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our story.
The moments, people, and choices that brought us here.
BEFORE WE BEGIN
I'm so glad you're here.
Take a breath and stay for a moment. Choosing to show up for yourself is no small thing. It matters. And I hope you can feel that here.
I’m Cerise, and this is the real story of how Mahalo came to be. Not the polished version, but the honest one. The one that begins, like most meaningful things do, with love, loss, and the questions that linger long after you’ve tried to make peace with them.
The idea for Mahalo began seven years ago, when Joel and I realized that the ways we were eating, moving, thinking, and living no longer served us.
So we made a promise. Not just to ourselves, but to each other and to the future we wanted.
What started as a shift toward a plant-based way of eating became something much bigger: a more intentional way to live, love, and grow every day.
We have a big, loud, beautiful family. Seven kids. Four grandkids. A table that is never quite big enough and somehow always full.
They are the reason behind every choice we make when it comes to our health.
Not to look a certain way. Not to hit a number. But to be there — fully present, genuinely energized — for the dinners, the milestones, and the ordinary Tuesday evenings that turn out to matter most.
THE HARD PART
This is personal.
This is the part that doesn’t make it onto most About pages, but it’s the part that matters most.
Ten years ago, my brother died unexpectedly. He was 38. A brain hemorrhage. Sudden. Shattering. The kind of loss that changes the shape of a family forever.
He was here. And then he wasn’t.
My parents never fully recovered from that loss. I don’t think you ever really do. But in the years that followed, I watched something shift in them. They got quieter. They moved less. They kept going, but not quite with the same aliveness.
They saw doctors who gave them prescriptions — pills to manage this, pills to manage that — but nobody ever seemed to ask the bigger questions.
What does your life actually look like right now?
Who is in your corner?
Are you moving?
Do you have something to look forward to?
Nobody asked them that.
And I can’t help but wonder what might have been different if they’d had more community. More walks. More shared meals. More people to laugh with, grieve with, and keep going with. A place where health felt less like a solo project and more like something carried together.
I think things might have been different. I can’t know that. But I believe it.
Then I lost my dad. Then my mom. And then Joel was diagnosed with cancer.
“We thought we were doing everything right. Eating well, moving every day, living with purpose. When Joel asked the oncologist what we could have done differently, he looked at us and said: ‘Nothing. You're doing everything right. It's just bad luck.’”
The answer that broke something in me, and rebuilt it too.
— Cerise
I’ve turned that sentence over in my hands a thousand times. On one hand, it was the kindest thing he could have told us. On the other, it felt so profoundly unfair that I didn’t know what to do with it.
What it taught me, what it still teaches me, is that Mahalo was never meant to be a guarantee.
Life doesn’t work that way.
What Mahalo is, what I believe it is with everything I have, is a way to meet life more fully. To show up with more steadiness. More support. More connection. To not spend your healthiest years alone, trying to figure it all out without people who understand why it matters.Joel is doing better now. We came through that year together. And I came out the other side more certain than ever that this work matters.
A DIFFERENT WAY
The life you've been longing for is closer than you think.
There comes a moment when you realize the life you've been chasing isn't the life you've been longing for.
Somewhere between the deadlines, distractions, and endless pursuit of more, many of us have drifted from the things that make a life feel rich, connected, and deeply human.
We think there's another way.
One that's slower.
Kinder.
More connected.
More human.
HOW WE GOT HERE
Somewhere along the way, we forgot how to live.
Life grew louder. Busier. More complicated.
Living well became something to manage. Something to improve. Something to measure.
We lost sight of what was right in front of us.
We believe it is still here.
In the life unfolding all around us.
OUR BELIEF
We don't need to create a better
way to live.
We simply need to remember one.
It's still here.
In shared meals.
In handwritten notes tucked into books.
In front porches at sunset.
In gardens that feed both body and soul.
In neighbors who wave from across
the street.
In homes where everyone knows
they're welcome.
Mahalo is part of that remembering.
A place for the shared meal,
the open chair,
the familiar porch light.
A place for the life
that unfolds in ordinary rooms.
A place for the people
who are still on their way.
LITTLE THINGS
Ordinary moments shape
extraordinary lives.
A pot of soup on the stove.
A porch light left on.
A book with a folded corner.
A conversation that lasts longer than anyone expected.
Nobody circles these moments on a calendar.
Nobody posts them online.
But over time, these are the moments become our lives.
SMALL RITUALS
A life well lived grows quietly
through ordinary days.
It doesn't begin with another plan.
It grows through small, repeated things:
home-cooked meals,
time outside,
work that matters,
rest that comes without apology,
people who notice when you've been gone too long.
Somewhere along the way, we started treating it as something to chase.
We believe it grows in the life we already have.
HOME
Home is one of the most important places in the world.
Not because it's perfect.
Because it's where life unfolds.
Birthdays are celebrated there.
Holidays become traditions there.
Muddy boots pile up by the back door.
Fresh flowers sit on the kitchen table
because someone thought to bring them in.
A home doesn't have to be perfect
to be beautiful.
CONNECTION
Community is built one
conversation at a time
It begins with a conversation.
A familiar face.
A neighbor who becomes a friend.
A gathering that returns, season after season.
Belonging grows slowly, when people keep showing up long after the introductions are over.
The strongest communities aren't built by accident. They're built with intention.
AN OPEN CHAIR
There's always room for one more.
One more chair at the table.
One more voice in the conversation.
One more neighbor welcomed in.
Making room has never been about
having the perfect home
or the perfect meal.
It's about making people feel
they were expected all along.
Some of life's best moments
begin with a simple invitation.
OUR NAME
A word that
feels like home
When it came time to name what we were building, we wanted a name that felt less like a brand and more like a feeling.
Mahalo
Hawaiian · Gratitude · Giving thanks · Abundance
It felt right from the moment we found it. Not just a beautiful word — but a set of values. A way of showing up for life. A nudge to slow down, breathe, and notice the good that's already here.
-Cerise
Life, even with all its chaos and curveballs, is full of small ordinary moments — the first sip of coffee in the morning, the hug from a friend you haven’t seen in too long, the smell of soup on the stove when someone you love is on their way home.
We wanted to build a community that felt like that.
Like a deep breath. Like a hand on your shoulder. Like someone saying, I see you, and I’m glad you’re here.
And that became Mahalo.
WHY WE BUILT MAHALO
We built this for others.
And for ourselves.
We have extraordinary people in our lives. Family and friends who carried us through every loss, every hard season, every place we couldn’t hold ourselves up alone.
And still, Joel and I are the only plant-based people in our circle. We don’t have people to call when we try a new recipe and want to talk about it. We don’t have friends who want to walk on Saturday mornings and talk about longevity research. We don’t have a potluck where everything on the table was made with intention.
So we built the thing we longed for.
Because most people need more than one community to sustain them. Not because the communities they already have aren’t enough — but because we are layered, and we need different things from different people.
Sometimes the thing we need most is people who are walking the same path.
That’s Mahalo. Built for the people who needed it. Including us.
MAYBE YOU'VE BEEN LOOKING FOR THIS TOO.
A place to learn.
A place to belong.
A place to keep becoming.
If so, we'd love to meet you.