We are the Maglios: Allie, Ayla, and Nic. Nic and I met in the fall of 2016 during my second year of graduate school at the University of Missouri. Nic was born and raised in Columbia, and after falling in love with this midwest town, his tight-knit group of friends, and summers spent on Cornell Lake in Wisconsin, I knew that this steadfast and loyal man was the person I wanted to create a life with. Ayla was born in January of ‘23, and this fall, I will embark on the journey of full-time teacher and mom. On the weekends and evenings, we like to garden, camp, and sit around tables cooking and being merry with our friends!

I was 16 years old the first time I took a yoga class. I had decided to quit dancing after 13 years, and I was looking for another form of movement for self-expression and to keep my body in shape. I was immediately hooked. I practiced three times a week at a local gym in my university town. At the time, my practice was focused mainly on the physical expression of the postures. Still, when I moved to Columbia for graduate school, I began practicing at a studio that explored the philosophical and spiritual depths the practice offers. My excellent teacher, Liz, taught me the power of mantra and Sanskrit through song, and soon yoga became my church. The summer after my first year in graduate school, I backpacked Europe and learned Transcendental Meditation - two experiences that forever changed the course of my practice and my life.

During Covid, when studios were closed, I began developing my at-home practice, which to my surprise, deepened my relationship with yoga in ways I never imagined. My husband and I committed to Yoga with Adrienne’s 30-day challenge in January of 2021, and soon I was practicing at home every day.

My practice now is one in which I am confident to show up and give myself what I need daily - my yoga. I have meditated daily for the past two years and practice Transcendental Meditation twice daily.

My posture practice involves stretching, dancing, and moving in any way my body needs at the moment - sometimes following a guide or a teacher and sometimes in silence with my intuition.

As a child, I loved to dance and write as forms of self-expression. I also loved to read, look at art, watch others perform, and observe nature and the outdoors.

I felt a deep connection to my femininity from a young age, and I loved to (and still do) express that through fashion and beauty.

In college, I fell in love with Virginia Woolf’s style of prose, which is a poetic stream of consciousness and so I began emulating her style in my own writing. When I feel an essay emerging in my body and mind, it often comes to me in waves, with a rhythm akin to Mrs. Dalloway.

I was accepted to a writer’s retreat for my poetry during my senior year of college and was introduced to contemporary poets such as Robert Hass and W.S. Merwin, who were the genesis for my self-expression in poetic form.

My current poems speak thematically to the birth of my daughter and the rebirth of myself as a mother, my reclaiming of my Judaism, my yoga and meditation practice, the intimate moments in my marriage, and a deep spirituality that comes from my connection to God and nature.

Poets and artists that inspire my art: Bon Iver, W.S. Merwin, Haruki Markami, Buddhist Monk Thich Nahn Hun, the Old Testament, Taylor Swift, Sylvia Plath, T.S. Elliot, Phillip Glass, Vangough, Walt Whitman, Stephen Hawking and any physicist who examines the cosmos, and more.

Bloggers and YouTubers I love for fashion and culture are my og Sunbeamsjess, Lizzy Hadfield, and Something Navy.

Places that inspire me are the mountains, any dive bar that serves stag, a Jewish deli, and my classroom full of teenagers who have no filters.