About Holly
Holly Ruth Finigan is an entrepreneur, author, retreat leader, and real estate broker devoted to living — and leading — from the heart. Her work bridges inner transformation and real-world impact, guiding people to reconnect to their true nature and find their Happy Place from the inside out.
Rooted in integrity, storytelling, and service, Holly has spent over a decade building trusted communities through conscious business, wellness, and real estate. From founding Nantucket’s first digital lifestyle platform to stewarding retreats, books, and gatherings, her work is shaped by one guiding belief: when we heal, awaken, and live wholeheartedly, everything changes.
After a life-altering open-heart surgery at 34, Holly’s path deepened through spiritual study and meditation training in Bali, redefining how she shows up in the world. Today, she is the author of the WHOLEHEARTEDLY trilogy, a broker with Maury People Sotheby’s International Realty on Nantucket, and the creator of immersive retreats and large-scale wellness gatherings.
Alongside her partner, Holly stewards The Dips — a one-of-a-kind retreat compound in Tom Nevers — which has been the premier rental compound on Nantucket for grand gatherings. In 2026, she will launch her WHOLEHEARTEDLY retreat series at The Dips with a growing community devoted to conscious living.
Holly believes finding your Happy Place is an inside job — and her work is an invitation to live from the heart, fully and with purpose.
As an early adopter of social media, Holly intuitively built digital communities rooted in trust long before “influencer” became a title. In 2012, she founded the Nantucket blACKbook, the island’s first social media based platform rooted in advocacy over advertising, which quickly became the trusted guide for where to sip, shop, and stay.
Her entrepreneurial path continued with Happy Place, which began as a lifestyle brand and evolved into an innovative retail concept shop. The Happy Place brand launched at the Nantucket Yoga Festival in 2015 — a weekend that would quietly shape Holly’s future work.
At 34, Holly’s life changed dramatically. Born with Marfan Syndrome, she underwent open-heart surgery on January 8, 2018. What followed was not only physical healing, but a profound spiritual awakening. Drawn inward and abroad, Holly traveled repeatedly to Bali over the course of five years to study meditation, mindfulness, Reiki, and Oneness teachings under her teacher Punnu Wasu. These experiences reshaped how she lived, worked, and served.
By 2020, as the world paused, Holly consciously closed her Happy Place store and shut down the Nantucket blACKbook, making space for a more inclusive, values-driven chapter. That summer, she launched The Happy Place Dining Sourcebook, a 100% inclusive and crowd sourced printed restaurant guide that blended offline connection with Flowcode innovation. She also earned her real estate license, stepping into the market in what she calls divine timing.
Real estate became another expression of Holly’s service. She became a broker in 2024 and now holds her license with Maury People Sotheby’s International Realty on Nantucket.
Alongside her partner, she is the steward of The Dips in Tom Nevers — a one-of-a-kind 13-bedroom compound that spans across two unique properties and has become a premier retreat and rental destination for grand gatherings on the island.
And yet, writing remains the golden thread that holds all of Holly’s heart work together. In 2023, Holly Self-published the first book in her WHOLEHEARTEDLY trilogy, The One You Want to Find Is You, taking it on a six-month book tour that culminated in Bali, returning her work to her teacher, Punnu. The second book in the trilogy The Queen of Golden Hearts was released privately on Substack in 2024, held intentionally in a sacred container until it is ready to be birthed into the world at large. She is currently working on her third and final book of the trilogy, Last Chance Lifetime.
Inspired by the power of collective healing and in partnership with her mentor Joann Burnham of Dharma Yoga Nantucket, Holly helped revive the island’s beloved Nantucket Yoga Festival — relaunching first with the Happy Place Wellness Symposium in 2025, and then fully expressed in 2026 with the Nantucket Wellness Festival under their non-profit Happy Place Events.
Holly believes that when you know what you want, you can really start to get what you want. For after all the findings of Holly Ruth Finigan, she wholeheartedly believes that the one you want to find… is you.
