The grind of being a business owner started to weigh heavy and her adoptive mother, Kathy Maneese, the matriarch of the family who had been battling cancer since Liana was a child, had taken a turn for the worse. Realizing that she was not on the path she had promised herself to pursue, Liana enrolled at Antioch University, New England to become a therapist. Kathy passed 3 weeks into her first semester after nearly 30 years of battling against cancer and Liana dove head first into her studies. “I lost an entire year of personal life, it was something I had dreaded since a child and I was still completely unprepared for the loss that I felt”, Liana confesses.

The desperation of alleviating the depression Liana turned onto researching psychedelics to help process the loss and re-birth that she was going through. She recalled growing up in Wilkinsburg in the 90s that anything besides marijuana was considered hard drugs and was taught to be avoided or end up homeless or worse. After a truly awe-inspiring psilocybin (magic mushrooms) experience with her partner, they realized that very few people of color felt comfortable partaking in the ancient medicines that seem almost casual to their white counter parts. It was then and there she vowed to make a commitment to normalizing psychedelics in the therapy setting.