As a registered nurse for six years, Bria Thomas makes a living tending to others’ health. But when it came to addressing her own, she wound up turning self-care into a whole enterprise.
“Everyone was starting a business,” said Thomas about what led to her launching Breebe’s Botanics, a brand of holistic skincare products, in August 2020. “I was inspired by some other business owners.”
When Thomas got a muscle spasm in 2018, she found her prescribed medication, muscle relaxers and extra-strength ibuprofen, to be both too strong and not as effective as pain-relievers as she’d hoped.
“It made me go to sleep, and when I woke up, I still felt a little drowsy. I didn’t like that feeling,” she said. “Not only that, the pain came back with the same intensity. So I just had to find something else.”
Researching alternative, more wholesome means of pain management led Thomas down a rabbit hole that eventually led to her earning her master herbalist certification from Trinity School of Natural Health in 2019 and developing her own recipes for items like exfoliating scrubs, bath salts, natural decongestant oils and moisturizers.
Thomas, an Augusta native, studied nursing at what is now the Georgia Southern University – Armstrong Campus in Savannah before transferring to Augusta University in 2013. She attributes her taking so well to studying herbal medicine and wellness a fascination with chemistry and an overall eagerness to learn new things.
“Everything doesn’t just go together,” said Thomas, broadly comparing the process of creating an all-natural product to cooking. A recurring ingredient in many of her handmade goods is roses. “The leaf has certain benefits, the stem has certain benefits, the oils have different benefits.”
An item called the Whipped Muscle Rub has proven to be Breebe’s Botanics’ highest seller, Thomas says. The shea butter cream, infused with ingredients such as lavender and cayenne pepper for warming, or mint and evergreen for cooling, is used to relax muscles and joints or to numb inflammation.
“When I started, I kind of just wanted to see what people were drawn to,” said Thomas. “I thought it would be my sugar scrubs or the body butter.”
Thomas didn’t expect the muscle rub to be her staple product, but frequent requests from customers for issues ranging from arthritis to cramps to even migraines reminded her of how prevalent pain issues are.
“With me being a nurse, I know that in report one of the first things you want to know is do they have pain meds, or are they in pain,” she said. “Most people sometime in their life, whether it’s acute or something more long term, are going to experience that.”
Thomas has sold her holistic wellness wares at the Augusta market and at various pop-up vendor events, saying she prefers to take her business where her target audience is. Some of her products are sold at Living Water Wellness Center on Tobacco Road, and she will soon have a space at Art on Broad downtown. Her online store has recently shipped an order to London.
Thomas understands her entrepreneurial endeavor as an extension of her work as a nurse. She cites the occasional tension between Western medicine and holistic medicine, and sees what she’s doing as an effective supplement, or complement, to a healthcare system that sometimes seems to offer meds in place of fully addressing a problem.
“I tell people, ‘Hey, you can take that pill, but also watch what you eat,” said Thomas. “Exercise, drink water, go get a massage. Sometimes there are so many things that you can actually do to help yourself that will give you more long-term effects that help you manage the actual pain or or whatever you have going on. And more people are looking for natural ways to deal with their conditions”
For more information on Breebe’s Botanics, visit its website at www.breebesbotanics.com.
Skyler Q. Andrews is a staff reporter covering education in Columbia County and business-related topics for The Augusta Press. Reach him at skyler@theaugustapress.com.
