Growing up as the youngest in a house of five girls, Rebekah Jensen remembers her grandma Jasso helping raise her while her mom worked toward her college degree. She’d spend full days at her grandma’s house and notice what she called her “healing powers”: making salves for her arthritis and carrying out limpias, which are ceremonies to rebuild emotional health.
Those experiences helped inspire her to launch Sanara, a skincare line that Jensen started from her home in Austin about five years ago using indigenous Latin American botanicals.
Sanará in Spanish means “you will heal” and it’s a sentiment Jensen has carried to the products that include body butter, bath soaks and essential oils. While she makes skincare tools that others can use in their homes across the country and is in talks with possible spa partners, she’s also found Sanara to be personally healing.
For one, she has psoriasis and started paying close attention to the ingredients she puts on her skin. And another reason is the tighter cultural bond it’s created for the fifth-generation Texan.
“I don't speak Spanish,” Jensen said. “I've learned a lot about the shame and guilt that comes with that. So this was also a healing process for me creating Sanara and being able to reconnect to my ancestors.”
Read the rest of my feature at Austonia!