Meet the Humans Behind Love & Above Wellness

Hi!

We’re Siena Lee-Tajiri and Toast Tajiri, the humans behind Love & Above Wellness —and partners in life, love, and creativity for more than 25 years.

We both grew up in Hawaii, but it was music that brought us together in 2001. At the time, we were each singer-songwriters, performing our own music and eventually doing mini tours throughout Hawaii and the West Coast.

We connected creatively first, fell in love somewhere along the way, and have pretty much been creating things together ever since.

And we really do mean things.

Over the past 25+ years, our creative life together has taken a lot of different forms. We started a podcast back when most people still responded to the word “podcast” with, A what? We created Concerts 4 Cats, an organization supporting senior cats in need. We’ve written, recorded, performed, built websites, told stories, created businesses, grown gardens, cared for animals, and followed more than a few ideas simply because something in us said, Let’s try this.

Looking back, though, there have always been common threads: connection, creativity, animals, wellness, and trying to live a life that feels meaningful.

 

Love & Above Wellness feels like a natural home for all of it.

 

A Little About Siena

Siena has worked professionally with flower essences for more than 25 years and has used them personally for more than 30. She was first introduced to them while in law school, during an especially stressful season of life, and they’ve been part of her world ever since.

She also spent more than 16 years leading an animal wellness company, combining two things that have always mattered deeply to her: animals and holistic wellness.

Siena is also the HSP (Highly Sensitive Person) of the relationship.

She has always experienced the world pretty deeply: animals, beauty, flowers, music, other people’s emotions, her surroundings...all of it. She has also always felt an especially strong connection with animals and makes the joke that sometimes (many times?), she understands them more easily than humans.

Cats have a particularly big piece of her heart, but she loves just about every animal she encounters, including the neighborhood raccoons who have become regular visitors.

When life gets stressful, there’s a good chance you’ll find Siena baking something. She loves figuring out healthier versions of favorite comfort foods, crafting, working with flowers, and wandering slowly through antique shops with a cup of coffee in hand. She can spend an unreasonable amount of time looking at an old bowl, painting, or piece of furniture and imagining the life it lived before ending up there.

 

A Little About Toast

Toast is the non-HSP half of the partnership.

And after more than 25 years together, that difference has actually taught us quite a lot about sensitivity, communication, relationships, and what it means for two very different nervous systems to understand and care for one another.

Professionally, Toast has spent years freelancing with musicians and other creatives, helping with everything from websites, to emails, to graphic design.

Outside of work, she can usually be found reading something.

Toast is deeply interested in restoring native habitat, regenerative agriculture, eco-philosophy, and the relationship between humans and the natural world. She also loves learning about history, especially American history during the Great Depression and World War II era.

Give her a stack of books, some land that could use rewilding, and several uninterrupted hours and she’s pretty happy.

 

Life these days

These days, life is a little quieter than our touring musician years, and we really like it that way.

We enjoy tending our vegetable and flower garden, wandering through craft fairs, heading out for nature walks, baking, crafting, reading, or staying close to home with our beloved senior cat, Bear.

Music is still very much part of our lives, too. We still sing together, usually Hawaiian songs we grew up with, or whatever song we happen to be practicing at the moment (lately it's been Indigo Girls covers).

Our love of animals has never gone away either. Years after creating Concerts 4 Cats, supporting cats in need remains important to us, and Love & Above Wellness now makes quarterly donations to Mission Meow, which helps small feline-focused nonprofits make a bigger impact.

 

Why "Love & Above"

Wellness and spirituality have been part of our lives for decades, but Love & Above Wellness grew out of lived experience more than anything else.

We know what it feels like to move through stressful seasons. We know what it feels like to build a life around creativity and meaning rather than following a perfectly straight path. And as an HSP/non-HSP couple, we’ve had decades to learn just how differently people can experience the exact same world.

Love & Above is where so many pieces of our lives finally come together: flower essences, aromatherapy, simple rituals, animals, nature, creativity, sensitivity, and the belief that taking care of yourself doesn’t have to mean becoming someone other than who you are.

For the sensitive souls who find their way here, our hope is simple:

To help you spend a little more time living your life instead of recovering from it.

Thank you for letting us share a little bit of ours with you.

With love,

Siena + Toast
(and Bear, of course)