Anna Blazevich relocated her nonalcoholic bottle shop from Long Beach, California, to Ashland, Oregon, last year. Now she’s running Hummingbird Heart Non-Alcoholic and Dry Elixir Bar, plus being a mom to four kids, nine dogs, two guinea pigs, a hedgehog and a bearded dragon named Master Wu.
“People always ask me how do you do all this stuff? I’m like, I got sober,” she told me. “You’ve got to realize, I’m a maniac.” She considers properly using her energy and creative outlets part of her sobriety process. “And I believe firmly in being of service.”
And since her grand opening last December, Anna’s set out to serve her new community of Ashland.
Visit Hummingbird Heart
Hummingbird Heart is part apothecary, part sustainable goods, in addition to the NA bottle shop. When people stop by, Anna lets them taste anything on tap or any bottle that’s open. That’s eight kombuchas on tap, a couple of CBD drinks and NA beer.
“Any bottle we use to make a cocktail off the menu is always going to be open. And it’s an opportunity to let people try things. Because the bottles aren’t cheap. Then they don’t have to hem and haw and worry what if I get it home and I don’t like it.”
Anna has already gotten to know her neighbors in Ashland better than her neighbors in California. “People here visit with you. They genuinely want to get to know you, and you want to get to know them.” And she feels like Ashland aligns well with her principles. “You get this sense of people really valuing their physical and mental health. They understand and really appreciate the store.”
Two of Anna’s great passions are sustainability and the health properties of plants. “My favorite category is absolutely the functional NA,” she said. “That’s where you have these plants in them that can do marvelous things for your body.”
She also thinks about various aspects of sustainability. “Not just environmental sustainability, but social sustainability,” she said. “Then eventually that evolved into this idea of personal sustainability of the things I’m doing, the decisions I’m making in my own life. Is this sustainable for my mental health?”
Anna’s customers open up to her about their own struggles with addiction and other mental health issues. “That‘s part of the process of not feeling like there was just something wrong with me,” she said. “Just alcohol is not meant for my system. It’s really not meant for anybody’s system. But definitely not for mine.”
Events
Hummingbird Heart participates in Ashland’s monthly First Friday event, staying open later than usual and sometimes hosting musicians. The shop has also hosted guided meditations, a happy hour for contributors to a local magazine, and a NA wine and chocolate pairing. It has brought a mobile bar to an animal farm and had a blast at Fermentopia, an annual marketplace for fermented goods in nearby Phoenix, Oregon. A book club met regularly at the shop. Anna enjoys partnering with local groups and businesses.
All ages are welcome at Hummingbird Heart. Anna keeps a shelf of instruments, gemstones and other treasures for kids to play with.
Taking the Focus Off Drinking
When Anna brought her family up to Ashland last year to check it out, she was hoping they would fall in love with the small town. They did. A month later, they moved to Oregon.
One of her favorite things about southern Oregon is there are so many things to do that don’t revolve around alcohol, whether that’s hiking, visiting farms or local parks.
“Long Beach, I felt, is very alcohol-focused. You went to the beach, and you always had to be like all right, let’s move the kids down the beach a little bit. You’ve got people obviously imbibing from their cooler and acting too loud.”
Anna is thrilled to raise her family in such a wholesome way. “To have four kids and to be normalizing this idea that all these wonderful things can happen in your life and you don’t need alcohol is a really wonderful experience.”
Hummingbird Heart Commercial
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