Today we’d like to introduce you to Liv Charpie.
Hi Liv, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
I grew up in Kansas City, Missouri and moved to Colorado in 2017 to join some friends who had moved out here a few years prior. I’ve always loved traveling, meeting new people, trying new things and starting new chapters. I’ve always had a “let’s see where this takes me” attitude toward life. I never planned to stay planted in Colorado, but not long after I moved I met my late husband Patrick while working in Boulder, and with him in the picture Colorado really became home for me.
Before doing hair, I worked in brand marketing for years and I loved the creative parts of it. The photography, styling, imagery, color and visual storytelling all captivated me. Eventually I realized I wanted to be doing something more hands-on and creative. So at 29, I decided to completely change careers and go to cosmetology school full time.
My original plan was to use my background in brand marketing along with hair and eventually work on set doing hair for film, fashion, editorial and photo shoots. I had this whole idea of where it was going to take me. And like a lot of things in my life, it ended up taking me somewhere completely different.
After school I started an apprenticeship and began building a clientele that I absolutely fell in love with. I realized pretty quickly that the humanity of doing hair meant more to me than the idea of notoriety or the glamour of working in fashion or film.
The relationships you build behind the chair are really special. People come in thinking they’re getting their hair done, and then somehow you’re talking about their marriage or their breakup or a new job or something they’re terrified to tell anyone else. Or we’re talking about absolutely nothing important and laughing for hours over nonsense. I love the art of doing hair, but I really love the people most.
A lot of life was happening outside of work during those years too. I finished my cosmetology degree in 2022, and that December Patrick proposed. We bought our first house together in Denver in April 2023 and got married that October.
I was so in love with the life we were building together and with our friends in the city. We loved hosting at our house, but also really valued traveling and having new experiences together, and music was a huge part of our lives. We went to so many concerts together, especially Red Rocks shows. If we had free time and there was somewhere to go or someone we wanted to see play, there was a pretty good chance that’s what we were doing!
Most of my favorite memories in my life are with Patrick on those trips, at those concerts and in all of those experiences in between the bigger milestones. I think that’s why I want to be careful about the way I talk about the life I’m living now and feel the need to first give mention to the full, beautiful life I was living that led me to where I am.
Because in June 2025, Patrick died by suicide and I was forced into a new life. A life that I am extremely grateful to be here for, but that I never would have chosen for myself.
Patrick passing away was the third enormous loss for me in a span of three months. My dog of 15 years died in April, my grandma, who helped raise me, died in May, and then in June I lost Patrick.
There really isn’t a pretty or inspirational way to package that. It was fucking awful.
I loved my life with Patrick. I loved being married to him. I loved our home and our animals and traveling together and going to shows and all of the completely normal parts of being a family. And while I’ve always loved travel and adventure and new chapters, choosing a new adventure is very different from having your entire life change without your permission.
For almost a year afterward, I stepped away from working normally and had time to grieve and figure out who I was in a life I hadn’t expected to be living. Eventually I realized I wasn’t going to recreate the life I’d lost, and I didn’t need to. I could love that life completely and still allow myself to love whatever came next.
Right now, that looks like living in a converted camper van in California with my partner George, traveling and working seasonal jobs. I still go back to Denver every couple of months to do hair and see the clients I love. I’ve started writing again, and I’ve picked photography back up after years of not giving myself time for either. I’m going to concerts, traveling, creating, falling in love and getting to know myself in a completely different set of circumstances.
I don’t know that I have the words for how grateful I am for my connection with George and the timing of it all. I feel incredibly blessed to be with someone who feels so aligned with the way I want to move through this next part of my life. We’re figuring a lot of it out as we go, and we’re figuring it out together. Somehow, instead of that feeling scary, a lot of the time it feels really freeing. Being with someone who is willing to question the rules with you and ask what kind of life actually feels good and meaningful to us, and then be brave enough to go try it is really incredible.
George isn’t a replacement for anything I lost. Loving him has actually shown me how much room the heart can make. I can carry my love for Patrick and everything we shared while also being completely present in this love and this life.
I feel really lucky that after everything, I get to be in love again and even luckier that I get to be on this long, strange trip through life with someone who looks at the unknown and wants to walk towards it with me.
My life looks nothing like I thought it would a few years ago. There are parts of that I would change given a wish or three from a genie, but I am incredibly grateful for so much of my life now, and I’m learning those things can exist together.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
As you can imagine, there have been many! Luckily I haven’t lost my sense of humor because some days all I can do to get through is laugh (or cry my eyes out) at the absurdity of all the lessons the universe has been throwing at me.
Mental health had already been a huge part of my own life long before losing Patrick. I’ve struggled with my mental health, I have ADHD and PMDD, and I’ve spent many years in therapy trying to understand myself, my brain, my patterns and my nervous system. Losing someone I loved to suicide made talking openly about mental health feel even more important to me. I think we need to get much more comfortable talking about the uncomfortable parts of being human before somebody reaches the point of crisis. And I think we need to talk just as honestly about grief and what happens to the people left trying to figure out how to live afterward.
One of the things I learned very quickly is that grief doesn’t exist separately from the realities of being alive. Your entire life can fall apart and the mortgage is still due and the bills keep coming. There are decisions to make and paperwork and responsibilities you have to take care of even when you can barely function.
And thank god for the people in my life because without them I truly don’t know how I could have managed up to this point! My family and friends absolutely carried me. My salon community carried me too. My salon owner, friend and mentor, Libby Anderson started a GoFundMe after Patrick died, something I would have never even thought to do for myself. My coworkers, clients and community showed up for me in ways I’ll never forget and I’m eternally grateful and still in awe every time I talk about it. Because of them, I was able to do something I wish everyone experiencing that kind of loss had the ability to do: step away.
I stepped away from working normally for almost a year and actually had time to grieve. Even with that support, I ultimately couldn’t afford to maintain the house and the life Patrick and I had built for two people on my own. Losing our home became another loss inside of an already enormous one.
But there were some really beautiful things that happened inside of that really awful period of my life.
I’ve practiced energy work for about ten years, and my connection to spirit and what I experience as the other side has always been a meaningful part of my life. Immense grief broke me open and deepened that connection in ways I couldn’t have understood before. My spirituality has become an important part of how I’ve moved through grief, and stayed connected to love while trusting that everything happens through divine timing. I know that isn’t everybody’s belief system, and that’s completely okay, it’s mine. I think spirituality, for me, is less about needing everyone else to believe what I believe and more about being open to mystery, trusting my intuition and recognizing how much about being human we probably don’t understand. It has helped me find connection in places where I could have very easily only seen absence.
One of the most unexpected gifts was getting to spend an entire winter with my dad, and there’s another layer to why that means so much to me.
In October 2023, my dad had a widow-maker heart attack. He died five times, was in a coma for a week and came back with no cognitive or physical issues. He’s truly a miracle and a medical anomaly. There were so many points when I could have lost him, but somehow I didn’t.
As adults, most of us don’t get uninterrupted time with our parents again after we leave home. Usually it’s a weekend here, a holiday there, phone calls and visits squeezed around work and the rest of life. So when I found myself in the position to spend that time with him, I was very aware that it was time I easily could never have had for so many reasons.
We spent normal days together. We talked, we hung out, we got to know each other differently as adults, and we became incredibly close. There was nothing particularly extraordinary (except everything) about most of what we did together. I got to see the magic in all of those ordinary days with someone I had already almost lost. I’m so grateful for the relationship we have now and for every bit of that time. It’s something I’ll cherish for the rest of my life.
I think this is where grief and gratitude get really complicated for me, because I can recognize that as an incredible gift without believing the things that led to it were gifts.
I didn’t need to lose Patrick in order to learn how to live differently, but that’s what happened. Once I understood that I could only move forward, I had to start figuring out what I wanted to do with the life that was still mine to choose. Grief forced me to slow down enough to really look at how I was spending my time. Somewhere in adulthood I’d fallen into this pattern where work, bills and responsibilities were the fixed points and life had to fit into whatever space was left around them and I realized how backwards that felt to me.
Work will always find a way to take more of your time, there will always be another bill, there will always be something responsible you could be doing instead. But there won’t always be another concert with someone you love, another trip you could take, or another winter with your dad. Once you’ve learned that in such a real way, it’s really hard to go back to living like all of that time is guaranteed.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
If I had to describe myself creatively, I’d say I’m an artist first. Hair is one of my mediums, but creativity has always shown up in a lot of different ways in my life.
I absolutely LOVE color theory! I love formulation, undertones and the science behind why the smallest adjustment can completely change a color. There’s a lot of science to it, but there’s also intuition and artistry, and that combination really feeds my soul.
As much as I love the creative side of hair, my clients are what made me fall in love with the career. You see people every six or eight weeks for years. You’re there through marriages, breakups, babies, deaths, new careers and reinventions. Sometimes you’re crying together and sometimes you’re laughing for three hours about absolutely nothing. I get to make art while connecting with another human being, and that’s a pretty incredible combination.
My service dog Jussi comes to the salon with me too and has basically become an unofficial salon therapy dog, which feels appropriate because sometimes a hair appointment really is half hair and half therapy. Patrick used to call me a “Hairapist” and I think all of us hairstylists should really just go ahead and add that to our resumes.
Outside of hair, photography has been a love of mine for a long time and over this past year I’ve felt really inspired to pick my camera back up. I love the way photography makes me slow down and notice light, color, animals, nature, and tiny moments I might otherwise not see. I’m also writing a book…well more like I’m writing and working on writing more and hopefully someday it all comes together as a book. Music is still a huge part of my life and always will be! I composed my first song last year and recently picked up a vintage Oberheim keyboard that I’m really excited about. And I’m still spending a lot of my free time going to concerts. Shout out Pretty Lights, bless up!
For a long time, I thought having a lot of creative interests meant I eventually needed to pick one, but I’ve found out that’s just how I’m built. I don’t need to turn every creative thing I love into a career either, some things are allowed to exist simply because they make me feel alive.
My relationship with my career has changed too. I still love doing hair and I’m proud of the hairstylist I’ve become, but I no longer want my entire life structured around work. Inspired by my friend and co-worker Bri, now I go back to Denver for a week or two every couple of months and work pretty intensely while I’m there. It keeps my clients on a schedule, lets me maintain relationships that are really important to me and allows me to keep doing something I genuinely love while having room for the rest of my life. I also still make time to take on new clients and focus on continuing to grow my business and foster new relationships! I spent a long time building my life around my work and I’m happy to say that I’m now reformed and am building my work around the life I want to live.
Can you talk to us about how you think about risk?
At 29, taking a risk meant leaving a stable career and going to cosmetology school full time. At 34, risk means something different to me. Losing Patrick changed my relationship with risk because it changed my relationship with time. When an entire future you thought you had can disappear so suddenly, “someday” starts to feel very different.
That isn’t a realization that made me reckless. If anything, it’s made me more intentional.
Loving again was a risk, letting myself imagine another future was a risk, letting go of my house and a lot of my possessions was a risk. Moving into a camper van with my partner, driving across the country and taking seasonal work in California instead of immediately trying to reconstruct a conventional life was definitely a risk.
Van life has also been a hilariously literal lesson in letting go of control. Things break, plans change, and you get lost in the chaos. Suddenly you’re learning about electrical systems and water tanks and engines because your entire house is also a vehicle. And then you wake up somewhere beautiful, open the doors, drink your coffee next to the person that you love and realize almost everything you need is sitting in this tiny space with you.
For a while after Patrick died, I think part of me wanted to figure out how to make sure I could never hurt so badly again and I realized there isn’t a way to guarantee that. Completely protecting myself from pain would also mean protecting myself from love, change, growth, adventure, and connection.
I’m not interested in doing that. I’d rather build a life that asks me to be brave sometimes. So I’m doing just that and loving both the lessons and the blessings that come along with it!
Contact Info:
- Website: https://willowstreetdenver.com
- Instagram: @livbythemirror
