Today we’d like to introduce you to Sarah Leiby.
Thanks for sharing your story with us Sarah. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
As a kid, I was incredibly curious and fascinated by nature, creativity, and the world around me. I always loved the patterns found on plants and animals, and have been drawing them for as long as I can remember. Drawing was definitely my first real joy. Once I reached age ten, my realm of expression expanded to music as well as I picked up playing the violin. It took four years before I really fell in love with it, and dove headfirst into the classical music realm. I devoted hours and hours to practicing and quickly advanced through school orchestras. I still kept drawing in my life, however, and became interested in animation.
I undertook the task of creating my own animated series on YouTube where I would draw the frames one by one in Microsoft Paint, and record the different characters voices myself. It was truly a new era of creativity for our generation having the capacity of computers and the internet at our fingertips. Once I reached high school, I had to make a tough choice because my animation and orchestra classes conflicted at the same time. After long consideration, I chose the opportunity to be a part of the Chamber orchestra and switched from animation to filmmaking. This is where I discovered my next passion, using my creative eye behind the camera. I loved being on set and found an incredible community of minds who loved to make films. I found a way to incorporate my love for music into my filmmaking and began to write soundtracks.
I would layer recordings of myself playing violin and piano on top of one another and play around with the octaves to create a one girl orchestra. I graduated high school with excitement to expand my capacity to create. I went straight off to the University of North Texas completely on student loans with the intention to study filmmaking and music but quickly learned that wasn’t the reason I was there. I felt conflicted because the idea of dropping any of my creative outlets to focus on just one seemed unfulfilling. I wanted to do everything and felt there just wasn’t enough time in a day. I became disheartened by grueling classwork and long hours serving at a Sushi joint, and the thought of the debt I would be in when I was finished with my degree made my heart sink.
What I truly gained from my time there was my new best friend, Alex. We shared a love for music and after a few dorm room jams, we began street performing in the Denton Square. My physical and mental health was at an all-time low, as I found myself eating sugary cereal for breakfast, lunch, and dinner and spending my time in between classes sleeping the day away. Making music with Alex became my outlet, but I knew I had to start paying attention to my health and climb out of my depression if I wanted to move forward. I was a lazy junk food addict with no motivation to pursue my passions. Slowly but surely, I began chipping away at my situation. I started to change up what I ate and started running.
It started purely because I hated my body, but as I continued to explore healthier habits, I started to find something I never knew I was missing. My taste buds began to shift and I started healing my terrible relationship with food and began eating real food that nourishes my body and mind. I realized my disgust with the beautiful nutritious food that the planet provides was all in my mind, Running started to feel better and better and soon I found myself running farther and faster. Getting yourself together requires a certain level of honesty. There’s nothing easy about realizing you’re the one who’s been holding you back this whole time.
My life started to look brighter and brighter as I felt like I was finally on the right track. Our guitar and violin sets were very well received and we were noticed by a nearby restaurant, who asked us to come play a few nights later. This was the first of many! As paying for school on my own became seemingly more impossible, I knew University was no longer where I was supposed to be at the time. I didn’t know what exactly to do next, but Alex and I packed up our things and moved to downtown Dallas to develop our music further. I found a job that changed my life at the restaurant True Food Kitchen.
True Food drew my interest because they serve real, clean, and nutrient-dense food which tastes amazing. What I found there was not just nourishing food but a nourishing community of people who would soon become my best friends. Not only that, but I fell in love with the human being who inspires me to shine every single day, my boyfriend Weston. I had lost 50 pounds, was healthier and happier than I had ever been in my life, and was finally feeling confident of the human being I was. At this point, I began practicing yoga and was discovering how to free my mind of self-sabotaging mindsets I’ve carried for years.
I met so many talented musicians, artists, and fantastically unique and creative minds. Suddenly I found myself collaborating and uncovering inspiration left and right. I became certain that I was meant to discover my path on my own without school. My dad, who attained a master’s degree in history didn’t actually end up using it at all. He now owns his own window cleaning business which he started from nothing and is free from having to answer to anyone but himself. I knew I would become my own boss one day too. I began to explore my artistic side through acrylic painting and was making more music than ever. Some of my new good friends and I started a band and practiced together multiple times a week.
We were growing as musicians and it felt incredible to be in a group setting again! I began to realize that being an artist all on my own is what has held me back all along. I feel truly inspired by the presence of other creative minds. I started hosting “Paint Nights” at my apartment to get my friends exploring their creativity. It is amazing to watch people I care about who believe they are not artistic to uncover their unique voice. I began to learn that I love to help others get in touch with their inner strength, power, beauty, and wisdom. I began to really grow in my musicianship, artistic ability, yoga practice, and running.
I discovered the freedom of barefoot running and the idea that our feet are so much stronger than we give them credit for, and that we’ve been lied to by shoe manufacturers for years. The barefoot runner receives a continuous stream of information about the ground and about the ground and about his own relationship to it, while a shod foot sleeps inside an unchanging environment.
I said goodbye to my running shoes and trained for a half marathon in zero drop sandals, only to discover I was so much stronger than I thought. Shoes block pain, not impact! Pain teaches us to run comfortably! From the moment you start going barefoot, you will change the way you run. Covering your feet with cushioned shoes is like turning off your smoke alarms. The more I pushed, the more my body adapted.
In every facet of my life, I now realize that the human body and mind can flourish in any area that you dedicate time and passion into. At times, I felt that I’ve run myself thin by picking up too many passions. I’ve never been able to choose between any of them. But I now realize how I am able to use all of these interests to collaborate with other like-minded individuals and live a limitless existence of expression and creation. I had once felt I would run out of time before I could do all I want to do, but I now see that this life is a blessing of time which I can choose to do anything with.
True Food Kitchen set me up with the incredible human beings that I will design my future with. We are now in the seedling stages of starting our own business. We are creating a website called Substain.co, which is a place for artists and creatives to come together to share what they make. We believe it is time that we make a change to the way we human beings interact with the world, and want to get people in touch with artists making low waste, natural, homemade, sustainable, and beautiful products rather than supporting large money hungry corporations! We have begun by finding artists from all around the world through the internet to make a collective. You’ll find homemade deodorants, sunscreen, lotion, soaps, reusable items you’ll love for years to replace the disposable plastic ones we’re using and wasting every day like bags, straws, razors, and bottles.
Cork yoga mats, beautiful wire wrapped jewelry, art prints, sustainably made clothing, and makeup, biodegradable 3D printed art, and this is just the beginning! I am so excited to see where this takes us and to be able to build a business built on helping others to express themselves and to work together to build a better future for us and for the world around us. I hope to turn Substain into not just an online site but a physical creative zone.
I want to incorporate my love for music, running, yoga, painting, and community and open up a venue somewhere in Dallas to showcase artwork and host large scale paint nights, music shows, yoga and fitness classes, healthy food options, and a shop for the earth-friendly products from our website! the sky is the limit for the opportunities I want to provide for local creatives. I couldn’t be more excited for what the future holds, and to see what we’re all made of. I realize more and more each day that growth happens outside of our comfort zones.
This year has been about no longer being the kind of person who takes what she can get, and finally becoming the kind of person who creates exactly what she wants. When you level up your idea of what’s possible and decide to really go for it; you open yourself up to the means to accomplish it as well.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
One of the biggest obstacles that I have faced is my own self-sabotaging mindsets, and not believing in myself. A couple of years ago, I was very lost and stuck. I let my financial circumstances and my dissatisfaction with my health get me in a cycle of negativity and blame. I felt that I was not capable of holding myself accountable. I really struggled with my relationship with food and inactivity and I had no idea how much it was affecting my life in every way from my energy levels, to my ability to think clearly, to not having a positive view of my life or myself. Getting out of this despair was no easy task.
Many years passed that I knew there was a problem and that a change needed to be made, but I just couldn’t help but to indulge in momentary pleasures that masked my pain. Eventually, I began to find the strength and power within myself. I began to notice that refraining from the comfort foods that brought me momentary pleasure and actually paying attention to the signals my body was giving me brought me to a place of such complete bliss and accomplishment that I finally did away with sugar, junk food, and my sedentary lifestyle.
This was not an overnight transition! It took years of hard work, dedication, and shedding habits that I believed were okay my entire life. I had to learn how to understand my body, and how to not get angry when it tells me something that I don’t want to hear. I am still not perfect by any means, but I have reached a state of balance in my life where I don’t eat food for momentary indulgence, but rather I take pleasure from providing my body with the nutrients it needs to truly thrive. Looking back on my struggle, I am incredibly thankful to have gone through such a low period and to have experienced the physical manifestations of my bad health, because it led me to where I am now, becoming a better version of myself every single day and constantly testing the boundary of my strength.
We’d love to hear more about your art.
Substain is not just an online store, but a community of artists and a movement to reinvent the way we shop. We have created a platform for artists crafting high quality, sustainable, mindful products and beautiful artwork to list their work all in one central hub. The internet is overwhelmingly vast, meaning it is really hard to discover people making products that will uplift our lives. Often we give in to cheap price tags and convenience on harmful products marketed towards us in our stores because searching for better alternatives is expensive and confusing. Not to mention, many people are just simply unaware that everything we use from cleaning products to food contains harmful ingredients or are created in ways that exploit other people or animals.
Our goal is to make it as easy as possible to discover people who are passionate about what they do, to become educated as to what is really going on in our consumer-driven world, and to help these passionate artists to become successful doing their work so that they can do it more often! This equal exchange way of managing a business that benefits all who are involved is the future. This is how we will combat the destructive system in which our society is currently participating in.
I am proud that in building our business, we have remained faithful that by sticking to our morals, and by not taking shortcuts, that we will set ourselves apart from the masses and create something that inspires business around the world to pay attention to their footprint on the planet. I think this is just the beginning of a ripple effect that will change our lives and bring us back to our roots as human beings.
Any shoutouts? Who else deserves credit in this story – who has played a meaningful role?
I never would have believed in myself enough to take the enormous risk of starting my own business, especially one that has never been done before, without some incredible people in my life. I thank my music, animation, and film teachers and classmates for giving me the tools to get in touch with my creativity at such a young age. This truly helped me to uncover my soul’s purpose and set out on the path with so much of my lifespan ahead of me.
I am also thankful for all the incredible people I have met in my three years living on my own out in the world. During my time at UNT, I met the people who pointed me in the right direction and taught me to put following my passion above anything else. Alex Brinkley, my street performing partner, and incredibly good friend influenced my life in so many ways. She got me in touch with my own spirituality, and with living my life to the fullest. She taught me that no moment spent enjoying myself is a moment wasted as long as I’m not hurting myself or anyone else, and to take joy in the small moments. I look back at the fun times we had in college with fondness and excitement for how our ever-evolving minds will continue to collaborate!
I also would not be the person I am today without my family. I am thankful for all that my parents have done to set me up for success, even in ways I was not able to appreciate until later. I am thankful my family did not cosign more student loans for me because it helped me avoid thousands of more dollars of student debt that would weigh me down for the rest of my life, and most likely lead me into an unfulfilling job rather than building my own business pursuing my creativity.
I am also thankful to my dad for showing me that it is possible to be successful in the world without a college degree and that all you really need is a good idea and confidence to become successful. My parents are also the ones who inspired me to live my life in a more healthy and balanced way. Both of them made huge changes to their lifestyles and got themselves in shape, which in turn made me think about the way they had raised me to eat. We changed our habits together and held each other accountable. My dad lost over 100 pounds and is my inspiration to run marathons just for the joy of running, and my mom found ways to stay active while working her desk job and turned her home workspace into a treadmill desk, (she walks miles and miles while she works on the computer!)
Finally, I am thankful to the incredible crew of people I work with at True Food Kitchen. What started as nothing but a job to pay the bills became something so much more and I will treasure it for the rest of my life. True Food gave me another family. There is something about this place that just attracts incredible people. Almost everyone who works there becomes immediately adopted into the group. We are incredibly diverse in every way imaginable, but we love each other for our differences as much as our similarities.
I have made so many close friends with people I never would have sought out to get to know elsewhere. Not only have I made friends, but I have found a group of like-minded artists with whom the collaboration opportunities are endless. In the year I have worked there I have had the chance to play in a band, take a snowboarding trip to Colorado and New Mexico, see more live music than I could have ever dreamed of, go on many camping trips, begin producing original music, do more paintings than I have ever done in my life, do my first art show run a half marathon in barefoot sandals, I could go on forever. These people have given me invaluable experiences and I am so excited to see all the amazing adventures we go on in the future.
Some particularly influential people from the past year are Emily Mennel who is an incredibly talented musician and amazing friend that I love to collaborate with and look forward to recording covers and original music with, Alexis Chavarria who has a hysterical sense of humor and makes everyone around him laugh in any given moment, Flor Morales who is an incredibly strong woman who has been an inspiration for me to be more mindful of our societal corruption and to reduce my unnecessarily wasteful habits as well as understanding that much of what we eat and use is not made with love, but with selfish intentions.
Taylor Novay who is an INCREDIBLE guitarist and has such a great insight into the nature of life and has taught me so much. I am thankful to the community of painters who have given me so many creative opportunities. Kohath Berry, Christina Van Pelt, Angel Monsivais, Dora Reynosa, and Tonya Flowers to name a few. I thank Eric Mercado for giving me and many friends the opportunity to work on our first public mural, and for being an amazing artist himself. I thank Sofia Alvarez for not being afraid to express herself in new ways. She showed me how a spark of creativity combined with practice can take someone who has never painted before and turned them into an artist.
I thank some of my most influential yoga teachers, Brittany Addison Prescott, and Karina Sell who have shown me my internal power and led me to advance my practice in ways I never thought I could. I thank Rafa Canales who pursues his photography with a passion that I truly admire. Prabhu Ragunathan who saw the light of inspiration in me and got me in touch with this opportunity to share my story in the first place. Stephen Jabour, who is headfirst in the local music scene and has shown me the gateway to the thriving community of creatives in Dallas and how to get involved.
I thank Taylor Scott for being one of the most powerful human beings I’ve ever met. She is a beast in the gym and has pushed me to get out of my comfort zone and discover how incredible it can make us feel. I am thankful to Nathan Edwards and Johnna Ingram for becoming not only Substain business partners but amazing friends. They share my vision for how we can make a change, and each has their own unique skills that together, make us an incredible team.
The most incredible person I have met on this crazy journey is the man I love with my entire heart. Weston Dawkins took me by surprise when he came into my life. It instantly felt like we had known each other forever. Our minds blend like paint on canvas. He reminded me that nature is the most important medicine, he reminded me of my love for music and art, and he inspires me to take joy in the simple things in life. Together, our energy uplifts everyone we meet and I love the person that I am becoming with him by my side.
Never have I met someone who I am able to be so completely open with. Who I know will be by my side through thick and through thin. Who has taught me that by going about my life with an attitude of gratitude and a giving heart will lead me to a state of total bliss. Who has pushed me to get out of my comfort zone and stay active as we conquer our lazy habits together. We have already undertaken so many adventures together and I know there are so many more to come. Together we write music, make art, practice yoga, and he is a key voice in our business, Substain. He is the most free-spirited soul I have ever come into contact with and I am so proud to be able to have him by my side.
I would not be where I am today without these and SO many more incredible people in my life. The gratitude in my heart grows stronger every day and I hope I am able to give back to the people who have given so much to me as my goals begin to manifest into reality.
Pricing:
- Art Prints ($20 each) at substain.co
Contact Info:
- Address: 4207 Live Oak St. Dallas, TX 75204 Apt. 4214
- Website: substain.co
- Phone: 2144492541
- Email: sarahnicholeleiby@gmail.com
- Instagram: @sarah_leiby_art
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