Starting from the Middle

Welcoming myself to Substack...

I’ve been wanting a place to go, a corner of the digital world to escape to, where depth can be explored and the human journey can be more considered than our products. A place where I can properly reflect on all of life’s big happenings without trying to filter my experience down to a reel's length of allotted time.

I have been wanting a place to write, to take what is happening in front of me and offer it a place to live so that I can better make sense of it, while deeply connecting with those on a similar journey.

So here I am! Beginning here, with you — but I know we are far from the beginning. For a lot of us, it seems we are in the middle of it all… no longer children, definitely adults, but learning to find comfort and confidence in the overwhelm that is growing up. Gracefully trying to navigate adulthood while preserving our inner child’s spirit.

But before I get too deep into it… let me properly introduce myself. My name is Makenzie Chbeeb. I am 29 years old. I grew up in Temecula, CA, and moved to LA in 2013 to pursue a professional dance career. I met my husband Phillip in 2017 through dance. We fused our backgrounds of movement, becoming an Emmy-nominated choreography duo — but what we are most proud of building is our empire of love: a life that prioritizes creativity, freedom of expression, and massive risk-taking. :)

Last year, we sold our home in LA and lived nomadically for about 10 months. Within that year, we started a small business, slept in the corner room of that business while we renovated and personally funded it, and simultaneously decided it would be the perfect, most inappropriate time to start trying for children. When I got pregnant in January of 2024, we knew life was about to become entirely unrecognizable — and thought, we need somewhere to live... So, after 10 months of crashing on friends’ couches and renting Airbnbs around the city, we found a 20-acre ranch an hour outside of Burbank, CA. We put an offer on the house and opened escrow days later, as I was about to enter my third trimester. We moved in a few months ago, while officially opening up our small business “Feybl,” an Art Wellness Club located in Toluca Lake, and choreographing and creative directing a tour for Paula Abdul. Life has this beautiful way of throwing everything at us all at once… But we are entirely aware that it is our fault and something we absolutely instigate, and even weirdly crave…

We love learning who we are in the midst of uncertainty, and meeting the capacity of our human potential — even if it means indulging in phases of chosen suffering, challenge, and serious uncertainty… With that said, each of these experiences this past year deserves its own dedicated blog: selling our home, starting a business, getting pregnant, buying a ranch, directing a tour, becoming parents…

But I just wanted to start somewhere. To say hello, and welcome myself to this new platform, where I plan on unfolding all of the beautiful, overwhelming chaos that is life. It’s a pleasure growing up in this lifetime, parallel to you all.

More words coming soon,

-Makenzie