A very personal read… which we wanted to share with our beautiful supportive community.
It has taken a lot to write this post. We have procrastinated, putting it off due to the emotional outpours we have had to conquer in writing it, and then redrafting and redrafting as we wanted it to read so perfectly to represent someone so incredibly special.
You may have noticed a little absence on the ARDERE socials, yes we are still here and continuing our wellbeing dreams through ARDERE, however we have taken a little time off social media for us and practiced our own self-care. We felt it was only right in sharing with our audience today the person who started all of ARDERE, ARDERE’s CEO, our absolute hero, best friend and father, Gary Windas, who very suddenly and unexpectedly passed away a week before Christmas (14.12.21) at the age of 55.
Without Gary and his unwavering belief in us and the vision that is ARDERE, ARDERE would not have been possible. It is our mission more than ever to honour everything that our dad has inspired in us and in ARDERE.
Our Dad wasn’t a realist, he was a dreamer, but somehow, he managed to turn dreams into reality, and this was pure magic!
As an extremely close family-run company, this has been our hardest challenge coming to terms with such a loss, and it is a battle everyday, as Gary was the beating heart of ARDERE. He embodied that rare positive energy and essence – a true energy angel. He has taught us everything we know, we are forever grateful that we got him as our dad, we couldn’t have dreamed of a better dad, the best mentor to have in life forever wanting to put a smile on our faces.
A guy that simply loved life and saw it for all its possibilities. ARDERE too is a celebration of life, encapsulating travel experiences, nature, health journeys, memories and bottling them up into ARDERE products, packaging and wellbeing experiences.
In our incredible ARDERE products you won’t just see our Dad’s influence and vision, but you will truly feel it. From the luxury clean aesthetics to the worldly travel influence that is embodied in the packaging design, scent, and the innovative wellbeing formulas.
Dad always held the “big picture” in his mind and was ours and ARDERE’s biggest cheerleader. Dad has left such a huge hole in our lives that we will forever miss, but we know that he is with us in spirit, championing us on to keep building and sharing our passion for natural products, beauty, travel and health. Your legacy will continue…
We have some new things we have been working on which will launch much later in the year, it is something we have been working on with Gary for two years and we are so grateful that he got to see the big picture coming into fruition before he passed. We are looking forward to you seeing and experiencing these too, but for now, we wanted to leave with you a poem.
Everyone experiences loss at some point in their lives and some losses are harder than others. For us, this was an absolutely heart-wrenching loss, and we wanted to be open and honest and to relate to those who are also going through grief at this moment in time, so we will leave you with one of our dad’s favourite poems. It’s a poem he used to find comfort in and send on to others when others had lost loved ones…
Loving Daughters,
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