The Story Behind Hug A Giant
The StoryBehind Hug A Giant
How four salons became paintings. How paintings became giant trees. And how giant trees became a sanctuary for the world.
Chapter I
Four Salons in Westwood
Where Beauty Began
Liana didn't start in the forest. She started behind a chair — four salon chairs, to be exact, in the heart of Westwood. For years, she built a name styling hair, shaping brows, and holding space for women in the most intimate of ordinary moments: the ones in the mirror.
A salon chair is a confessional. Women sit down and tell you things they haven't told their therapist, their pastor, or their best friend. Liana listened. She heard about burnout and broken marriages. About dreams deferred and identities lost in motherhood. About the quiet ache of giving and giving and giving until there's nothing left.
She became known not just for her scissors but for her presence — the way she could make a woman feel seen in forty-five minutes. But something was stirring beneath the surface. Liana realized she was doing more than hair. She was doing healing. And healing, she discovered, needed a bigger canvas than a salon could hold.
Chapter II
Became Paintings
When the Brush Took Over
One evening after closing up, Liana picked up a paintbrush for the first time. Not a styling brush, not a brow brush — a real one, with bristles and pigment and possibility. She squeezed paint onto a palette and something cracked open inside her.
The women she'd listened to for years began appearing on canvas — not their faces, but their feelings. Splashes of cobalt for the grief they carried. Swirls of gold for the joy they'd forgotten. Bold, wild strokes for the strength they didn't know they had. She painted the stories salons had whispered to her, stories she'd held like precious, fragile things.
Her apartment became a gallery of emotion. Friends saw the work and wept. Strangers reached out asking if they could buy a painting, hang it where they could see it every morning, be reminded of who they were underneath it all. Liana realized art wasn't decoration — it was medicine. And medicine, she learned, works best when you're surrounded by beauty.
Chapter III
Became Giant Trees
The Forest Called Her Home
Liana needed a place to create — somewhere the noise of the city couldn't reach, somewhere the paintings could breathe and grow. She drove into the Sierra Nevada foothills one weekend, just for a day trip, just to clear her head. She never really came back.
The sequoias stopped her in her tracks. She stood at the base of one and tipped her head back, and back, and back, until her neck ached and her eyes stung. These trees had survived wildfire and drought and a thousand winters. They had watched civilizations rise and fall. And still they stood — massive, patient, alive.
She bought land. She built a cabin. She hung her paintings on the walls and found they looked different here — deeper, more honest, as if the trees had been waiting for them. And then visitors started coming. Friends first, then friends of friends. They'd arrive exhausted, eyes dull, shoulders high. They'd leave softer. Brighter. Taller, somehow — as if the trees had lent them a few inches of themselves.
Liana saw it happen again and again and she understood: the forest wasn't just her studio. It was her work.
Chapter IV
Became Hug A Giant
And Then It Had a Name
One afternoon, a guest — a woman who hadn't taken a day off in three years — wrapped her arms around a sequoia and pressed her cheek to the bark. She stood there for a long time. When she finally stepped back, there were tears on her face and a look in her eyes that Liana recognized. It was the same look women had in the salon chair. The same look people had in front of her paintings. The look of someone who has finally, finally come home to themselves.
Liana heard the words before she said them: 'I just hugged a giant.' And something clicked — not just a name, but a calling. A giant isn't only a tree. A giant is whatever is bigger than you, older than you, wiser than you. It's the thing you lean against when you can't stand on your own. It's the thing that holds you up.
Hug A Giant Getaway was born that day — not as a business plan, but as a promise. A promise that anyone who arrives carrying too much can set it down here. That anyone who has forgotten how big they are can stand among the giants and remember. That healing doesn't always look like therapy. Sometimes it looks like paint on your hands and dirt on your shoes and bark against your cheek and the quiet, ancient whisper of a thousand-year-old tree saying: you are safe. You are held. You are enough.
And that is how four salons became paintings, how paintings became giant trees, and how giant trees became Hug A Giant. Liana's story. Your sanctuary. Sequoia's hidden secret.
The Paintings on the Wall
Every brushstroke tells a story. These are the women, the moments, and the feelings that walked out of the salon chair and onto the canvas.
The Woman in the Blue Hat
Woman and Horse
In the Kitchen
Liana on the Porch
Light Among the Giants
"Everything I've ever done — every cut, every stroke, every tree — was leading me here."
— Liana
Founder, Hug A Giant Getaway