Gabrielle Mirkin grew up on an avocado farm in New Zealand, where mānuka honey was the medicine for everything: a sore throat, a stomach ache, a scraped knee. Years later, she was an art director at Harper's Bazaar and then Vogue, living her childhood dream, when Lyme disease and the antibiotics made her so sick she had to leave her job and NYC to return home to New Zealand. She and her husband moved into an old black barn among the mānuka trees, and used the honey to rebuild her immune system and restore her gut health. Out of that healing, she and her husband started Activist Mānuka, and have since made it their life's work.

Gabrielle and Roanne talk about bringing an art director's eye to a raw, unadulterated product, and why you can always feel when a brand was built without love. They discuss the losses she has endured since: her home in Topanga to the LA fires, the month her two-year-old son spent in a coma, and the passing of her mother, who lives on through the hummingbirds, the rainbows, and the owls. Running through all of it is Gabrielle's belief that suffering brings wisdom, and that love is what carries you through.

*Content note: this conversation includes discussion of serious illness, a child's hospitalization, and losing a home to fire.

Founder of Activist Mānuka, a line of high-grade, raw New Zealand manuka honey and manuka oil for body and skin, which she started with her husband. Raised on an avocado farm in New Zealand, she spent years as an art director at Harper's Bazaar and Vogue in New York before Lyme disease brought her home, where the manuka trees helped her heal. She lives in Los Angeles with her family and returns to New Zealand every year for the harvest.

Links:
Activist Mānuka
Activist's Instagram
Gabrielle’s Instagram