Suzanne Tarry bags up self-care goodies for essential and community workers.
Suzanne Tarry’s mission is simple: care for those who care for us. After hearing about the long shifts nurses, doctors and other essential workers were pulling last year, she felt compelled to help while her flower business, Dragonfly Designs, was put on the backburner due to postponed or canceled weddings.
Knowing that a little #selfcare goes a long way (like many of us, after a long day she enjoys soaking in a bathtub), she created Olive Tree Blessing Bags, a nonprofit that delivers bags filled with luxury personal care items to essential and community workers. The bags, which are tailored to both gals and guys, contain a thank-you note and everything from bath bombs to chocolate to hand cream.
“… I don’t know how to feed 1,000 people,” says Tarry. “I don’t know how to find housing for somebody that is living under a bridge. I don’t know how to administer medicines and solve somebody’s issues, but I can sure as heck support the people that do.” And there’s almost nothing chocolate can’t fix if you ask us.
Suzanne Terry
The nonprofit has delivered over 3,000 bags and counting to WakeMed facilities’ COVID and ER nurses, the Boys and Girls Club of Wake County and Raleigh Rescue Mission, among other homeless shelters, food banks and more.
But Tarry couldn’t stay away from the flower-arranging business for long. Olive Tree Weddings, a flower event company with the tagline “Blooms With a Blessing,” will officially launch in July with 100% of the proceeds going toward Olive Tree Blessing Bags. To her knowledge, the nonprofit—which combines her love for flower arrangement and serving others—is the first of its kind in North Carolina.
Tarry, who assembles bags and flower arrangements in her dining room on top of an old piano (or while doing laps around her dining room table, which is often covered with flowers), didn’t originally set out to have a career in flower-arranging, however. After doctors found a tumor the size of her heart in her chest when she was 19, she took a hiatus from school and changed courses careerwise, earning a business degree and then working for a retail and a wholesale florist.
“I didn’t want to do anything that is going to be that stressful or cause that much stress or unhappiness,” Tarry reflects. “I just want to do flowers.”
She hopes Olive Tree Blessing Bags and Olive Tree Weddings will continue to bless—and pamper—essential and community workers once the pandemic has been long gone, touching the lives of those who give up so much for all of us each and every day.
“Heroes are not made out of COVID,” says Tarry. “Heroes are made from self-sacrifice.” Donate, sponsor or volunteer: olivetreeblessings.com
Remove that mask if you can, y’all, and follow your nose to Stacy Ahua’s fragrant soy candles. Her now burgeoning candle biz, Usu Company—the name a nod to the Tiv Tribe in Nigeria (usu is the tribal word for fire), of which Ahua is a member—was born out of a single flame. The candle that sparked it all? One she made in lockdown (prior to losing her job) and sent to her mom and other nurses on the front lines.
Ahua says curiosity, and a need to connect people, was part of the “passion and thought behind the candles and the stories.” Oft called a connector for her ability to bring different people together, Ahua previously worked for nonprofits and in politics, and is known for her ability to find—er, sniff out—the commonality between different races, classes, candidates and voters.
With Usu, when people connect to the scents or the stories behind each of the candles, she says, “it opens the door to so much more than selling a candle. … That ability to connect with people in that way from very different backgrounds is really powerful to me.” Scent too, in its innate ability to evoke emotions and recall memories, helps connect people as well, she adds.
Ahua’s culture and the people who shaped her life serve as the main inspo for her candles—summoning, for example, the scents of an orange tree on her granddad’s farm in Nigeria that he planted for her and her sisters before he died (Grandad’s Farm, with notes of mandarin, coconut and peach, plus sugar to please the senses).
Fiya, a yet-to-be-released candle (warm spices, leather, jasmine and tonka bean), is named in honor of her father, to whom, whenever he sped through his Nigerian village on his motorcycle, the children would yell “fire!” And No Dey Carry Last (orchid, sea salt, wood and jasmine) is named after a Nigerian mantra that calls people to strive for greatness. Even Ahua’s business tagline “Blaze On” is partially inspired by her father’s fiery spirit—a courageousness and rebelliousness she sees in herself.
A recent deviation, Golden (saffron, ginger, lemon peel, amber and vetiver) is a fragrant scent Ahua made specifically for the North Carolina Museum of Art’s current Golden Mummies of Egypt exhibit. And upping the feel-good factor, a portion of proceeds for her Guardian Angel candle (grapefruit, basil, agave, sandalwood and oakmoss) partly benefits the COVID-19 Solidarity Response Fund, which provides resources to health care and essential workers, patient care, and research.
But while her flame burns on, one thing that will never change? Ahua staying true to herself—something she advises any entrepreneur to do—no matter what risks she’ll have to take to grow her business. As St. Francis of Assisi says, “All the darkness in the world cannot extinguish the light of a single candle.” usucompany.com
