We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Jessica Houchin a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Jessica thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Let’s start with the story of your mission. What should we know?
In the summer of 2020, I was talking to my close friend Meg, now business partner, about our friend Lacy who would have a baby in the Fall called Ursula. I said, “we should welcome Ursula into our coven”. In the following days, I would google “mystical baby products”, “witchy baby items”, etc., and kept coming up empty-handed. I then half-jokingly returned the information to Meg saying, “we should open a witchy baby store”. Meg was studying herbalism at the time and we were stuck inside because of the pandemic, it just felt like the perfect creative transition. Their simple affirmation to explore this idea put us on a path of brainstorming, researching, receiving coaching, and crafting together what would become Mystic Baby, a new adventure for us to embark on together!
We sell mystical things for mystical beings, just like you! We believe chosen families should be celebrated in all their forms.
Jessica, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
Hi, I’m Jessica! I’m Queer (she/her). I reside in the Midwest. Pisces sun, Sagittarius moon. Tarot novice. I own a witchy baby store that makes mystical things for mystical beings. My store, Mystic Baby, began as a celebration of growing community. It was a way to welcome new love into chosen family. It’s a little love note to queer and gender nonconforming families. When shopping Mystic Baby, I hope items bring to mind someone you love. I hope people see the products and think about ways to better love and care for themselves. I want people to feel soothed, seen, and celebrated!
I got connected to my community in St. Louis through a weekly potluck hosted at the nest, a friendly anchor in our queer community. Learning to create and celebrate intentional community took root here.
Through this lens, Mystic Baby came to hold a simple desire to celebrate chosen families in all their forms, driven to create products to help foster spiritual and hopeful beginnings for little ones, and care for communities and covens embarking on this hard and lovely journey together. Find items displaying daily reminders to create sacred space, soothe little mystical being as they grow, or choose herbal blends to calm and restore body and spirit. Use the tarot prints and onesies as daily reminders to create mindfulness and mercy for the journey we are all on. Light a candle to allow a moment to focus on breathing, let that moment be an act of meditation. Let it be a reminder to trust your intuition and extend kindness toward yourself when you don’t feel like you can access the answers on your hardest days.
My background is in nonprofit and customer service, with over 20 years of combined experience. When I decided not to return to the global nonprofit I was working for in late summer 2020, I found space for more creative things. Mystic Baby started as a mention in conversation, one I needed affirmed, and thankfully my friend, now business partner, took the time to explore it with me. I have always loved to create and my brain can swim with ideas, but I never thought of myself as a creative. When approaching it, I wasn’t sure how to bring it to fruition exactly, but something in the possibility of it all lit a little fire inside me to keep going, so I did.
I hope you find all these things and more when experiencing the products I make, and I hope you share your stories!
I currently work full-time at a nonprofit, while running Mystic Baby, and attending markets most weekends. I love the opportunity to meet people in person and see how they engage with the products. For much of my life, I hadn’t actualized that I could be a creative. When the business was still in its idea phase, I kept it very close to my chest. I felt like I had to protect it in order to protect myself. If I’m being completely honest, I still question myself on occasion. That being said, I am also extremely proud of my products, and feel even more so when I see people reacting to them with excitement! It is so affirming to hear people say things like, “I wish I knew a baby to shop for!”, or “We have to get this for (insert name here)!”, or “Oh my gosh, wouldn’t (insert name here) love this?!”. When I see people using our products to celebrate someone they know and love, I know they get it and I love that that they do!
Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?
Like many other small businesses in the last two+ years, a big struggle on the journey included that of a global pandemic. It made it hard to connect with the community, having to cancel some initial markets when the Covid case numbers ramped up. It made it hard to connect with our own communities and loved ones. Mystic Baby became as a dream in early summer 2020, got the LLC title in August 2020, and was set to open a bank account in September of 2020, right after Meg’s birthday. We had planned a weekend trip to celebrate their birthday, the weekend of September 26th; I was packed and ready to leave that morning when I received a phone call that my dad had passed away suddenly the night before. It pushed back our opening date until October 31, 2020. It was challenging to start a new venture that I’m really excited about while giving myself space to grieve. It was challenging moving through the deep loss of my father’s passing, while managing an estate, working full time, and running a business. There were times I felt like I existed only in a fog, and others where I felt like I was just treading water. Thank the universe for community that helped support me when I was truly at a loss!
Can you tell us the story behind how you met your business partner?
Meg and I initially met five years ago through a weekly potluck in our queer community. Our weekly gatherings allowed us space to share the weight of our hearts, laugh at life’s absurdities, and fill our stomach’s with rich offerings of love, made for one another. Each Tuesday night, we discovered how much more we have when we grow together in intentional community. Potluck became a sacred space, a bright light in our week we could look forward to. Our friendship solidified on a camping trip with those same friends one long weekend in May through much laughter, sharing, and dancing wildly around a fire. Now it’s really more like family. I podded with Meg, her partner, and their daughter during the pandemic when it was safe for us to do so. We have traveled together, built this business together, and I have watched their little one grow up from the age of two. She read a book to me for the first time about a week ago. I mean, it’s so wild to look back on markers like that!
Contact Info:
- Website: www.mysticbabystore.com
- Instagram: @mysticbabystore
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/mysticbabystore