Meet Gabriela Pineda of Luz de Luna Collective & GavvyLaMFT in Jefferson Park

Today we’d like to introduce you to Gabriela Pineda.

Gabriela, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
Daughter of Delmy Gonzalez y Nelson Pineda and granddaughter of Luz Gonzalez y Irma Martinez. I am the Owner of Luz de Luna Collective as well as an Associate Marriage and Family Therapist working in private practice. My narrative begins in El Salvador as I am a seed that was transplanted in the United States. When it comes to being a psychotherapist aka healer, I believe that I was meant to work with people in this capacity. Pursuing higher education as a first-generation student led me to acknowledge the significance of building a community. As I grew and went through the steps to become a Marriage and Family Therapist it ultimately created this parallel process where I could also embark on this journey of learning how to strengthen this intuitive wisdom, this ancestral wisdom that has been very present throughout my life. Luz de Luna Collective is my way of exploring within a safe and hopefully, one day a network of peoples where we can come together and learn, unlearn, and relearn to radically heal ourselves and the community.

Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Definitely has not been a smooth road, I am a product of immigration. I am both the fears and aspirations of so many before me and so my narrative is embedded with having an overwhelming amount of information before I could ever begin to articulate words, emotions, and consciousness about it. I did not necessarily have an appropriate or safe space to process and feel yet I recognized I could hold onto the nurturing moments of hope. I attribute to standing in this place and in this moment to myself and my guides. I grew up in East Hollywood surrounded by people who looked and spoke like me yet commuted to Culver City 5x a week to attend school (K-12) and let’s say I definitely knew and felt what imposter syndrome was at an early age. So part of my day was about being just as smart as the other students in my classroom and when I went home, it was survival of the fittest and I had to learn to stand my ground because of the presence of gangs, a policed-community and bearing witness to unhealthy/ toxic dynamics within my community and family. There’s been this constant desire to stop the unhealthy cycles and redirect my focus on how resilient we are and understanding the whole picture, big and small in order to create change.

Please tell us about Luz de Luna Collective & GavvyLaMFT.
Luz de Luna Collective is in its infancy stage yet I am excited to be able to provide both locally-sourced-handmade products to promote self-love while engaging in the exploration of ancestral knowledge from a reclaimed space and hold our power and our culture. As an advocate for community-based healing, my hope is to grow into a physical collective space and allow for healing to occur. I wish to be able to integrate and support decolonized principals of psychotherapy and intuitive knowledge which in turn can cultivate radical healing.

We sell smoke/smudge sticks, resins, incenses, and hopefully soon essential oils. I make moon brews which are Epson salt baths with dried flowers and herbs, moon brews were inspired by the way my own skin handles stress and toxicity so through trial and error I came to realized that the solution was a 20- minute hot bath with salts and herbs that began to alleviate the blemishes and hypo/hyperpigmentation. A colleague will also be making homemade and all-natural body butter so we will slowly begin to expand our selection of natural and homemade products.

We are a family-based business and have intentions of collaborating with all these other wonderful small businesses in the LA/ OC area.

Do you look back particularly fondly on any memories from childhood?
My favorite childhood memory is a simple afternoon when we lived in East Hollywood where I wanted to buy a snack from the ice cream truck and so I asked my dad for 50 cents, and he gave me a whole dollar! I just remember feeling so seen, so heard, and loved because to me, he had gone above and beyond. I think it was also because I could get two bags of Hot Cheetos lol.

Pricing:

• Current special of $15 for Smudge/Smoke Sticks
• Moon Brews come in different sizes and they range from $14-$22

Contact Info:

• Email: [email protected]
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/luzdelunacollective/
  https://www.instagram.com/gavvylamft/ (Same for FB)

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