Mood Indigo Living is a small batch soap studio in North Carolina, founded and run by Réa, who came to the United States from Bombay with two suitcases and a dream. This is her International Women's Day letter to her community.

Today is International Women's Day, and I find myself pausing in my small soap studio, hands dusted with something fragrant, thinking about the long and winding road that brought me here.

I grew up in Bombay — a city of monsoons and noise and color — and arrived in the United States as a young woman with two suitcases, large dreams, and a quiet, stubborn desire to succeed. Decades later, here I am in North Carolina, in a small studio that breathes lavender, patchouli, lemongrass, and tulsi — oils that have crossed oceans to land softly on my workbench.

Some days it is just me in my beautiful chaos: a table scattered with oils and botanicals, stacks of freshly cut soap catching the light, friends drifting in and out, and my sweet dog peering through the glass door like a small, earnest supervisor. And of course those other days when I'm cursing out loud because I've run out of coconut oil yet again, or spilled a giant vat of loofah soap on my floor!!

Mood Indigo Living may be tiny by most measures, but it is shaped by the same hard-won qualities women have always drawn on — creativity, resilience, curiosity, community, and a very real amount of grit. It is held aloft, too, by a community of women around me, who carry the richness of being citizens of the world.

International Women's Day has been with us for more than a century, born from a simple, radical idea: that women's labour, voices, and lives matter — everywhere, without exception. This year, with so much unrest in the world, with women displaced by war, with immigrants and others made to feel unwelcome in places they have given their hearts to, that idea feels especially important.

Not as a political statement, but as a human one.

Women have always found ways to carry their cultures, their craft, and their care across borders — and that quiet, persistent courage deserves to be honoured. I feel it in my hands when I work. In the shea butter produced by women's cooperatives in West Africa. In the essential oils distilled by farmers across the globe. In the plant wisdom and craft traditions that have moved through generations, woman to woman, hand to hand.

There is something sacred about women who make things.

Soap. Food. Art. Businesses. Communities.

The thread runs long, and it runs through you too — because every time you support a small business like this one, you are part of the story being written.

If this story resonated with you, I'd love for you to be part of it.

Browse the Mood Indigo Living collection — handcrafted soaps and butters made with intention, and ingredients from around the world. Every purchase supports a woman-owned, immigrant-founded small business.

[Explore the collection here]

And if you'd like to follow along — the studio, the chaos, the occasional spilled vat of soap — you can find me on [Instagram] [Facebook] or [YouTube].I'd love to see you there.

Thank you for being part of this.

— Réa