From Striving to Abiding

Founder & Owner of Abide Wellness Boutique | Allie Mashni

The story that led me to build Abide Wellness

For a long time, I thought fulfillment was something I could find if I just looked hard enough.

I grew up carrying trauma that I didn't fully understand how to process. Without realizing it, I began living from those wounds, looking to relationships, approval, achievement, and other people to fill a void in my heart that I didn't know how to fill myself.

I thought somehow I would be rescued.

On the outside, I could be charming, happy, and seemingly okay. Inside, I was angry, numb, and hurting. When things became difficult, I often dissociated rather than allowing myself to feel what was happening beneath the surface.

Eventually, I made decisions that hurt people I deeply cared about, and I had to confront something I had spent years avoiding: I couldn't keep living this way.

I could continue allowing the hurt from my past to shape my present and the choices I made, or I could finally face it, embrace my story, and choose a different path.

For the first time, instead of continuing to run, I looked up.

Where God Met Me

That decision eventually led me to Meadows. I was referred there because of its multifaceted approach to healing, but I was terrified to go. I had spent much of my childhood dissociating from painful experiences, and I knew facing my past would be incredibly difficult. There were things my mind had worked hard to protect me from, even though my body was still carrying them.

I also didn't think my story was that bad. I imagined treatment would mostly involve sitting around talking about our problems with therapists.

I couldn't have been more wrong.

Healing came through so many different avenues: counseling, movement, nutrition, community, self-care, slowing down, and learning how to be present. Different experiences unlocked different pieces of my story and gave me pivotal ahamoments when something I had carried for years finally began to make sense.

I ended up extending my time there, and slowly, I began to feel something shifting.

There wasn't one dramatic moment when God suddenly appeared and everything became okay. There wasn't one conversation or chapel service that changed everything.

God met me there slowly.

Some of the moments I remember most happened on a yoga mat. In those quiet, intimate moments, I began to feel the presence of the Holy Spirit. Little by little, the void I had spent years asking other people and other things to fill began to feel different.

For the first time, I started to understand what it meant to care for all of me.

A Different Understanding of Holistic Wellness

Before that season, I thought wellness was largely physical: work out, eat well, take care of your body.

Those things still matter deeply to me. I believe caring for our bodies allows us to steward them well for the lives and purposes God has given us. But I learned that I could work out every single day and still carry a deep emptiness within me.

Wellness had to be more than physical. It meant learning to care for my spirit, mind, and body together. That understanding of holistic wellness would eventually become one of the foundations of Abide.

Movement mattered. Nutrition mattered. Counseling, prayer, rest, and self-care mattered. And something I had underestimated before, community mattered.

For 10–12 weeks at Meadows, I was surrounded by community four days a week. There were people walking alongside me as I did the hard work. Then I left, returned to Arizona after having been away for years, and realized that built-in community was gone.

I had to intentionally build it for myself.

Looking back now, I think that longing planted one of the earliest seeds for Abide. I began to wonder what it could look like to have a place in everyday life where women could care for all facets of their wellness and find people to do life alongside. Years later, that idea would become Abide Wellness, a wellness boutique and community in Scottsdale, Arizona.

I didn't know what it would become yet. But the seed was there.

The Life I Thought I Was Supposed to Want

I've always loved learning and knew I wanted to run a business someday, so after Meadows, I earned my MBA. I eventually began working for my family's company and built a career in corporate leadership.

I remember thinking, This is it.

I'm incredibly grateful for that chapter of my life. It taught me how to lead, make difficult decisions, think strategically, build teams, and carry responsibility. Those experiences continue to shape how I lead today.

But somewhere along the way, I began losing connection with some of the things that had rooted me after Meadows: my community, my routines, and the practices that helped me slow down and remain grounded. I found myself pursuing the things I thought would bring fulfillment and the approval of others instead of the purpose God had been leading me toward.

At the same time, God had quietly been placing pieces of another vision in front of me for nearly two years.

The Vision I Kept Talking Myself Out Of

I would talk to my friends about this place I could envision so clearly: somewhere women could move their bodies and stay for coffee, where restorative wellness services and community could exist alongside fitness, and where you could attend an event, meet someone new, or simply have a place to slow down.

I could see it.

But the vision felt so big that sometimes I would talk about it with incredible excitement and then turn around and talk myself out of pursuing it.

Leaving what was comfortable, starting something from nothing, and believing I could actually build what I was envisioning required a level of faith I wasn't sure I had yet. So for a while, I focused on the life in front of me and ignored the little nudges God kept placing along the way.

Eventually, I realized I had another choice to make.

This time, I chose to step out in faith.

Not because I suddenly stopped being afraid. I would be lying if I said there isn't still fear. There absolutely is. But alongside that fear is an incredible amount of excitement for what I believe God can do through something I'm finally willing to surrender to Him.

I'm certainly not working less than I did in corporate. I'm just learning what it looks like to work from a different source of strength, to recognize that I can work hard while also knowing the outcome was never mine to control in the first place.

And one of the sweetest parts of this season has been seeing the same community I once shared this seemingly enormous vision with become the people behind the scenes encouraging me, helping me, and rooting me on as it becomes real.

Why Abide?

As I started putting a name to the vision, I had narrowed it down to two possibilities. Then I came across John 15:4:

“Abide in me, and I in you.”

The word abide caught my attention.

I started looking deeper into what it meant: to remain, to dwell, to stay connected, to make your home.

And I knew.

It wasn't simply the name of a wellness boutique. It was an invitation from Christ, the name of the place, and ultimately, it had become the foundation of everything I wanted Abide to represent.

I remember texting the name to my friends, and one of them responded, “I can see someone saying, ‘I'm going to Abide.’”

I could too.

The Heart Behind Abide

Abide wasn't built because I wanted to open a wellness boutique.

It was built because I experienced what happens when we care for our spirit, mind, and body together, and I couldn't stop thinking about what it would look like for women to have a place to practice that in everyday life.

And that's an important distinction to me.

Abide isn't only for someone coming out of recovery or walking through one of the hardest seasons of her life. It's also for the woman in one of her happiest seasons. The mom who needs an hour to herself. The woman who wants to get stronger. The person who just moved to Arizona and is looking for community. The friends meeting for coffee. The woman who needs restorative care or simply wants somewhere that reminds her to slow down.

You don't have to have a story like mine to belong here.

Abide is becoming a Scottsdale wellness community where movement, restoration, and connection come together under one roof. A place where you can take a Pilates class and stay for coffee, attend a community event, experience a restorative wellness service, connect with someone new, or simply sit and stay awhile.

My hope is that every woman who walks through our doors knows she is welcome. I hope she gets stronger. I hope she finds people to walk alongside. I hope she has a place to slow down and care for herself well. And somewhere in the midst of movement, coffee, conversation, restoration, and ordinary everyday moments, I hope she discovers what it means to remain rooted.

My own journey has taught me that wellness isn't a destination we finally reach. It's something we continually choose to cultivate, by caring for our spirit, mind, and body and remaining connected to what roots us.

For me, that root is Christ.

And that's the heart of Abide.

This is only the beginning, and I'm incredibly grateful you're here for it.

Welcome home.

Ready to experience Abide for yourself?

Explore Pilates classes, restorative wellness services, and upcoming community events at Abide Wellness in Scottsdale.