Our Second Life began in 2023, but the real started long before that.
Personal note from Julie:
When I started Second Life, it wasn't because I wanted to sell candles for a living. Far from it. I was working 16-hour days for a job I hated, in a terrible relationship, and stressed out beyond compare. I was feeling like I had no creative outlet, no direction, and no support.
I didn't mean to fall in love with making candles. I liked candles, but really what I liked was *big* candles. One day I stumbled across a posting for a Hearth candle from a luxury store, but didn't want to spend the money to buy it, so I decided to teach myself. The rest is mostly a story of learning from mistakes and googling answers until I got really good at making very big candles.
But in the meantime, I was also learning how to build a new life for myself out of the one that I eventually realized I couldn't sustain anymore. It was a long and difficult road, and throughout it, one of the only things that kept me grounded was having a craft I could come back to, get better at, and sometimes even share with friends (because who doesn't like candles?).
A couple of years later when I finally launched a shop, I was finally in a new job, had left a miserable 12-year relationship, moved, and done a lot of self-reflection. It felt like the only thing I took with me from my old life (other than my cats) was the newfound love and feeling of creativity that making these custom, unique, sustainable candles had brought me. I wanted that feeling to show through in the heart of the business. So, at the beginning of what felt like my second life, Second Life got its beginning, too.
