio, right? Like such a gift.

ash alberg: Yeah, absolutely. So running a business, even when everything is going well is fucking hard on the body and the nervous system and everything. And it has not been easy over the last couple of years. I feel like this takes us nicely over into, what's your personal relationship with ritual and magic?

Like your business is very much focused on providing those resources to others. How like do you keep things for yourself? How did you get started in like doing everything? Basically just give us a Cole’s notes of your whole life. [Snorts.]

maria vashakidze: Let's see. Give me a starting point.
ash alberg: Yeah. What made you want to start Seagrape and how did you ...

what was the first thing that you started with?

maria vashakidze: So I was working as a ... at a sex shop when I was 19 and my art had already been revolving around sexuality or relationship and connection because I was exploring that within myself. I was exploring my own queerness and my sexual expression in the world. And so I went to school in Baltimore and I was steeped in queerness and then drag shows and this like beautiful experience.

And the shares really like, the shares that I got from the customers are what informed the trajectory of my current life. So like when folks came in and inquired about their pleasure, looking for maybe a sex toy to please their partner or to spice up their own sex life, and really the conversation almost always went to how do you feel in your body? How are you doing in the world? What is it

that you want, what do you find pleasurable? What are you desiring in the world right now?

If your partner wasn't in the picture, what would your own sexuality look like? Bringing folks back to themselves and back to nurturing their own ideas of desire and pleasure and self care, giving them the opportunity to like ... holding space for that question and giving them the opportunity to think about it and be held without judgment or expectation really informed the next 10 years of growing this business and forming this business.

I was interested in helping the folks that I interacted with kind of see themselves as whole and see themselves as evolving, like bad-ass sensual babes, right? Like you don't ... sure, we all like are trying to work on stuff. And we're always like trying to remedy the way that we're in relationship to other people in the more than human realm.

We're always learning and growing in that way, but I think society really beats us down and tries to take sovereignty from us and tries to take our own sense of pleasure and embodiment. And so my work in the world is really informed by that, by helping folks come back to themselves and come back to their bodies and their pleasure. I think because so much of our audience is queer and non-binary, a lot of us don't live in our bodies. Like a lot of us are floating around. [Both chuckle.] [Audio distortion.]

And I’m really, I'm really interested in helping us come back to the physical realm to pleasure, to joy, to living an embodied life where we can have those experiences.

ash alberg: Have you felt like you've been able to maintain that for yourself through the years or does it come and go?

maria vashakidze: Oh, great question. Yeah. I think when I started Seagrape, it's the medicine that I needed. I definitely was very stuck in a relationship pattern that was toxic for me and was really limiting. And so, when I started to make the medicine, I started with like body oils and bath soaks, and I was also making like visual art at the same time.

And it was all like, you are fine. Everything's okay. Like you can, touch is a nice thing, a bath is a nice thing. I was like very, I was babying myself because I was also in that situation of, does my pleasure matter? Does it even make a difference what I want, or am I always compromising to make sure that I'm being a good partner or I'm supporting the people that are having traumatic

experiences in my life or the community and whatever the thing that's happening right now is?

And so the medicine really grew from a place of trying to be gentle with myself, and give myself that medicine also. Yeah, so I definitely ... it was a learning curve. I would say it took about six years for me to actually believe that I deserved the medicine I was making for other people but once I started to lean into it and really take ownership over no, fuck this. My desire really matters.

The fact that I don't know, what I desire in the world is a problem and actually like, it's my job to figure that out and to know what brings me pleasure. And so I started this like active practice of dating myself. Like I would take myself on dates. I would fly myself to different, to different states and to different places and seek out the things that brought me pleasure.

For example, when I travel, I always seek out baños or like bathing spots so I always go soaking wherever I am. So I like find the local spa or the local like, I dunno, like Russian baña. It's like on my, at the top of my priority list. Yes, I'm going here maybe for a work thing, but actually I need to take a significant chunk of time to bathe and come back to myself and be quiet with myself because right now it's, that's my priority.

I gotta date myself while I'm working And while I'm doing all of these things and weaving pleasure medicine into the world.

ash alberg: Yes! Oh, man, that sounds so good. It's so funny ‘cause I, I have realized in like the last few months, I'm like, I'm really bad at taking vacations when I'm not able to like physically leave. Like pandemic has not been good. I need way more travel than exists for me right now.

But as a result of it, like I'm not taking those breaks, which are very necessary. There's a reason that the labor movement fought for us to be able to have breaks. And I recently, like last week, used a credit that my, one of my dear ones and I had for a local spa and we just, we had the credit for it. We went and used it. It was like an hour-long treatment. That was all that I got out of it.

But actually what I got out of it was realizing like, oh, if I'm not able to physically leave, I don't need to like book time off for two weeks. That's not actually restful for me in the way that I function. What is restful is taking three days and booking myself somewhere where they provide the food. I don't have to do that cooking or if I want to, I've gone and gotten all the nice ingredients myself.

And then that there is a spa and I just go and do that. And that is exponentially more restful for me than just like not working for two weeks. That's ... my body doesn't function that way.

maria vashakidze: It's tricky, right? Because I think often artists and empaths and witches, like our sense of time is different.

ash alberg: Yes.

maria vashakidze: And because our work is so integrated into everything that we do, it's really hard to take like a weekend off from being a professional witch, or a weekend off from being a professional, like empath.

ash alberg: Yeah. It's ... and we don't want to turn it off necessarily. Even if you, when you get to burnout mode, then you recognize like I have to, but I feel like ideally for me at least, I wouldn't get myself to the point where I have to turn off. It's that I've given myself the like things that are supportive for me so that I don't ever get to the stage where I have to turn off, and then I can maintain it in a way where I'm still like able to prioritize other things during just a general day, rather than being like, okay, I'm going to work for six months and then take two weeks off.

Like that doesn't, that doesn't feel good in my body.

maria vashakidze: Yeah. I think it's really important to notice for all of us individually, like what it is that we need, how we function, what feels good and the kind of rest that we want. Like I think sometimes society encourages us to rest in ways that support capitalism. [Both chuckle.] What am I going to say here? I think we’re supposed to rest in ways that like, where we spend a lot of money and society makes that kind of a priority or like really glamorizes that.

And I think, yes, let's spend money on ourselves. Let's do nice things for ourselves, but also if that's not important or if that's not how you rest, then fuck that. That's not for you. You could take the day off and go to a farm and pull weeds if that feels more restful or you could ... it just depends on how you want to date yourself and how you want show up in he world as your like juiciest self.

ash alberg: Yeah. I love that. I feel like society really, like we've been saying, it really doesn't encourage us to prioritize ourselves and our needs. And especially when you are socialized as femme or as female, then you're like really not encouraged to do those things.

So how do you find, and I know every customer would be different, but for your audience is there a consistent, a consistent like trouble or like hurdle that they have to get over to get to the state where they can start dating themselves and caring for themselves or by the time they found you, they already know that they need to?

maria vashakidze: Our hurdle is almost always people pleasing. It's almost always, if I take time for me, I'll disappoint someone.

ash alberg: Ooo yeah. [Both chuckle.]

maria vashakidze: For the last 13 years, that's been the consistent fear for, especially for folks socialized female or femme. The consistent fear is, I'm expected to take care of everyone before I get to me, and what if I disappoint someone if I prioritize myself?

And that used to also be me. Like I understand, I've definitely been there. And it's like a hard threshold to pass if that's where you get your self-worth, right, is that if helping other people and prioritizing other people over your own self is ... equals self worth to you, it's going to be really hard to cross that threshold.

But I really just try to encourage folks to think on if your cup is full, fuller, then you can help more people. If you have what you need, if you are well-resourced as Jessie Susanna would say.

ash alberg: Yes. [Laughs.]

maria vashakidze: Well-resourced, then you have more to give to other people. And I think it's really important not to burn ourselves out to try to be good for other people.

One of the things we, one of the places we start often, if folks like want to work with me or want to walk do this work long-term is figuring out what your values are. I don't hear a lot of people talking about that. And for me, that's really important. If you know what your values are, you can be in integrity with everything you're doing, including taking time for yourself.

If you know why, if you can stand strongly in your values, if you know why you value a certain thing, then every decision you make can be informed by those values and you can feel like you're in integrity with the person that you want to be in the world. And so it helps you to not feel guilty. It helps you have a purpose.

It helps you understand your own thinking around your needs and wants and desires. Which are all valid. Yeah. And if you can fall back onto your values, then it's easier to date yourself. It's easier to find those points of pleasure and to step out of people pleasing roles and into genuine care and comradery and community, right?

Like you can't really show up for community if you're not showing up for yourself first. Like you're just going to drag everyone down.

ash alberg: Yes. Yeah, it's been, it's been fascinating and by fascinating, like annoying as fuck for me, but that's the triple fire, just like being a little too active [indecipherable]. Seeing folks who are ... and it's not their individual faults automatically, right? Like systemically, there are a whole bunch of things that fuck us over and that stop us from being able to access things as easily and also stop communities from being able to support people.

So I do believe that it is largely a systemic failure, literally because of systems. But also we all have accountability and responsibility too. And when we are in places of especially burnout and burnout looks different for different folks, but you're dysregulated and showing up dysregulated in community.

And I feel especially in activist circles, I say this all the time in the queer community where like people are operating from being traumatized and then going into spaces traumatized and then taking that out on other people, and it's, you're actually not helping in this moment. And it's so much easier to say than to do, but there are points where you just need to recognize, and I say you like collectively, ‘cause I've needed to do it for myself as well, when you need to step back.

And that actually, showing up is not actually helping that you actually need to take yourself out for a bit, to get yourself to a state where you can show up in a more regulated way. Because we see the world right now is the most epic dumpster fire recently, but it's also like the same dumpster fire over and over again.

And it's because we're showing up in dysregulated ways. And like, again, systemically, absolutely there are things at fault that are not individual’s faults, but then if we're going to combat that, we do have to take some personal responsibility of okay, I cannot fix this really large thing, but I can change the way that I am showing up to respond to it because right now, the way I'm showing up to respond to it is actually making everybody else around me get like super fucked up.

And I feel like social media is just one of the most obvious and visual examples of how that's not working particularly well right now.

maria vashakidze: Yeah, I think pretty often about what it's going to be like in 30 years. It's not sustainable to be this activated all the time.

ash alberg: Yeah.
maria vashakidze: And not to say don't participate in activism for the sake of

self care.
ash alberg: Yeah. [Laughs.] That’s not ...

maria vashakidze: Not like, I would rather have a bath than participate in social change. I'm not saying that. It's not the same thing.

But I am saying like, know what it is that you need to be well in the world or to take steps towards wellness, whether it's asking your community to call and compliment you so that you can receive positive reinforcement even if you can't give that to yourself. Like naming the small things, the small kindnesses that you can infuse your day with so that you feel more embodied in your pleasure and like your existence is fucking magical because it is, right?

Whatever that looks like for you. It can literally be anything. Like, it could be like greeting the same plant every morning walking outside of your house and like being in relationship to that plant. And asking your ancestors for help or like whatever your things are.

Because in 30 years, like if we don't know what our values are, if we can't sustainably be in integrity and be able to shift and change and hear people that tell us we've harmed them so that we can adjust, so we continue to be within our values, I imagine that in 30 years, we're all just going to disappear and give up and try to live really quietly and in small ways ...

ash alberg: Yeah.

maria vashakidze: ... out of guilt. If it's not sustainable and if you just like ... I see this in the non-profit world. I have an ex who has been a non-profit for forever. And I literally just, okay, like two, three years is the max and then they just never want to work for a non-profit ever again because they're so burnt out and tired and they just will go corporate after it.

And it's what's the point of that? If you're so immersed in social good and if that's your number one concern, then your own social good also matters. Like you have to take care of your future self in this moment so that you can continue to show up in good ways, whatever that looks like for you. Yeah.

ash alberg: Yeah. That's a really beautiful example though of almost like holding a mirror up of whatever the thing is that you are working so deeply on for community or for others is probably also the thing that ...

maria vashakidze: Your own medicine.

ash alberg: Yeeaah, yeaah. And so like investing in that and especially if you're like, if you feel so disembodied that you're like, I literally don't know what the fuck I care about.

If you're doing lots of, I don't know, like food access for children, okay, then start feeding yourself really good meals. Or if you are doing like land and water defending then going and taking your medicine from similar things, like going for walks in the forest, or like taking more baths or going swimming, like figuring out okay, what is an easily accessible form of this thing that I care so deeply about?

Yes. Yeah, totally. Are there things that you have for your own practice that you ... like either are really integral for your own practice or that you make a point of not selling, specifically, because it's like, it feels too ... precious feels like the wrong word, but maybe too sacred?

maria vashakidze: My own practice is really down to earth. I'm just in relationship to the things I do and tend to daily. And so some of the things are impossible to sell. Some of the things are just literally my relationship with my house spirits. And so not everything is made to be for sale. And I'm actually like a really private person in my own life.

I know people are always really surprised to hear that because I'm half naked on the internet pretty regularly. [Ash chuckles.] For my own personal practices, those are private to me. And those aren't, they can't be recreated because they're just a personal relationship with my surroundings. And yeah, I make medicine that I think would be like the most beautiful version of a pleasure ... a personal pleasure deep dive.

And so for me, my medicine is often really simple. Like when I go to take a bath, often I'm just sitting in water, eating a slice of pizza like pretty regularly.

ash alberg: [Laughs.] I love it.

maria vashakidze: And sometimes it's a conscious decision, like in the summer I'll just sit in water so that I can then like water my garden with that same water, so it doesn't have anything else in there. And sometimes it's like exhaustion and I just want to be in a little puddle and that's what I have energy for.

And so definitely like my practice, the different components of my practice don't always translate to tools, especially tools that I sell because so much of it is about energetically being in alignment and feeding my pleasure and always figuring out like what my pleasures are. And so that stuff doesn't translate, but the tools that I create are really informed by the desire to provide a very pleasurable experience for folks.

I'm a Taurus sun so like I'm very scent-driven and I have like a really wild nose. I can smell the different ingredients and food and stuff like that. And so everything I make like smells really great. I'm also allergic to commercial fragrances and so I'm only using essential oils and botanicals.

So I'm always in relationship to the plants that I'm utilizing and the botanicals that I'm working with to really create that pleasurable experience for other folks and I do that for myself too. Like I have a perfumer’s organ in my house and so I'm always creating concoctions that I could never sell because the plant materials are very precious or I'm just like never going to order that thing that's now on the endangered list.

And so there are a lot of medicines that don't make it out into the world that are just for me. Yeah.

ash alberg: Yeah. Do you, because you make some really beautiful things, do you ... have you trained people now to make certain formulas or are you still the person who's like mixing every batch of soap and like pouring every bottle of massage oil and stuff like that?

maria vashakidze: Yeah, all the production happens in the store and multiple people do the different components, so I have taught other people. Some of the things I don't let other people do because some of them include prayer and the essential oils that come in blends that have upwards of 10 plus different essential oils, the plant matter is always different depending on the growing cycle and the batch.

And so when I'm making the blend, the formula never stays the same because I'm smelling it as I'm making it, looking for the energetics of the formula that were my intention. And so it's really difficult to train somebody to do that because it's literally like my desire for the experience gets poured into every bottle.

And so there are things that no one but me makes still, yes.

ash alberg: That's super cool. And I also, I, it's one of those things where I'm like, it's the complete opposite of what anybody who's like working in traditional business would tell you, you should do. And it's also the bit where I'm like, this is how we fuck with capitalism.

We like maintain the parts of our businesses that we didn't start ‘cause we wanted to start a business. We just wanted to support ourselves and offer what we have to offer to the world and maintain like those things that feel the most precious.

maria vashakidze: Yeah, this is the constant battle as a witch, right? You are in relationship to your ingredients and so recipes don't always make sense. But in order to assure the customers like, yes, these are the ingredients for allergens or whatever purposes, it's ... you have to, it's such a fine line.

And I still definitely like when I'm making soap or something, keeping all the ingredients the same, I still vary the proportions based on intuition. That's not something you can like really do outside of small business land, I feel like.

ash alberg: Yeah, definitely. Like it's definitely, my joint salve is one where I, every time I make it, it's by ... I've made it so many fucking times that it's basically the same, but it's still, I do the folk methods and I'm like getting it's about this much arnica and about this much calendula. And that's not a thing where at the commercial level, in theory, yeah, you could do it, but I feel like at that point, a lot of the magic gets lost and so a lot of the efficacy also goes out the window. Maybe that’s ...

maria vashakidze: I think it's possible. Yeah. I think for those witches that want to scale, it's possible to scale, but it'll take longer. You're always giving something up.

ash alberg: Yeah, totally. It's also ... so being in the PNW, how do you find, because I am literally just now dealing with this for the first time where we had a really cold winter even by our standards and so my soap batches, I, they were

doing fine. And then all of a sudden we had a cold spell and my soap started curing funny because it was literally so cold that it couldn't do that first like 24 hours of processing properly.

And like the soap is still fine, but obviously customers don't like ... you want it to look a little bit more even than it does. So do you find that the weather for you changes, like you'd be dealing with, I guess, more humidity than anything else?

maria vashakidze: Yeah, we're more affected in the summer. So we're affected by heat and moisture. Yeah, every summer it's like such a battle making bath soak, for example, because salt absorbs moisture in the air and depending on how big of a batch we’re making, sometimes the salt just melts and there's nothing. And then you just take it home and take a very luscious bath with it.

There are, the ingredients are affected by their environment, but I'm not mad about it. I think it should be that way. I think yeah, we should be aware of how our environment impacts us and our surroundings.

ash alberg: Yeah, totally agreed. It just makes it funny when you're like, especially when you're like shipping orders to other regions of the world and they have different climates and you're like, mmm, I hope that this arrives in approximately the same format around.

maria vashakidze: Non-makers don't know, but yeah, we like with our soap, there's like several towel options. There's a down blanket option. So we always just like check on the weather, see what it's doing and it's always a game of chance.

ash alberg: Yeah. Too funny. How ... I feel like we've talked a lot about it, but there are other parts of your business that we haven't talked about. Like for example, the community, also the community boxes, which are so wonderful. How have you like grown the business and added in different pieces of it over the years?

maria vashakidze: So the growth is really informed by community and my desire to create a global community that really benefits from all of the beautiful offerings that we're putting together. And so each little step I add is really informed by what the community is asking us for and the conversations that I'm having with people around what they're struggling with, what they desire in the world and such.

And so we started a membership site, actually right before the pandemic hit. I had this like intuitive sense that something was going to happen. And I had been working with a website that I'd had for 10 years that was like a Weebly, like thing put together by myself that was really difficult to navigate that I was like, it's fine.

If people are ... it's fine. Like we were hardly getting in the online sales and people were like coming in person and I travel and do trade shows regularly or had before the pandemic. And so I was like, these are like the avenues of business. The website is just like nice for people that are searching for us.

And then I just had this hit where I was talking to my business coach and I was like, I'm going to redesign the website. And she was like, ahh, that's a really big undertaking. Let's like, hold on a second. And I was like, mm mm, I'm just, I actually already hired someone. She was like okay, that's different than what we had talked about.

And so I hired someone and we got that website up and running in January and in March the pandemic hit and literally everything went digital. And so that's how my, that's how my business functions. Like everything happens very intuitively where I'm like, something's up, my guides are telling me to do this like right now, like it's an emergency.

So we developed this beautiful website that like, I was like, I want to take the customer through an online experience the exact same way I would do it in person where like, they were coming in and I would ask them like, what's up? What do you need? And they would say, I'm going through a heartbreak, like a breakup and I'm heartbroken. I needed heart medicine.

Or I'm looking for like ways to celebrate myself. And so we created all of these shop by intention so that folks could take themselves through the Seagrape journey like we would normally take them through the journey at the store. And then we also started our membership site, which is a private membership community that's $25 a month and has so many beautiful community resources. And we have babes from around the world that have joined us in that community space for like we share blog posts and videos, and it's a lot of peer support.

And we've been doing study groups, so this year we're doing an astrology and tarot study group where you can show up monthly in community with Tal, who's leading this year's cohort, where you can just study astrology and ask

questions and bring your own practice to the table and share like your own adventure in witchcraft in the world.

Because I wasn't seeing that, that didn't exist three years ago where you could like very easily find an online space where it was like queer informed, trauma informed, like welcome to people of all kind of witchcraft practices. Like we're not a pagan group. We welcome folks from all traditions and we just, it's really based in the values of the store and my values on community, pleasure, beauty.

So everyone shows up in a really good way, even though everyone's coming from different walks of life. And so we started that right as the pandemic was hitting. And so everyone was able to find a home, even if you couldn't come in person. So folks that were immunocompromised but couldn't shop in person or couldn't really leave the house had an avenue to connect with community and engage in these beautiful medicines with us.

Yeah, so we did that. And then the CSW, which is the community supported witch kit is our monthly subscription toolbox. And that's really beautiful for folks that are like, I like the medicine but I have no idea where to start. So we curate based on our monthly theme every month. So right now in March, the theme of self-devotion. In February, it was dreaming, for Pisces season.

So every month we're talking about a specific topic. So all month, we're talking about how to practice self-devotion. And then in April, it's heart-centered. In the summer for pride, the theme is hot witch summer.

ash alberg: Yeah!

maria vashakidze: Like every monthly theme we’re like really stoked, like for hot witch summer, like, how do you date yourself? How do you like practice some like beautiful sex magic? How do you pull on the strings of like queerness to inform your like best life?

Working within these monthly themes and then for folks that want tools for the medicine, there's also the CSW. So they just subscribe and get a monthly delivery to their door of different tools within that monthly theme that they can dive into and work on the practice by themselves, or join us in community to talk about the tools also.

ash alberg: That's so cool.

maria vashakidze: Different avenues, different ... I'm also thinking about like the way folks interact. Some people like can't look at a screen anymore, for example, right? Like lots of us have Zoom fatigue at this point. And some people just need physical, okay, this month I am taking a bath. I am like doing a candle ritual. I am, I've got this like aura spray that I'm going to use with my intention every morning.

So like the tools are like laid out for people that are like, I just need to be touching something right now.

ash alberg: Toootally. I imagine, ‘cause I haven't had the opportunity and to be completely honest, I don't know when I'm going to cross the border again. [Laughs.]

maria vashakidze: Fair.

ash alberg: So I don't know that I'm going to have the opportunity to walk into your shop, but I imagine it smells delicious. How do you find, especially where the things that you offer are so tangible, it very much feels like Empress energy for me, just like all the time.

How do you find translating that to an online space, where you're having to ... obviously the photography does a beautiful job of it, but it would be a very different way of engaging audience versus having people be able to walk into your store versus their experience being online?

maria vashakidze: So that was one of the most difficult things for me through the pandemic is translating. I'm such a tactile person. Um, translating the experience and the sensory experience, especially of everything being in a physical space for a workshop where we can make soap together or skill share together in a room, where you can look at another person.

We used to have a couch at the store and people would come and drink tea and look at books. And we would just like talk and hang out. So that was, that's part of Seagrape culture. And so translating that to be digital was one of the most difficult things for me and I had a lot of resistance around it.

And that's something I worked with my business coach on for a long time. And she was very encouraging. But yeah. I, that's not my preferred way. Like I want to be able to sit next to another human and ask them how their day is going and what they need in the world. Like I want to have that one-on-one conversation.

Translating it to a digital platform is really difficult for my brain. And so the way that I've done that is by enlisting lots of help. We've got, everyone on staff writes copy. And so when we sit down to like create a blog post where we're translating the like sentiment of something we would say to somebody in real life in person, we're all working on what does this feel like?

What's the medicine? What are the approachable ... what if they don't have this tool at home, what else can they use for accessibility? So all of us are like sitting down and really infusing everything we do with collaboration and supporting each other in the ways that like in my brain doesn't work that way.

Like I want the like smelly thing that I can slather myself with, that's me. But then finding Drew and Nick who are the primary photographers currently for Seagrape, finding them and like sitting down and having a conversation of, these are my values. This is what I find really beautiful. This is what I need.

And they were like, both were like, oh yeah, we're Tauruses, like, it's fine. We're just like always having a feast. We'll just photograph it. [Ash laughs.] It's like, this is our everyday life. And so finding folks that are in alignment, that want to translate into different mediums, like describing something on paper and then describing it via photograph visually, and like all of these different avenues really take very different skillsets.

And this is one of the things that I learned that I wish I learned earlier in my business is like really hire out for the shit that you're not good at. Hire out for the things that are other people's skill sets that they are killer at.

ash alberg: Yeah.

maria vashakidze: Just, you don't have to be able to do everything. You can just do your own, make your own magic and medicine and find people that'll support the spread of that medicine in helpful ways.

ash alberg: Yeah, it's so true. It's so funny ‘cause I feel like, especially when you're like running a small biz, then the idea of letting go is terrifying. Especially when you're more of a control freak. I say that as a control freak.

But also, I feel like often what we end up doing is hiring out the menial labor first as opposed to ... ‘cause it's, you don't necessarily have a large budget. So you're like, oh, okay. If I hire a few hours of admin work out a week, rather than spending a chunk of money on somebody who is an expert in their field, does

really good work and charges accordingly, and getting them to do the work for something, whether like a specific project or whatever.

I like, I think a lot of times we're like, oh, we'll go with this one ‘cause it's cheaper. But actually, it might solve a lot more problems and open up more time for you by having the expert come in and do something really quickly and efficiently. Have you found, ‘cause also of course, like running a brick and mortar, then you have staff that are ... they get hired because their job is to like, sling soap basically.

So have you found that there's been like a sweet spot for you in hiring over the years or where like, you've invested in one area and then realize oh shit, I should have ... it would have been more useful to have hired this other person who had this other kind of skill set instead?

maria vashakidze: No. I don't have regrets around any decisions that I've made through the business. I'm just looking at this whole thing as a learning opportunity. Perfectionism is such a trap, right?

ash alberg: Yesss, it’s so true.

maria vashakidze: Like I don't need to do that to myself. Like I said, like I'm over that kind of threshold of beating myself up over like, not being perfect or not being like the thing someone else needs me to be. Like, I there's just a lot of energy I don't have for that right now.

And so I think over the years, like certainly I think the best decision I made early on, like I think in my second year of doing this part-time, was I hired a tax preparer and a bookkeeper. That was the best decision. I was like $200 is so much money, but like literally at the end of the year, he was like, people usually come here with a shoe box and then it's, I give up. And I gave myself the opportunity because numbers make me nervous and spreadsheets definitely give me a panic attack.

There's no Virgo anywhere in my chart. And so giving myself the chance to thrive by giving away the thing that made me very nervous gave this business a hope, right? It gave those businesses an opportunity to thrive in the things that I was really good at. And like at this point in the business, I can look at a spreadsheet and I am in relationship to the numbers and budgets and everything like that.

So I've definitely built that up over the years, but I think that was a really great gift I gave myself early on in running the business. I asked for the kind of help that I felt like, there's no way I can do this. And then over the years, there's always a savings account for a hopeful project, right?

Like I'm always saving towards the thing that like feels out of reach, because I know in two years, in five years, maybe in a year, like it's not going to be out of reach and I'm going to reach that goal because I'm working towards it. I think hiring professional photographers was like one of those things where I was, this is so expensive. Like literally this budget is giant.

ash alberg: Yeaah.
maria vashakidze: But I like sat down and thought about how much time do I

spend photographing my life? ash alberg: Yes! [Laughs.]

maria vashakidze: To show people, to like, try to convey the feeling of everyday magic and helping people embody magic and pleasure in the ways that my medicine hopes to do? How much of my like, mental health am I sacrificing to photograph like my rest?

ash alberg: Yep. Yes, literally.

maria vashakidze: I actually don't want to have my phone on me. I don't want to have my phone on right now. And it's, I like came to a place of I can't do it anymore. I don't want to like, before my like lover gets into this bath with me, I don't want to be like, hey, can you actually take a quick picture of me before you get in here? I just want them to get in the bath with me.

ash alberg: A hundred percent. [Both laugh.] Yeah.

maria vashakidze: And people will be like, how did you take this picture? It doesn't occur to people like, oh, there might be like another person there. Or this is not actually happening on a Monday morning. This photo is probably from two years ago.

ash alberg: Yes!

maria vashakidze: And it was like really taxing for me and like really bad for my mental health.

And so there came a point where I was like, I'm going to start a budget. I'm going to like solicit photographers, ask them what their budgets are and then just save. And that's what I did. Like I saved until I could afford a month of it. And then it was like so incredible that I was like, I will move the money around.

I will find the money. Let's keep this going. And at this point we had been, we've been working together for ... I think this is going on year three too. Time was a blur but such a good decision for my mental health. Money is an energy. Money is like a weird thing that we use to function within late-stage capitalism and I would rather spend it on two humans that are incredible, that are very helpful to me and my business and my customers than whatever other thing I'm going to do to help my mental health.

ash alberg: Yes, that's so smart. It's also just like a really smart idea of if you're, if you have a glimmer of an idea, start saving now, and if you don't have a glimmer yet, just start saving any way because a glimmer will come. And if you've got that money already, like sitting there and waiting, it just takes the anxiety off of, I feel like this is a good idea and your guides being like, do it.

And if you are able to dig into a pocket that already has some coins in it, rather than being ... the scarcity is definitely, scarcity with money is huge. Scarcity with other things is also huge. But I think when we run businesses and you're like trying to work on money magic and trying to like, retrain your money mindset and everything, one of the biggest tripping points is when you're trying to do that work and also the money truly isn't in your account.

And yeah, I love the idea of starting to save in advance because it, it gives you the ... a little bit more flexibility to make those decisions and try something.

maria vashakidze: Yeah, and I would say if you're hiring other small businesses, I have yet to come across anybody that has said no to a payment plan, or a sliding scale if I really needed it or to trade. I think especially if you're hiring queers and other people that are in alignment with your values, you can be really upfront, like I don't have this money. I'd really like to hire you. Are you open to a payment plan? Are you open to trade?

And that's something we still do at the store. Even at the scale where someone will email and say I want to attend this class, but I can't afford it. And we'll say do you need a payment plan? Do you want to trade? What, are you a farmer? Great. Bring us some food, we'll absolutely trade for that.

It's, we're all just making it up. And I think often the fear of people saying no to you stops folks from asking for the things that they actually wanted need, which include services for their small businesses.

ash alberg: Absolutely. I had ... the thought went that way in the house and escaped from me. But what is, I'm going to come back around to it if it decides to return to me, it's like running around the room. What's something that you wish you had been told when you were younger about magic and ritual in witchcraft?

maria vashakidze: [Quiet pause.] I wish somebody had introduced me to the idea that magic is about relationship first and foremost, when I was younger. And I'm learning, I'm still learning this now and I'm really learning it from my guides and from my own personal practices. But it's not something that I really had heard anybody talking about until just a few years ago, really.

And I think it's so important for folks that are seeking out ritual and magic to loop relationship in, because if you start to view everything as a relationship, then it stops being so transactional. It stops being so much about what, I'm going to worship this deity because I want something from them? I'm going to attend to this deity and be in relationship to this deity because I want to know them and I want to see, I want to see how that magic informs my life.

It's like a really different mindset. And I think, like being in relationship with everything around us, I think is really important and magic obviously is infused to all aspects of our lives, but if that was a conversation that somebody had with me when I was younger, I think it would have been really beneficial and gotten me to where I am now faster.

Because it's like, the way the relationship I have with my family and the way that like those stressors inform my life and affect my magic, like everything, all the relationships around me, the relationships I have with the plants that I work with and with my spirit guides and with humans that I'm in like romantic partnerships with. All of those relationships need tending in specific ways, and they're just like magical relationships. And so I wish that somebody had woven that thread for me sooner.

ash alberg: Yes. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I think we, especially if you're not part of a specific magical tradition that involves like ongoing ritual and commitment in the way that, like hoodoo and voodoo do. If you're just like popping in and out of doing stuff, we forget that magic is ... it's a practice, which means you have to be in practice with it.

And it also, it's like having a garden, like there are certain parts that you can neglect for a while and they'll keep doing their thing, but there's other things that do require that ongoing tending and that you have to at least be checking in. Especially if we're like hoping for or expecting something to come out of them.

maria vashakidze: Yeah, and I think like all of us are in relationship to a degree, but like for me, my magical relationship was interrupted by ancestral trauma. And so, I'm a Slavic Jew, but I didn't know I was Jewish until we had immigrated because my family had survived the Holocaust and nobody talked about being Jewish.

ash alberg: Yep.

maria vashakidze: And people, like my family is alive. I speak the same language they speak. My grandmother's in Russia, so like I can call her and ask her, but she like, nobody will talk about the like ancestral lineage because there's so much hurt there. And those relationships got lost to me and the like ancestral practices, Slavic traditions have such strong tending practices.

And like each of our, like the bath house has its own guardian, the kitchen, the guardian, the stables have a guardian, the doorways have a guardian. So like all of those are like relationships that you tend to daily because you exist with them, and because that trauma interrupted that like ancestral knowing in a way, I just, there were many years in my youth where I was like floating around because I felt like I'm literally connected to nothing.

I don't like, I don't have my ancestral like Jewish connections. I don't have my Slavic connections. My family like thinks I'm too Americanized, so there's like such a disconnect and I'm tethered to absolutely nothing. And then only when I started to look at my relationship to my culture and my ancestry in my twenties is like when I found that oh, the connection is there, it just got interrupted and I have to reach back further to connect to that tendril.

Which is so painful. And I think I know ... a lot of Slavic Jews, for example, it's like a really specific little slice, but like I know so many folks that are like, am I even Jewish? Am I even Slavic? Am I even American? Am I even anything, because like, where do I actually belong? And I know like many of us experienced that in life and relationship, I think is key, right?

When you start to look at being in relationship to your surroundings and to your past and future self it becomes a little bit easier to connect then.

ash alberg: Yes. Unrelated and not really that important for people who are listening, but have you read or listened to the fictional ... I think it's a trilogy technically, but it's called The Bear and the Nightingale?

maria vashakidze: Yeah.
ash alberg: [Laugh-snorts.] was just like, oh yeah, our little house spirits. You

need to know this book, if you don't. [Chuckles.] maria vashakidze: Yeah.

ash alberg: So good. It's been really interesting, like I'm Polish on the one side and similar situation where it's, the war fucked a lot of things up and the folks who survived, they survived using certain tactics and you didn't necessarily stop using those tactics after the war.

And yeah, like there was a lot of magic that came over and also magic that got lost and magic that was not necessarily handed down. I don't know, for whatever reasons. But it's been interesting to see and it's horrendous because it also just makes you think of like how humans are garbage but like right now seeing so many cultural Ukrainian references and being able to see the overlap with Russian and Polish traditions as well, because the same ... like they vary a little bit by region, but overall Slavic practices, and it's the same if you go back far enough and where those borders were different borders, if you go back, honestly, not even that long, but to see the painted windowsills and knowing oh yeah, that's a thing across the whole region.

Like that, that's just like what you do, like the painted cottages are what you do, and like using blue in your home and painting, painting different things in your home blue is like a protection across the board. Humans are weird.

maria vashakidze: I mean but humans are also really incredible, right? Yeah.

ash alberg: Yeah!

maria vashakidze: Yes, we're a little bit of a dumpster fire and always have been, but also like, through this time, the amount of mutual aid and the folks showing up. I just saw a new story this morning that folks from the UK are going over to Ukraine to fight.

Like they don't need to do that. They're safe, but humans are also very resilient nd when in alignment and desiring to be in alignment with humanity and like in

alignment with their values, humans are also really incredible and resilient. And I think like both things are true.

We are corrupted by power and the patriarchy and white supremacy. But also like, we're so incredible and resilient and able to hold complexities and differing truths in ways that like break my heart in the best way.

ash alberg: Absolutely. You just, you've got all of this like propaganda and like false stories or one very specific version of the narrative being spoken in Russia. And yet, there are so many Russian civilians that like, know that it's not okay and are doing what they can do for the betterment of other people.

Like what we are told by governments is often not true, or is not a full truth and there's still outward ... just like anybody in power. And yet humans still have the ability, despite, I think honestly, the systems of oppression, they've just all, they have been in existence as long as humans have been in existence.

And also humans have maintained this intuitive understanding of yes, we have survival methods that we fall into, and we also still have the intuition of knowing when our own personal survival does not necessarily trump what our intuition is telling us is actually the right thing to do in a moment.

It's ... yeah, humans are complex creatures.

maria vashakidze: It is, yeah. I think too, there was like a really sweet video circulating on social media of a Ukrainian soldier taking video of like a bird landing on him. And what I'm thinking about is through the horrific things, right, there can still be joy and pleasure.

And I think it's really important not to just let the horrific things that are happening completely override the complexity of human existence and the fact that, especially for queer, non-binary folks of color, disabled folks, those of us that have had kind of our ups and downs through life, like it's really important to also cultivate joy and pleasure at the same time while all of these horrific things are happening.

To also prioritize dreaming and like being in relationship to our future self and talking to our future self about what we've accomplished and how amazing we are and how resilient and like soft and joyful we are, because I think ... yeah. If we just let ourselves, it's so devastating to just be immersed in world news and all of the horrific things that are constantly happening. This war isn't, it's not new. It's not ...

ash alberg: It's not isolated in the world.
maria vashakidze: Yeah. It's fucked up and I wish that it wasn't happening, but

in the meantime, how are we tending to our joy? It's vital that we do.

ash alberg: Yeah, absolutely. And I think it's also important for us to question when we are losing sense of joy, looking at the other things that are taking its place very directly and saying, okay, what's your higher purpose? Like my therapist, bless her, recently ... the war hadn't even started, and, but there was other bullshit happening because it’s the world! There's constant bullshit.

And I was like, I'm having a really hard time with the nihilism. This is not a thing that I'm familiar with when I am depressed. It is not a thing that I am happy with. It feels very uncomfortable.

I like having a heavy dose of Sagittarius in my chart and so the lack of optimism is highly problematic. And she looked at me and she was like, what's it, what's it’s highest purpose? What is it trying to get you to do? And I immediately was like, it's trying to get me to rest. She was like, okay. [Laughs.]

And having that reminder of like also that things are temporary and that things are temporal, like something happens and then the moment shifts and then perhaps it continues for a bit, but ultimately things are always changing. And so even if something is absolutely horrific, something else may happen immediately afterwards that's the complete opposite.

And that is part of the human experience, is keeping ourselves open to that fact.

maria vashakidze: Mmm.

ash alberg: I remembered what my question was, which is, so you mentioned earlier that you have everybody on the team contributes to what is going out in terms of like copy and stuff. How do you, how do you manage that? Because having a specific brand voice, it comes down to even just the way that you write sentences and the language, the like little idiosyncrasies that we use. I don't think I said that word right but whatever.

So how do you, I can understand being like, oh, I'll hire one person whose job is specifically to help with writing the copy so that I don't have to write all the copy, but how do you, how do you manage that, spreading it amongst like more bodies? How has that been?

maria vashakidze: We, whenever we train a new staff person, the onboarding process really just entails getting to know the community. It's always priority number one before anything else, like the brand voice is really clear about the service that we are providing to the community. Like it's really clear about how pleasure and beauty and support inform everything that we do.

And so, I think everyone on staff really has a very good understanding of the mission, like why we do what we do and why it matters. And so when it comes to creating blog posts, like we always ask the same questions. Like how does this benefit our community? How are we infusing our values into the thing we're sharing? What are the tools, are they accessible?

So there's a series of questions that we go through before we write anything at any given moment. And then I read through everything before it's finalized and I always give notes and I always make edits to make sure that I'm always looking for, like, how can we be more accessible? How can we give people more tools? And I do look everything over to make sure it's in alignment before it goes out, even if we've all collaborated on it. Yeah.

ash alberg: Smart. [Laughs.] I was thinking like, oh my god, how do you ... ‘cause the idea of like fully handing something over is terrifying to me. And then, but then the other side of it is like, it can get very easy to start micromanaging. And I feel like that's a different ...

maria vashakidze: I forgot what the podcast was, but I listened to a podcast a couple years ago that was like naming that superhero syndrome. And I was like ew, that is some white supremacist shit. [Ash laughs.] And so like really hearing somebody be like, this is super, Superman syndrome. And I was like, okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna need to cut that out.

And so I like made a conscious effort to hand things over because I was like, that is ... okay, that's an ingrained toxic system in my brain that I really need to make sure I get myself out of.

ash alberg: That is, oh shit. I'm going to ...
maria vashakidze: Google it.
ash alberg: ... start unpacking that. That's wild and so true. Shit.

maria vashakidze: Yeah, and it's like noticing, as an artist, as somebody who created this company 13 years ago, it is like really hard to think, this is my

creation. This is like my mission and vision in the world. And, but if I can think of, I can train more people to help me hold this expanding vision, that feels better to me and that feels really exciting because I'm good at a sliver of things. Like I am a visionary, I am a creative. You really have to drag me to a spreadsheet if you need something from me in a spreadsheet.

So like I really make it a point to hire really brilliant people that have super powers and skill sets that I don't have, and I think that's one of the best things we can do as small business owners is recognize our own genius and then make sure that we're handing the things that we're not good at over to folks whose genius it is.

ash alberg: Yeah, definitely. So what's next for you, then? This episode will come out around Pride-ish.

maria vashakidze: So for June, like I said, our theme is hot witch summer and so all month long, we'll be stoking mostly like queer community around pleasure and joy and embodiment and sex magic. I'm just, that's always, the next thing for me, is how to support community better and how to be in alignment. And through the pandemic, I feel every month we're like pivoting and trying something new, depending on what is happening.

So we look forward to having kind of hybrid in-person and digital events at some point, so that we can gather in community. Like really, I just want to drink beverages with other queers and other like magical folks around me. So looking forward to that, depending on what COVID numbers do and what it looks like.

But yeah, always looking forward to all of the incredible workshops that we have. We host four to five classes every single month. Yeah, just looking forward to all of the incredible, like sex magic, embodiment magic, seasonal magic. We've got Ylva Mara, do you know their work? They’re based in Seattle.

ash alberg: I think so.

maria vashakidze: Yeah. They're teaching like a seasonal, four seasonal classes with us. So they just taught the spring one, so the summer one will be happening in June. And they're like such an incredible, like priestess, human. You should definitely find them on the internet, @bimboyaga is their handle.

ash alberg: [Laughs.] That's a fabulous ... I love it. [Snorts.]

maria vashakidze: Yeah. And so, just always looking forward to stoking community and showing up in pleasure and joy.

ash alberg: Cool. So one final question for you. If you had somebody who showed up to the shop and was like, I have no idea where to get started, what's your favorite product? What would you say?

maria vashakidze: I would ask some clarifying questions, because literally we have thousands of products in the store and I have tried all of them and am in love with all of them. We don't carry anything that we don't love. And so I would ask clarifying questions around, like, where do you want to start? And I would probably encourage them to drink a glass of water first.

Chances are they're thirsty. And then I would reach for probably the core body oil, which is like one of my favorite. It's like a sweet sensual, spicy blend. It's got clove, a little bit of lavender, patchouli, a bit of rosewood accord in it, so it's like really, it's a very delicious blend and it's very sensual.

And then I would encourage them to slather themselves and after they smelled delicious, I would walk them over to all of my favorite sex magic things. Sex magic spray, sex magic candle. We have a couple of aphrodisiac potions that I really love. And I would actually create, this is one of my favorite things to do when I'm at the store, I would create a day for them.

So like you wake up in the morning, what's the first thing you do? You make yourself a cup of coffee. Can you put a couple of drops of an aphrodisiac in your cup of coffee and set an intention? And then you shower, can you slather yourself with something nice smelling after your shower? Can you put on some perfume?

I take them through an experience to help, ‘cause I think folks have such a hard time visualizing how they can infuse their entire day with pleasure. And I really love to take them through that. So I would probably, you would walk out smelling amazing if nothing else. [Giggles.]

ash alberg: That sounds delightful. God, I gotta, I need to either ... I don't know. Like I need to either get across to the States, but I don't really want to do that. Or I can like teleport you guys just like slightly across the border.

maria vashakidze: Let's teleport. We're powerful. We can do that.

ash alberg: [Laughs.] But that sounds absolutely delightful. And so what would you say then would be the digital equivalent of that, do you think?

maria vashakidze: I think the digital equivalent would be to spend some time on the website, reading through the blogs, noticing what inspires you and then searching for those specific things. So if an aphrodisiac catches your eye, searching the website for aphrodisiacs, or if like self-massage catches your eye and you really need rest, searching the website for tools around that is what I would recommend.

Just letting yourself float around intuitively, poke around like you would at the store.

ash alberg: Love it. This has been absolutely delightful. I am so glad for the work that you do in the world, because it is very necessary. And we'll make sure that there are links so that people can find all of the lovely things that you are doing and sign up for classes and buy all the lovely things that they need.

And y’all ship worldwide.

maria vashakidze: Shipping is really crazy expensive, but when you ship worldwide ...

ash alberg: [Laughs.] And do you guys ship with USPS or do you ship with ... how does that go for you?

maria vashakidze: Yeah. Within the states we ship USPS priority and first class, most often. Sometimes UPS. And then worldwide, we do DHL Express so that you have tracking and it's in your hands within a week.

ash alberg: That makes sense. Okay. Thank you so much for this. This has been delightful.

maria vashakidze: Thank you.

ash alberg: [Upbeat music plays.] You can find full episode recordings and transcripts at snortandcackle.com. Just click on podcast in the main menu. Follow Snort and Cackle on Instagram @snortandcackle and join our seasonal book club with @SnortandCackleBookClub. Don't forget to subscribe and review the podcast by your favorite podcasting platform.

Editing provided by Noah Gilroy, recording and mixing by Ash Alberg, music by Yesable.