The Woman Behind Frigg

 

Meet Kimberly Dillon, Founder of Frigg

I hit a wall in 2017.

I was doing too much for too many people and I was chronically stressed out, just like 60 percent of the American population.

I used to think of stress and burnout as a pesky inconvenience that everyone just got through. But then I started finding a lot more hair in the sink than usual. Falling asleep at night was harder and harder, and when my scalp started to sting and itch, I finally started looking for solutions. 

Now the funny part is that I was working in the cannabis industry during this time,  spending my days at wellness expos selling the idea of "chill" while being anything but. As the Chief Marketing Officer at a company called Papa & Barkley, I helped build one of the biggest pain management companies in the startup space—but my years of working in wellness had me seriously burnt out.

My initial solution was a three-week vacation by myself to re-center—but of course I lost my luggage on a jungle retreat. The only thing I had was a bottle of CBD at the bottom of my purse, left over from a trade show. And that little bottle became my hair oil, my face oil, my rub on insect bites, my take-at-night-to-help-me-sleep oil. Three weeks later I noticed that my skin was smooth, like really smooth. Not only was my hair thicker, but taking out my braids didn't hurt as much. Friends were commenting on my skin and hair, asking me what I was doing differently.

Since I was already working in the wellness space, I was able to talk to some of the world's top researchers and scientists. I remember one conversation about inflammation for a caregiver that inflammation was a sign that the body was off-balance. Overworked. Stressed. And so I developed a sandwich approach of taking CBD internally and externally, boosted by other plant remedies. Today, I know that ultimately I was following my intuition to bring my body back to homeostasis. But I was also calming my mind and taking care of my mental well-being, something that I was not culturally encouraged to do. Topics like anxiety or even just everyday stressors were not talked about amongst my community. But hair growth and beauty were. 

In designing Frigg, I wanted a brand that was warm, inviting, and educational. And while I have never fully felt comfortable in wellness spaces, which seemed so exclusionary, quiet, and restrictive, I knew the restorative benefits of holistic, plant-based wellness. So we built a wellness brand but with beauty tendencies: vibrant, playful and bold. We are cracking the door on conversation about mental well-being, exhaustion, and how stress can impact us internally and externally, even if it's disguised as dry skin, insomnia, or an itchy scalp. That's why with each purchase we support a mental health organization. Stress less beauty: That's what we are here to create.

—KD