Missy and Guy Craig celebrated their first day of business at The Healing Spirit on Tuesday, a holistic wellness tea shop that Missy Craig envisions as a place for customers to slow down and rejuvenate.

Missy and Guy Craig made a conscious decision to cover up the drive-thru window of their petite building on College Street.

“It defeats the purpose of getting people to slow down,” Missy Craig told the Daily News on Tuesday as her husband bustled around inside the couple’s tea business, straightening jars of leaves and helping out customers on their first day open to the Bowling Green public.

The pair are the founders of The Healing Spirit, a holistic wellness tea shop that Missy Craig envisions as a hub for visitors to commune over cups of aromatic herbs, swap stories and take a moment to pause from the full-throttle pace of daily life.

“Tea gives you the privilege, the right, to sit down and slow down,” she said. “It’s supposed to give you that permission.”

Missy Craig said the relaxed venture is her way of giving back to the couple’s adopted community and the people who assisted them after they were impacted by Bowling Green’s December 2021 tornadoes.

The duo moved up from Panama City Beach, Fla., in 2020, eventually settling in an apartment complex on U.S. 31-W By-Pass. It only took about 10 seconds for the Craigs to lose their home and vehicles to the EF3 tornado that barreled down the road the morning of Dec. 11.

“We lived in a hotel for two weeks and everything we owned was in trash bags,” Missy Craig said, sharing that the event left a lingering traumatic mark on her and her family.

She said what surprised her was how willing folks were to provide them with supplies and assistance following the disaster.

“Everybody just wanted to help. They wanted to give you things,” Missy Craig said. She added that if a tragedy like that had occurred in a different town, “I don’t know that we would have felt as supported as we did in this community.”

She said that brewing tea was a productive way to deal with the stress brought on by the storm’s aftermath. Her dream of running a tea shop had been percolating for several years and the twister’s effects pushed things forward.

“I thought there were a lot of spirits around here that needed to be healed. I know mine did,” Missy Craig said.

As Guy Craig put it, the couple are nurturers who thrive off of greeting new faces.

“We don’t meet strangers,” he said. “For us to get our fix, if you want to say, we need to work with the public. We need to be around people and we want to take care of them.”

The couple’s tea shelf is stocked with more than 20 different options, all sourced from Danville’s Elmwood Inn Fine Teas. Customers can find anything from staples like Earl Grey and pumpkin spice to more niche offerings like milk oolong and white peony.

“Each tea is different. Each tea has to be brewed to a different temperature,” Missy Craig said.

Besides brewing drinks, The Healing Spirit also offers yoga classes and will soon host workshops to teach customers how to create their own wellness products, like herb-infused facial oils.

Missy Craig said the goal is to serve customers in seven areas of wellness: physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, intellectual, social and nutritional.

“You can’t say you’re well physically if you’re not well mentally,” she said.

The Healing Spirit is located at 300 College St. and is open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday-Friday and 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturdays.