About Monique and Maisha Haus

I'm Monique. I've spent most of my adult life as a dancer, performing everywhere from Radio City Music Hall to Carnaval in Rio de Janeiro. Dance asked everything of my body, and for years I gave it everything.

Then something shifted. What started as cyclical pain slowly turned into something daily and excruciating, and it started taking away the thing I loved most, getting in the way of the rigorous training and performances I had built my life around.

I saw a couple of doctors who dismissed my pain. One recommended birth control, which came with side effects that made things worse, not better.

The other looked at my scans, told me she didn't see anything wrong, and said if the pain was really that bad, I should just get a hysterectomy, like removing an entire reproductive organ was as routine as pulling a tooth. I still wanted to have children. I didn't even have a diagnosis yet, and I was already being told to remove an organ.

"Before I had a name for what was happening to me, I became my own science experiment."

I tried supplements, diets, different forms of movement, things I read about at 2am when the pain wouldn't let me sleep. The diet changes helped. The movement helped. The supplements helped. I kept going because nobody else was going to figure this out for me.

It took years to find a doctor who actually listened. When he finally operated, he found endometriosis had spread to my colon, my bladder, my ureters. It had been growing for years while I was told there was nothing wrong. That surgery didn't just treat my pain. It likely saved those organs. That's what the right practitioner can do, and it's why I take vetting so seriously with everyone I bring into Maisha Haus.

Surgery wasn't a cure. What's keeping me from needing another one is the protocol I built for myself afterward, the daily, unglamorous work of staying ahead of it. Finding that relief is what led me to become a certified yoga instructor, and then to go deeper into my studies of the body and become a wellness coach. I wanted to give other women the same tools that gave me my body back.

That's why I built Maisha Haus. It's for women who are doing everything they're told and still flaring. We start with deeper lab work, so you can see what your body needs. Then we figure out together how to make those changes feel less like a fight. No woman should have to figure this out alone.

Ajè serves as Chief Operations Officer of Maisha Haus, where she helps bring the vision of creating a supportive, restorative, and empowering wellness space for women to life.

In her role, Ajè supports the day-to-day operations of Maisha Haus, including event coordination, partnerships, vendor relationships, communications, and the behind-the-scenes details that transform an idea into a meaningful experience. She is passionate about creating thoughtful spaces where women feel cared for, connected, and equipped to prioritize their well-being.

With a natural eye for organization, strategy, and experience design, Ajè works closely with the Maisha Haus team to ensure that each initiative reflects the brand's core pillars: Educate, Equip, and Embrace.

Ajè is also a Certified Travel Fulfillment Coach through her own brand, Alchemical Soul Connection, where she helps millennial women raised in survival mode shed emotional baggage and travel with purpose. Her coaching was instrumental and transformative in Monique's own travel journey.

She believes wellness is not simply about what happens in a single moment. It is about creating environments that remind women they deserve to be supported, informed, and cared for throughout their lives.