Kimberly Dillon Is on a Mission to De-Mystify Self-Care for All
By Lyneisha WatsonAccording to a survey by Sanity & Self, millennial women are 3.4 percent more stressed than men. From Hinge dates, budgeting, grinding at work, and meal prepping, it’s pretty safe to say most modern women feel too busy to invest in their wellness.
“I’m a constant worrier, so I turned to cannabis to really help me address my anxiousness and sleep issues,” shares Kimberly Dillon, the founder of Frigg, a botanically based CBD beauty line, that will target the stressors of millennial women inside and out.
“I think a lot of consumers know what the beauty
Dillon knows a lot about the various conditions women use CBD to treat; she was the CMO for Papa & Barkley, one of California’s top cannabis brands. As one of the first employees for the company, Dillon helped grow its revenue to $30 million in two and a half years. After working in the medical cannabis sector, Dillon is moving into canna-beauty because she wants to encourage women to incorporate cannabis into their beauty routines.
Frigg Face Potion, $60“Beauty is self-care, and it's so incredibly important. It should be a ritual,” she says. “I realize that when I'm stressed out I have really dull skin and my hair is not where I need it to be. Anecdotally, people had mentioned that they were using CBD lube as part of their beauty regiment and I just got really intrigued by that. I can use cannabis to help me stabilize my mood, my sleep, and get glowing skin.”
For instance, hair loss caused by stress could potentially be helped with high-quality CBD oil, Dillon says, since CBD is known to reduce inflammation. “If you wear lots of weaves and braids, you can actually have an inflamed scalp. When we talk about people’s edges disappearing, what we’re actually talking about is inflammation and CBD addresses those kinds of issues.”
Dillon believes learning to trust cannabis will allow humans to learn to trust the earth and her gifts again. Though she didn’t begin using cannabis until she was in her thirties, Dillon thanks her mother for encouraging a plant-based lifestyle when she was a child. “My mama would go in the backyard and just pull some plants and boil them,” Dillon says. “We had all these different traditions and practices like taking cod liver oil or eating collard greens when you’re feeling off-balance. What I realized is the wellness movement, as it is described today, is a return to that.
But as wellness has become increasingly commodified, self-care can sometimes seem unattainable. There is no easy access to the wellness industry for a few reasons: oppressive legislation and pricing, lack of diversity, and ignorance about how multidimensional a plant-based lifestyle can actually be.
Dillon believes that normalizing cannabis is the first step to creating an accessible, diverse, and accountable wellness culture in the US. “It seems that the wellness space is very competitive in the way that it is presented and made accessible to those who have wealth and/or time to do yoga and go to three-week meditation retreats. Everyone isn’t holding crystals and going to sound baths,” she laughs.
“But every human can benefit from this plant. All of us deserve to be well and all of us should figure out how we can take time for ourselves.”
In a social media age, beauty as self-care can often feel hollow. But, as Dillon will tell you, cannabis helps us see the beauty in most things, so it’s only right—through the normalization of the plant that we will begin to see the beauty in ourselves—without necessarily needing the fancy names and aesthetically pleasing packaging. Self-care, like cannabis, at its core is about being present and accepting what is.
Frigg is Dillon’s way of bottling up the essence of authentic self-care and high-quality CBD to help alleviate that extra stress women feel.
“A return back to nature is a return back to ourselves."