Meet Abriana “Abri” Frees

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Abriana “Abri” Frees a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Abriana “Abri”, we’re thrilled to have you on our platform and we think there is so much folks can learn from you and your story. Something that matters deeply to us is living a life and leading a career filled with purpose and so let’s start by chatting about how you found your purpose.

I feel that I’ve been working on finding my purpose most of my life. And to be honest, I think I still am working on it (and will be most of the rest of my life). However, over the past few years I have discovered a truer version of myself, which has led me to a more self-aligned purpose—
to shine the light I found back for others trying to find their way out of their own darkness. Sadly, I came upon this more self-aligned journey through the death of mine and my husband’s firstborn, Judah Tyler Frees.

We had been planning to start a family for the first five years of our marriage, and when I finally got pregnant with Judah, it felt like all our life plans were finally coming together. We had a happy marriage, had recently moved to a new town and were getting ready to start a new life, really. When he unexpectedly stopped breathing, just four days after he was born, it was as if reality itself was being ripped apart. Then, when Judah “officially” passed away two and a half weeks later (he was on a ventilator in the NICU that entire time and not really conscious), it was as if I, myself as I was at that time, died along with him.

I spent the better part of the next two years either wanting to physically die (to match what I felt like and desired inside) or breaking, mentally, even further than I knew was possible at the time. My purpose was supposed to have been being Judah’s mom, and now that he was gone so was my reason for existing.

However, through a lot of support and difficult soul searching, I finally came to a place where I wanted to try to heal. That’s when I decided what my purpose would be and how I would pursue it. I had been through hell and back, had finally found the light to lead me out of my darkness, and I knew that I was meant to shine that light back for others trying to find their way out of their own darkness.

That purpose has led me to a lot of beautiful things and beautiful people that I am blessed to have in my life.

Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?

My name is Abri, and professionally I am a licensed massage therapist and a certified yoga teacher. My current pursuits include growing my own massage practice, deepening my massage and yogic knowledge and getting lots of practice doing both professionally. I grew up in a very loving home, along with my younger brother, Zach, mostly here in Colorado (Colorado Springs, to be specific). I’ve grown up spiritually (Christian) my whole life, but ever since high school, specifically, I began a personal journey of exploration to understand—both the truths of the universe and my role in it.

My journey has led me down many various paths, but the most significant path has been that which includes the births and deaths of both of mine and my husband’s children— Judah Tyler, our son and very loved firstborn, and Macie Savannah, our precious daughter. I got pregnant with Judah in October of 2021, and when we found out, we were ecstatic. We had been planning for a family since before the beginning of our marriage, and we were finally in a place where we felt that we could start that dream. My pregnancy with Judah was hard, but I barely even noticed (yes, I was one of those obnoxious pregnant women that had full rose-colored glasses on during my pregnancy). I was so in love and so enthralled with every painful kick and tiny movement that he made. I had been waiting to finally be a mom, and here was my moment. When Judah was born, I couldn’t imagine a more perfect being ever having existed. Simply put, he was beautiful. However, our dream didn’t last for long.

Four days later, we ended up in the NICU with Judah after he had unexpectedly stopped breathing during dinner that night. We later found out that he had a patent ductus arteriosis, a fancy and confusing way of saying that he had a hole in his heart that never closed. We spent two weeks in the NICU with him, fighting for some shred of hope, and left with empty arms and beyond broken hearts.

In the aftermath of losing Judah, simply put, I lost myself. I began having panic attacks, couldn’t sleep or eat, experienced major depression and some postpartum paranoia. There were so many who tried to lovingly support me and help me come back to myself, but I think ultimately, I simply didn’t want to and maybe even couldn’t. The night that Judah died, the Abri that I had been before also died. I couldn’t imagine a life worth living without my baby boy, and I had so much pain that I just wanted it all to stop. It was terrifying, it hurt too much and it just didn’t make sense. Thankfully, that wasn’t the end of my story.

While I no longer claim the same faith I had before, I am still a very spiritual person, and I can confidently say that there were many prayers going out for me and my husband, that got us through the darkest period of our lives. For me, I was so deep down in my own darkness and lost in my mind that when I finally began wanting healing I had no idea how to even get started. It was in the week that I started asking, cosmically, for that help out of my darkness that I had a deeply impactful experience with the divine, the source, God, the Holy Spirit, the Great Spirit, whatever you want to call it.

I got connected with a special clinic that has a location in Hollywood, Florida (thankfully only a few hours away from where I was staying at the time) that encouraged me to start eating differently, gave me some supplement and therapy recommendations, and helped me find the CORRECT medication I needed to help get my brain on board. I began thinking again, dreaming again really, about what my life might look like, should it continue on. And I decided that I wanted to help others find their way to their own healing journeys, by shining the light I had been given in my own darkness back, as a beacon of hope to those that were still in their own darkness but wanted out. This and living my life in honor of my son became my reasons for moving forward towards whatever my future held.

When we were in the NICU with Judah, a nurse with a beautiful soul taught my husband and I how to massage him and help him move his limbs (he was unconscious), to not only help with his severe edema but also, as I look back on it, to give us meaningful ways to connect with our son, when it seemed there was no possible way to do so, amidst all of the wires, his feeding tube and the many pieces of noisy machinery monitoring him. I had been aware of massage before, and actually received some pre-natal massage when I was pregnant with Judah. However, this experience of being able to connect with Judah, as well as the love and support of some dear massage therapist friends who blessed my heart and, maybe unknowingly, imparted so much wisdom and teaching about the mind-body connection, led me to decide that I wanted to pursue a career in massage therapy, as my way of touching the lives of others who were hurting and, hopefully, help them find their own light again.

So, through many other perfectly crafted circumstances, I found myself going to school at Berkana Institute of Massage Therapy in Longmont, CO. And when I started school, that’s when I found out I was pregnant with Macie, our daughter.

I spent most of my massage program pregnant with her, holding her so carefully and timidly in my body, so very different from the light and truly bold way I carried Judah. I felt that Macie was our gift, maybe even life’s way of redeeming the unfairness of losing Judah when we had wanted him so badly. When I found out she was a girl, I began dreaming of the ways that my mom and I had related to each other, her being one of my best friends for a long time now, and how I was going to love Macie so, so deeply, however she decided to go through life, similar to the way my mom patiently loved me, despite our big differences in style and personality. Both mine and my husband’s families, both still hurting so deeply from the loss of our beloved Judah, also rejoiced so fully at the news of our precious Macie. My mom prayed, every day, that Macie would grow up, healthy and HERE. And yet, life had other plans.

At 26 weeks along, Tyler and I both stopped feeling Macie move and made the trip to the hospital on Thanksgiving Day, 2024. Truly, I had spent so much time during my pregnancy with her trying to convince myself that there was nothing to worry about, that we would make it to full-term, and that the doctors would be watching her diligently once she was delivered, that I didn’t think that there could really be anything wrong. I assumed that she was just a little less…vigorous than her brother, and she was probably running out of room at this point. I thought that we would go to the hospital, they would find her heartbeat, and we would be on our way down to my husband’s parents’ house, as we had planned for that day.

The next morning, after a night full of silence and heaviness and disbelief, I delivered Macie sleeping. She, though less developed physically than her brother, was equally as beautiful. Her tiny red lips and fingers and toes were so dainty and lady-like, accented by the sweet dress that the nurses had found for her.

The same day that we were able to lay her to rest, in the same site as her brother, a yogi friend of mine had invited me to a cacao ceremony at her house. I had no idea what it was going to be like and wasn’t sure that I wanted to go honestly, but I felt somewhere in me that I should. That night, during a guided meditation that my friend led, I felt Macie’s presence again, so clearly and comfortingly. I knew I had to come to a place where I could let her and her brother go, no matter how painful. They had lives of a different sort that they had to move on to, and because I loved them as much as I do, I had to let them go and live those lives. But, I still had questions. So many questions.

That’s when I decided to attend the YTT program at Buka Yoga in Castle Rock (where we had moved to just before I gave birth to Judah). Right before I started that program, I began my own massage practice, previously El Roi Wellness, now AE Frees Wellness.

I finished my YTT program about a month ago now, and have been working on continuing and building my practice ever since (with some yoga elements to come, hopefully, in the near future). While I don’t have my children living here in this dimension with me, my practice has become my legacy and gift to them, to honor them with how I help others find their own healing, through alternative and holistic practices.

I offer CranioSacral Therapy, Integrative Therapeutic massage, Relaxation massage and Hot Stone massage. I also recently began offering Thai massage, which I am in love with for its deeply grounding and profoundly healing properties. I hope to offer Ashiatsu massage and private yoga classes (for individual or event purposes) soon.

I love doing this work, not only for the healing it has helped me find, but the ways that I see it impacting the lives of those I have the privilege of partnering with on their journeys. It’s brought so much clarity to my new reality in ways I never would have understood before and has brought me to a new, maybe even truer, version of myself. I am so very grateful.

To read more about AE Frees Wellness and the services that we offer, please visit our website at https://www.aefreeswellness.com/ and follow us on Facebook and/or Instagram.

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

Looking back, I think that the three qualities that helped me the most in my journey towards starting my own massage practice were humility, vision and focus. I had to learn a lot along the way from so many various persons. There was a lot of paperwork to file, a lot of boxes to check and many different moving pieces to come together. Not only did I have to keep my ears and eyes open to how others were building and forming their own businesses, but I had to ask a lot of questions and not assume I knew the best answers.

Of course, when it’s your own business, some of the time you DO have the best answers for yourself, and that’s where vision comes into everything. I had (and have) big ideas and dreams for my business, and that impacts the decisions I make now on how to form my business and the various aspects of running it. Some people make different decisions than I do, but that’s because the vision for my business is my own and is going to be different than their businesses. This is not wrong, it’s just the way that it is. If you don’t have clear vision, you’re not going to be able to effectively grow towards one.

I also have had to find a lot of focus. The hoops I’ve had to jump through (and there will be more) have, at times, become a little discouraging. However, when I feel discouraged or like something is not working to the way that I had hoped, I have to hone in again on my original vision. I have to decide, is this one thing worth it? Is it going to advance towards my vision? Does it need to be done now or in this way, or is there another time or another way to achieve this goal/step?

I’m not exactly sure how to cultivate these qualities, honestly, other than making a very self-aware decision to pursue them in practical ways. And sometimes that means making the harder decision that is not in your nature necessarily. I am not so great at humility sometimes. But, I talk internally to myself a lot, so I remind myself to make the decision to be humble and always learn where and from whom I can. I have to analyze whether a decision requires me to take advice that maybe I don’t love or if I need to go where my gut is telling me to go because it is more aligned with my vision (even if it doesn’t make sense to someone else). So, be open to asking for and accepting help and advice, but also know that at the end of the day it’s your business/project/vision and you, alone, are going to be responsible for its success.

Alright, so before we go we want to ask you to take a moment to reflect and share what you think you would do if you somehow knew you only had a decade of life left?

This is something I’ve spent quite a bit of time thinking about over the past few years, although, it hasn’t always been a decade that I’ve allotted myself. However, if I knew I only had a decade of my life left, I think I would continue spending my time exactly as I am doing now—building my business, continuing my massage and yoga practices, spending time in each present moment with my friends, family and husband and continually striving towards more peace, more balance and more healing, both in myself and for others.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.aefreeswellness.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/aefreeswellness/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61573075435095
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/abriana-frees-51241560/