This Latina Wants to Help Encourage People to Enjoy and Prioritize Sleep

We've all been there. You're tired as heck, ready to cozy up in bed and lay your head on the pillow, but for some reason the moment you do, your mind starts racing and you can't seem to achieve what you've been longing for — which is to finally sleep. For Zoila Darton, this feeling was all too relatable. So much so that she decided to do something about it on an entrepreneurial level.

"I built this nighttime routine, and that's where Piú Mas was born," Darton tells POPSUGAR. "I would light my candles and do yoga. I was developing a way to really wind down at night, which I think is a part of our day that a lot of us don't think about because many of us are exhausted, so we just pass out. We don't ever think about bedtime as a ritual, and it is a ritual."

Darton's life as she knew it ended and turned a 180 when she entered motherhood nearly six years ago. "I was not prepared mentally for how my life was gonna change," she says. As the founder of her marketing agency, WORD Creative, it was difficult for the new mom to put aside her career baby, yet she couldn't operate business as usual with a tiny human under her care.

"I was going to bed every night, and I would have a thousand things in my head. My brain was racing every night with ideas for my business," says Darton, who at the time was signing on huge clients such as Nike and HBO, only a year after having launched her agency.

However, she recognized that lack of sleep was not the solution, so she first committed to daily meditations, followed by journaling, and later, morning movements to help with sleepless nights. "I got my life back by giving myself structure," she says. "As the daughter of a single mother, I was always very independent, but no one was ever really around to give me a sense of structure," she comments.

Today, as a mom of two (she welcomed her daughter eight months ago) the Afro-Latina entrepreneur joined forces with her husband and creative partner, Zach Darton, to create Piú Mas. This new line of products and lifestyle concepts marries their cultures and translates to "more plus" in Spanish and Italian. Piú is the word for "more" in Italian, while mas is the word for "plus" in Spanish.

The power couple set out to launch the first product of the Piú Mas initiative, which is based on three pillars: functionality, harmony, and luxury.

"When we speak of luxury, it's not about fancy clothes, it's just about what feels good," Darton explains. "For me, luxury is being able to have a coffee slowly in the morning, taking a walk to the beach, and not having to worry about time. Luxury is time. The oil is this luxurious moment for you." she says.

The Piú Mas Sleep Ritual Dry Oil ($39) Darton speaks of is a roll-on that's infused with CBD, CBG, and magnesium, which is now available for purchase on their website. The formulation also includes rose hip oil, apricot, argan oil, and squalene.

Piú Mas Sleep Ritual Dry Oil

From

$39

$39 at piu-mas.com

"It is so emollient and antioxidant-rich. It truly is quenching and rejuvenates your skin overnight," she says. "I wanted the roll-on experience to feel very intuitive, not just like an oil that you slap on. That's why it comes in an oversize roller that you can roll onto your body while you're lying in bed."

With this product, you don't have to worry about greasy hands because it's a dry oil that contains moisture without leaving a greasy finish.

"It's this moment that you get to take for yourself at night before you go to bed. I truly believe that the things we think about right before we go to bed are some of our most important moments in life," she says of the experience.

Upon her own struggles with turning off her busy brain, Darton realized the importance of prioritizing sleep and rest as a woman of color, a businesswoman, and a mom.

"When we are functioning from a place of exhaustion or a place of sadness, we are going to project that directly on the people that we love most and beyond. Every single interaction we have with a human is a ripple effect," she explains. "We're all going to have trauma, there's no way around it. Our children are going to have trauma from us, but what we can do is try to take as much care of ourselves so that when those moments arise we can know how to react."

Darton also made it clear that she firmly believes in the importance of taking care of oneself before attending to the needs of others. According to her experience, this results in a much better and well-thought-out reaction to occurrences.

"If we can figure out how to take care of ourselves, how to regulate our nervous systems, then we're able to pause and think before we react to things," she adds. "I believe everything is either a blessing or a lesson."

How does this busy mama like to use the product? She explains she likes to use it in a couple of ways. "I really like to use it on my décolleté, on my neck and my chest. Because it's a roll-on, I like to apply pressure and almost massage myself on the back of my neck and my back," she says. "I also like to roll it down my arms and put it on my knees or the back of my knees as I have some trauma-caused joint issues." Darton adds she also likes to do a lymphatic massage with a gua sha on her legs right before bed. "It's almost like you're painting away the stress," she says.

To further enhance each individual's relaxing experience, Darton's team plans to team up with a lymphatic masseuse to create massages you can do with the roller.

Besides helping to ease minds, the Latina entrepreneur says she's also had people who suffer from fibromyalgia reach out to tell her it's helped them with their flare-ups. "I'm really optimistic and excited to see how people begin to incorporate this product into their day," she says.

This is only the beginning for Darton and her vision of Piú Mas, which she plans to expand into a full-range lifestyle brand complete with ready-to-wear apparel and home goods along with other luxury essentials that will be launching this year for the holidays.