Our Story

Upsensed began not as a business plan, but as a way back.

Mikayla, the founder, a labor and delivery nurse, and someone who spent years learning how much environment shapes the way we feel — started making candles during one of the harder seasons of her life. Not as a hobby. As a practice. A way to slow down, create something with her hands, and find a ritual that existed outside of shift work and the relentless pace of healthcare.

What started as a personal act of care eventually became a brand. And the belief behind it has never changed: the spaces we live in should actively support how we feel — not just look good, but do something.

Every Upsensed candle is hand-poured in Houston with a custom blend of coconut, soy, and apricot waxes, 100% cotton wicks, and phthalate-free IFRA-compliant fragrance oils and essential oils.

5% of every purchase goes directly to the Anxiety & Depression Association of America, supporting access to resources, education, and the ongoing conversation around anxiety, depression, and emotional wellness.

A candle is a small thing. What it can become part of isn't.

For a decade, Mikayla has spent her career as a labor and delivery nurse... in rooms where emotions run at their absolute highest, where she learned firsthand how deeply the environment around you shapes how you feel inside it.

Candle-making began as a way back to herself. After years of balancing nursing, her own mental health journey, and the particular weight of caring for others professionally, she needed something that was just hers. Something slow, tactile, and entirely outside of the clinical world. Fragrance became that thing. And once it did, she couldn't stop.

She graduated with a Master of Science in Nursing from Western Governors University in 2021 just one month after having her first son. Today she works part-time as a labor and delivery nurse and full-time on the brand: developing new fragrances, refining formulations, shaping the creative direction, and making every candle by hand in Houston.

"It is easier to keep things surface-level: 'I make luxury candles,' and leave it there.

It is much harder to say: 'I make candles because anxiety forced me to reexamine my life, and therapy helped me find my way back to something I loved. Creating became part of my healing, and I want this brand to help someone else feel seen.'"

— Mikayla, Founder