New Year New What???

Welcome to 2018 and all of the cliche that comes with a New Year greeting.  If you are anything like me, then you hate all of the pomp and what have you that goes along with the supposed "fresh start" of a new year.  Yes, we are starting with a roll up of the calendar, sure.  Counting another year under our belts?  Ok, great.  Is it really the ONLY time we are open to a "fresh start" or a "new beginning"?  I think not!

In many traditions that started with the celebrations of the winter solstice, yes it is the beginning of longer days, the birth of the sun...or rebirth if you will.  It is our guarantee that daylight will last longer and the sun will warm our skin once again in the coming months.  Some traditions celebrate the rebirth of the mother spirit back from her death that happened on all hallows eve, or somewhere there around the autumnal equinox.  The spinning of the earth, it's tilt toward and away from the sun, and the human necessity to package it up and make sense of it is as old as time and humans themselves.

I like to think that we have all risen above the thought that the new year is the only time we can reflect and become what we truly wish to be.  I am often very wrong though and well, I must accept that.  In my experiences of life thus far, I have only ever been truly happy when I followed my heart and my true self.  I have strayed from that so many times only to find comfort right here where I have always been.  It is so funny how we resist it, when it is really the most simplistic of things to do.  So, for me at least, I will continue to strive to be myself more truly throughout the year.  I will do so regardless of the status quo.

The past year has brought about much change, but I feel like that has been happening for a couple of years now.  It has been physical as well as intellectual.  There was a time in life when I really believed the words "I cannot" when I prefaced a sentence with them would wholly ring true because I said them.  As it turns out, there is very little that I cannot do.  There are many things that I choose not to do for many different reasons, including time, lack of resources or interest, etc, but lack of ability is no longer an obstacle for me.  I may try something and find that it's just not something that I am so great at because it's just not something that holds my interest, but that is always ok.  Things however, like making soap, well heck I can do that.  I used to think that it could only be done with machines in a factory, and there was no way my little hands could ever accomplish such a feat.  I was so wrong.  Maybe that is where it all started, with that first bar I crafted.  Now that I've made hundreds of them, I have become even more brave, no brazen, to color outside of the lines that have been drawn for me.

So, here's to a new year, new opportunities, and I hope you too can learn to color outside of the lines!!  Peace!!

How This All Began

How did you get started doing this?  OR How do you do that?  These are questions I hear often when I mix up a "potion" of ingredients and they come out a soap or a salve.  Honestly, I always went to the store thinking that these sorts of things were made by "experts" and that I could not possibly ever grasp the concept of the how.  What did I know?  Well, it turns out, I had it in my blood, but I needed a trigger.  My daughter was born.

At this point just blurting out that my daughter was born and expecting you to put the puzzle together how it led me down the path to making handcrafted soaps and other skin care products would be sort of silly.  It was actually a pretty complicated path that I will attempt to simplify.  When my daughter was born, she was my second child.  I was certain I had this parenting thing figured after all of the stumbles we have with our first.  She was sleeping well, not complaining much, breezy right?  Oh was I ever so wrong!  She just was not thriving.  I was feeding her regularly, but it seemed that my milk was passing straight through, my worst nightmare realized.

After many doctor visits and weight checks, giving up different foods, logging what I ate, her poop schedule, sleep schedule, and so on and so on, I finally gave in and went on a full elimination diet.  IT WAS HARD.  It was not as hard, however, as watching my little angel suffer.  After a couple of days, she started to thrive, gain, I was thrilled!  Then came some more challenges, adding back foods one at a time.  It came down to she could not tolerate wheat, dairy, corn, eggs, potatoes, or soy.  Yes, I know they are in EVERYTHING.  So my family took on a new way of eating.

But how does this relate to soap you ask?  Hmm, well I am getting to that.  Eventually, we went to organic choices after I had started to research food, specifically chemicals on food.  It seemed that if I ate something conventionally grown, she would have a skin reaction, a little eczema and dry patches that would spread and itch or a stomach ache that would double her over.  The more I read about chemicals the more worried I got.  I went from being a pretty laid back, Cheerios serving Momma to swing the pendulum in the complete opposite direction, nothing but organic was ever going to touch my precious angels lips ever again.  As we all know, this isn't always the easiest tenet to follow either, but the pendulum eventually gets back to a middle path.

It was at this time of chemical discovery that I started to read ingredients labels on EVERYTHING!  It had become an obsession.  I was making all of my food from scratch, growing a huge garden, shopping co-ops and farmers markets, canning, and toting my own food to parties and denying my children the delights at other kids parties.  I was THAT Mom.  I noticed all of these chemicals on my kids soaps and shampoos and lotions that I could not pronounce, or that I could pronounce, and as an environmental engineer scared the living poo out of me to put on their delicate skin, so I set out to see if it was something that I could do.  Someone was doing it in these factories, right?  There had to be a way.  As it turns out, there is, and with some determination, we can make anything!

So, I researched and searched.  I started with lotions, those seemed to come easiest.  I made salves and balms, toothpastes and deodorants.  Some of them worked and some of them failed.  I kept on.  Eventually, I came up with some recipes that I liked and I have stuck with them.  I found a friend who makes soap and asked her to teach me, she did.  It was like chemistry class.  I loved chemistry class.  I started to ask myself why I was so intimidated by the thought of making it myself.  Now it's a hobby, it's a love, it's a business.  My family eats and walks a more middle path.  We have settled the pendulum and make good choices.  I have found my way to help them and others.

It is truly in my blood.  My Grandmother always told me to keep the Witch Hazel handy, drink vinegar with honey every day, and there is nothing a good salve cannot solve.  She was the daughter of the town apothecary and midwife, who was the daughter of the town apothecary and midwife, and so on and so on.  I wish to pass on these traditions and pure products to the next generation and so on and so on.

Destiny

I had not been around a lot, I know that.  It's been a long, drawn out, chaotic, and life-changing year.  I feel in my heart that I'm able to see things more clearly, or rather have woken up.  Yet, I remain chronically so exhausted that I cannot keep up with my Super-Mom tasks the way I once could.  One answer is stress, you're too stressed out, you need time for yourself, you need to meditate every day, get a massage, go to yoga, etc, etc, etc.  There are a few problems with those things.  I admit that I'm under stress, but all of the things listed require me to take time for myself.  I don't know how, I never have.  My draw in life has always been to help others and now that I have children of my own, I'm up to my ears in helping others.

Next, I'm a lazy over-achiever.  What the hell does that even mean?  I will tell you.  My brain has wonderful ideas, but my body disagrees with completing all of these idea, sometimes starting them at all, talk about that in a minute.  My stamina is just gonzo.  I stress at work all day over deadlines and goal meeting.  Then I go home and stress that my house is dirty, are the kids eating well enough, I don't have time for my husband, home is falling apart (to my standards).  I cannot deal with it, then I get overwhelmed and even more stressed out and it all goes tumbling and sends my body into such a state of exhaustion, I basically collapse if I let myself buy into my brain claiming I need to do it all.  The thought of starting one of my goals at that point is, well, pointless, because I just stress and stress and the cycle repeats.  Lather, rinse, repeat.  That had been my life.  It looked like I was being lazy, but I couldn't muster the strength to get up, and when I actually did, I couldn't get through it as I would poop out.

Frankly, my body has been trying to tell me something for years, and I didn't know what.  I didn't even know it was trying to be honest.  I just thought, well, I'm doing everything that society expects of me and not getting any further ahead, it's something wrong with me.  Nope.  I'm beginning to see that I need to listen to my body.  When I'm happily doing what I should be doing, it agrees, when I force it to do things it shouldn't, it disagrees.  Perhaps should is an improper term to use, we should ourselves into a frenzy sometimes, right?  Maybe it's destiny, maybe it's my body trying to say this is making you dreadfully unhappy and I quit.  Do what makes you shine, do what makes you feel free, do what gives you joy...you dumbass.

So, here I am no longer at that same crossroads I was when I started writing this and was to afraid to share it.  Zuza la plaja, I have turned to the beach.