We recently connected with Felicia Howe and have shared our conversation below.
Felicia , thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Was there a moment in your career that meaningfully altered your trajectory? If so, we’d love to hear the backstory.
The turning point in my journey began right after high school when I was captivated by graphic design and functional art, particularly the way it impacted communities. However, as technology began to reshape the industry, my interest waned. I craved a more tactile, hands-on approach to creativity and soon found myself as a disillusioned artist. It was then that I decided to pursue a license in styling, a decision that ultimately transformed my path.
Upon receiving my credentials, I moved to Los Angeles and was quickly absorbed into the vibrant entertainment industry. This career was exactly what I had been seeking—creatively fulfilling, both physically and visually stimulating. As my career progressed, I shifted towards building a personal client base, where I discovered the profound healing power of my work. Helping clients enhance their outward appearances directly influenced their confidence and self-esteem, lifting their energy and transforming lives.
Witnessing people navigate major life transitions—health crises, marriages, divorces—while uplifting their spirits through my work was deeply inspiring. It revealed to me the potential for healing through visual transformation. However, I also began to see the underlying toxicity within the industry. This awareness motivated me to explore uncharted territories, pioneering holistic alternatives.
This journey, though complex, unveiled countless opportunities to revisit my roots as an artist and redefine my creative expression. Today, I offer beauty through visual art and expression, guiding people to reflect and explore their inner selves, opening up pathways to spiritual growth and self-discovery. This defining moment set the stage for everything I do now, merging artistry with healing and inspiring transformation in others.
Felicia , love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
Felicia’s lifelong passion for plants and flowers began during her childhood on a community family farm in the lush, forested coastal range of central Oregon. From an early age, she developed a deep love for nature and felt intuitively connected to the fragrant herbs and flowers that grew around her, absorbing their essences and communing with their spirits. She was enrapt by stories of her family’s lineage and their history as farmers in the region. She felt especially drawn to tales of her third great-grandmother, who owned The Snake River Dahlia Farm in Ontario, Oregon in the 1920’s. As she pored over the farm’s old catalogs featuring colorful hand-drawn illustrations of the varieties they grew, she felt a connection to both her ancestry and to the flowers themselves.
This sparked a desire and a curiosity that led her down an immersive, decades-long path of learning to explore and reveal the healing properties of plants. While studying with Master Herbalists, she gravitated to the practice of Aromatherapy, which transported her back to her floral roots. As she mastered the ancient practices, she learned to distill essential oils and formulate therapeutic herbal products from her own garden plants and other carefully sourced botanicals. As she began to use and share her remedies with others, creating case studies and monitoring their impact, she was inspired by their powerful therapeutic benefits and positive effects. And in healing others, discovered her own healing.
Through working with essential oils and herbs, Felicia began to explore the more ethereal and mystical qualities of the plants, specifically the vibrational signatures and energetic imprints of flowers. She began to develop flower essence elixirs from flowers cultivated in her own garden, and in using them to work through her personal experiences of environmental sensitivity, loss and grief, began to appreciate their potential to provide mental and emotional healing by releasing the kind of stagnant emotional patterns and self-limiting beliefs ingrained in the greater collective. In wanting to share this healing with others, she created a hand-illustrated oracle with each card featuring a specific botanical to address a common mental and emotional condition. This became the impetus for her first book, The Flower Attunement Guidebook and Tarot, and formed the basis for her Flower Attunement readings and healing work today.
Felicia’s healing practice is housed in a cozy and private studio in a lovingly restored art deco building on Portland’s west side where she offers flower attunement readings and facials, formulates personalized flower essence elixirs and hosts monthly new moon sessions in a heartfelt commitment to help people connect to the beauty and power of flowers to find healing and self-love.
She resides in a mountainside flower sanctuary in northeast Portland where she cultivates flowers from her own secluded garden for her flower essence elixirs and invites clients to sit quietly among the flora as part of their healing process. Her second book, Sibyl of the Flora, a deeply personal collection of forty-six floral affirmations with hand-painted botanical illustrations written as a tribute to her grandmother, will be released in June of 2024.
What’s been the most effective strategy for growing your clientele?
Growing my client base has been most effective by truly listening to their needs. Being a good listener who is understanding, caring, and authentic serves as the best form of marketing. However, there’s a delicate balance between serving others and becoming a people pleaser. It’s important to navigate the line between meekness and confrontation to develop a well-rounded character. There are moments to be assertive and others to be gentle, showing compassion and understanding. Especially in my line of work, this approach is the most effective advertising. Ultimately, people simply want to feel good, seen, and heard. By creating space for these experiences, clients are likely to keep returning.
How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?
Over the past 27 years of my career, I’ve encountered numerous moments where I’ve needed to pivot, which, in many ways, has kept my journey interesting. Changes in real estate and gentrification led to the loss of brick-and-mortar spaces, but these losses often paved the way for something better. In my younger days, life was about riding the wave of creativity and exploring new experiences without looking back. Adapting and pivoting became second nature.
Today, with years of experience, I’ve faced setbacks and moments of abundance and fulfillment. Like many, the pandemic brought a major shift when my thriving business was suddenly upended. Yet, amidst the challenges, blessings emerged—I returned to my art and wrote three books. Despite the evident strain on safety, security, and being thrust into survival mode, COVID-19 altered communication and consumption patterns. While financial recovery is ongoing, the need for constant pivoting is still present.
Reflecting on past pivots inspires me, as greater opportunities always arose from those challenges. However, middle age brings a more complex dynamic of trusting and surrendering, as life experiences—failures and successes alike—accumulate. Trust, hope, faith, and inspiration are vital ingredients needed to persevere. Life is short, and it’s essential to make the most of it.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://Primroseapothecary.com
- Instagram: Primroseapothecary
- Facebook: Primroseapothecary
Image Credits
hello@aubreyjanelle.com