Serenity Discko is the Founder of Aloe Bud, a self-care and mental health app designed to encourage taking time away from technology. Inspired by their upbringing, Serenity shares the story of how they discovered that self-care should be treated the same as caring for plants. From a young age, they knew how important it was to build a community online. That is exactly what Serenity has accomplished today with a widespread and growing Aloe Bud community that encourages others along their self-care journey. With its supportive and nostalgic design, Serenity has built a comfortable space for all to grow.
I was born in Las Vegas, Nevada but I actually grew up in a couple of states. When my parents divorced I grew up between Connecticut and Wisconsin. Neither of my parents are from Nevada, I think them wanting to go to Nevada to have me when they’re both from Connecticut is really interesting.
I moved around so much that it was really hard for me to find a community that I could grow up with like joining clubs. I really didn’t find my community until much later in life. I found a community online when I was a kid through different forums back when they were the thing to do. I would also make my own forum as a fun way to get involved and learn how to code. I really found community online whether through video games or finding other people who play that game. Later I found community with other people who do social media management and use social media for their work.
Growing up, it was instilled in me to create my own routine. I learned about taking care of the house and taking care of myself through setting routines. As I got older and moved so much, it was really hard to keep routines. I played a game called Habbo Hotel which is a pixel game where you can make a character and have a home and decorate it, or have people over. I love that graphic style of artwork. I also really like Nintendo like Donkey Kong or Sonic.
That nostalgic feeling I believe had a place within Aloe Bud- to use a product that looks visually good and brings people back to the early days of building a routine, and reminding them that routines are what help us to stay on the right track for our well-being.
Definitely my mom and my stepmom. My biological mom has always given me support and told me that you can do anything you set your mind to and you’ve proven it over and over. She let me experience life on my own and never told me what to do but to experience it on your own and see if you like it. She has this thing she would say to me, “Do what you gotta do, kid,” That was the mission statement that’s been ingrained in me this whole time is doing what I gotta do and what makes me happy and learning on my own.
My stepmother raised me when I lived with her and she’s such a kindhearted person. She taught me how to garden and instilled in me the satisfaction of growing something and the hard work that goes into it like weeding and making sure they have enough water every day. There is a saying that humans are just like plants with complicated emotions. Taking care of plants is similar to taking care of ourselves and she really showed me that. The story for how we came up with the name Aloe Bud is because my stepmom is a big believer in the aloe vera plant and its healing properties. I used to get so burnt as a kid being outside living by Lake Michigan. We were always out by the lake and I would turn cherry red. My stepmom would slap her aloe vera gel and that healed me from my burn. I realized this could be a good name for what we’re building because we’re creating a caring companion and with aloe being a healing plant I thought of self-care being like a garden.
Our mission is to inspire positive change through small, tiny actions for people who are very digitally connected. We target all types of people but especially people are who really plugged into the internet and social media. It helps to take a breather and come out from technology to take better care of yourself. We believe that anybody of 4+ can use Aloe Bud.
Our community is all over the internet but primarily we’re on Twitter, Discord, and Twitch. We are using Twitch to spread the mission of Aloe Bud through our channel point icons. We have a group of streamers who stream on the Aloe Bud channel during the week to talk about self-care and play games at the same time. Our Twitch community is really awesome, the challenge point icons are the activity icons from the Aloe Bud app that Twitch streamers can use to ask their community to remind them to hydrate or move around in their chair so they can redeem them while someone is streaming. For example, I could redeem a water check-in, and then the Twitch streamer takes a sip of water and encourages the rest of the channel to do the same as well. Then the community is hydrating together which is really fun. So we create moments of self-care while being plugged into the Twitch stream.
On Discord, we have different channels that talk about self-care and music or art. We have a pet channel where people can share cute pics of their pets and a main channel where everyone just checks in with each other and wishes them a good day which is really sweet. We’re growing pretty fast, we’re approaching a thousand followers and on X we have a community of people who share our reminders. Everyone is very helpful and encourages the community to take care of themselves. We’re doing a stream with Twitch which we’ll call ‘Streamer’ later this month and sponsor their stream.
I would say try to think about what areas you want to work on first and see what you’re missing in your life. Maybe that is skipping meals or something else and then write that down. Before putting together your Aloe Bud dashboard, you can make a list of things that you want to improve and then set it up that way. This will make the best use of your app because you’re not just adding random activities to the dashboard but rather consciously thinking about where you need more improvement. Take time to think about your day-to-day life and what you would like to improve in and don’t feel bad if it is basic things like brushing your teeth because there’s no shame or guilt in this process. It should be about realizing what you want to do better. I think having the Aloe Bud community is something special because you know that you’re not alone in your self-care journey and there are a lot of other people who are working hard every day to improve their self-care.
