The Road Here. About Lauren Boiros, founder of LaurZen

Chips on the table. Late nights. Smoke and perfume. The feeling of being watched before I’d even spoken.

Smaller. Bigger. Softer. More. Never enough.

I was good at it. I knew how to arrive. I knew how to hold a room. I knew how to look alive. I just didn’t know what it was costing me.

On the job

I thought I was living. I was just very, very decorated.

Hollywood was the second costume. Commercials. Callbacks. Hair and makeup. Billboards. Bookings. A life built to look chosen.

I understood beauty as currency. Presence as performance. Worth as something felt from the outside in.

It was a real life. It taught me things. But somewhere beneath it, I was beginning to want something quieter. Something that didn’t depend on being watched.

What I wanted most was to be heard, not seen. That distinction changed everything.

Someone from my past told me about a house on the Ping River in Chiang Mai.

In 2014, I sold what I owned, took my dog Dora, and booked a one-way ticket. I didn’t tell many people.

I shaved my head. Moved into a forest monastery. Lived alongside the monks, sitting when they sat, eating when they ate, saying almost nothing, long enough for the noise to stop.

Forest monastery · Thailand

And I stayed.

Twelve years later, I still live between two worlds: northern Thailand and Orange County.

The glamour and the jungle. Three years sober. Still human. Still learning how to live more honestly.

I still love beauty, long dinners, and women who know how to walk into a room, drop the masks, and live from what is true.