OUR STORY

We are Leilani and Dharma. We didn't grow up with a real, conscious relationship with Jesus. To us, growing up, He was someone distant — a figure we only ever saw on a cross.

Leilani grew up in Sikhism. Dharma grew up in Islam. From the time we were children, our foundation was built on authority, rules, punishment, guilt, shame, performance, separation, transactional love, fear of God — not just within our religions, but in everything those religions touched: our families, our communities, our understanding of who we were and who God was.

We saw how deeply hatred was rooted in the hearts of those around us — toward other religions, toward anyone who didn't fit the mold. No one was ever enough. So when we chose each other, when we chose love, it brought out the worst of everything we had witnessed, from the very people who claimed to love us unconditionally — threats, emotional torture, physical abuse, humiliation, cursing, blame, disowning.

If that wasn't love, then what had we actually been following?

And yet, in the middle of all of it, what we chose was still love — a love that never saw religion, or race, or difference.

I remember the moment we were introduced — and the second our eyes met, every fear I had ever carried, every rule, every warning, every voice that said this was impossible, dissolved. And what replaced it was peace. A quiet, unshakeable knowing.

Home. That's what it felt like. Not the kind we'd been raised inside of — but a home with no conditions attached to it, no performance required to stay.

It felt familiar, like something already written. Like Jesus had already placed us in that exact moment, that exact space, long before we ever arrived there — already leading us toward the one true home we'd both been searching for without knowing it.

We didn't have words for it then. But we understand it now. That feeling — that peace that overcomes every fear, that knowing that says you are exactly where you are supposed to be — that is Jesus. It has always been Jesus. We just didn't know His name yet.

That home didn't stay quiet. It awakened something within us.

It was a kind of home we had never felt or embodied before — because the love and connection were so real that everything false we'd been taught started coming undone. How could something that pure, that real, be wrong? Deep in our souls, none of it made sense anymore. Looking back now, we can see it clearly: moment after moment where Jesus guided us, protected us, kept us together when everything around us said we shouldn't be. Synchronicity after synchronicity, too many to call coincidence — each one more proof of a greater hand opening doors, protecting, leading.

We still went through the motions for a while — still followed what our families and our religions expected of us, because that was the only programming we had ever known. But something had already cracked open in us. And we know now, that was Jesus. Awakening each of us through the mirror of the light within each other. That recognition wasn't only of one another — it was of everything false that could no longer stand next to something so true. And once we saw it, the fear had nowhere left to hide. We couldn't let anything stand in the way. There was a knowing in us that our coming together carried a meaning bigger than we could yet see.

Eventually we stepped back from everything we had been taught. Not because our souls stopped searching for God — but because we could no longer call what we had witnessed love.

That searching took each of us somewhere different — Dharma through nightly prayer under the open sky, Leilani through a quiet, wordless knowing that never left.

For Dharma, that season even looked like calling himself an atheist — the only word he had for what he was feeling at the time. But he wasn't walking away from God. He was walking away from the false one religion had handed him, the only one he had ever known. The one built on fear and control rather than love. Underneath it, his soul kept searching for something greater — some part of him refusing to believe that was all there was. Every night for months, he stood outside in the grass, under the night sky and the trees, hands folded and raised, surrendering the only way he knew how — praying for a teacher to guide him, to lead him to freedom. There was a rootedness in him even then — something that kept him searching, kept him praying, long before he had a name for what it actually was. Faith.

For Leilani, it was also prayer, a quiet longing, a deep knowing that there was more to this life than what she was told. Something she carried long before she had a word for it either. But it also was, faith. Growing up, she was a child who didn't question — not because she never wanted to, but because questioning wasn't safe under the threat of disowning. Silence felt like the only option. But underneath it, the truest part of her never went silent — the belief that love was the answer, that the impossible was possible with God. Love, faith, and a quiet surrender to something greater had always been her foundation — a knowing deep within her. No one had ever taught her the words for what she felt. Instead, she was told her thinking wasn't acceptable, that it wasn't real, that it didn't belong in the world everyone else seemed to live in. Even in fear, she kept returning to it — because her soul never stopped feeling it.

Our souls began searching. For something more. For truth beyond anything we had been taught to believe.

And then — in the way Jesus always answers a surrendered and prayerful heart — our spiritual teacher appeared. Right on time.

Her name is Liana Shanti. Liana means My God has answered. Shanti means peace — and there she was: the answered prayer, already carrying the peace of the Prince of Peace in her very name.

Through Her teachings and Her embodiment of unconditional love, the walls that had been built around our hearts since childhood began to come down. And as they did, something deep within us was awakened — and recognized. The truth of Jesus, for the very first time. Not as someone on a cross. Not as a religion. But as the living truth within us.

It was as if Jesus showed up and said — Follow Me. And, we did.

And our journey back to our true selves, to the Kingdom of God, to Jesus Christ — began.

It has been a homecoming.

And homecoming is the only word that holds it. Because that is what it feels like — returning to somewhere we had always belonged. A sacred place where we were safely held. Still. Whole.

We spent so much of our lives searching for that. For love that didn't come with conditions. For a place where we were enough — not because of what we performed or proved or sacrificed, but simply because we existed. Most people spend their entire lives searching for that and never find it. They look for it in relationships, in achievements, in places, in religion, in new age practices.

It was never in any of those places. It was always found only in Jesus.

And when we finally returned — when we finally surrendered to Him and His will and came home — everything changed. Not because the outside world changed. But because we did.

And from that homecoming, this brand — Our Why — was born.

READ OUR WHY
Created with Devotion.
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Worn as Testimony.
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Created with Devotion.
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Worn as Testimony.
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Created with Devotion.
✦
Worn as Testimony.
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Created with Devotion.
✦
Worn as Testimony.
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Created with Devotion.
✦
Worn as Testimony.
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Created with Devotion.
✦
Worn as Testimony.
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