If you’ve followed my blog for any length of time, you might have noticed that I am pretty conventional but every once in a while I throw in a natural beauty post or a healthier recipe. So which is it? Am I some sort of eco-friendly, all-organic, healthy-living warrior or not?
Well my friends, it’s a long journey of discovery and balance that goes back about 20 years to when I was a kid growing up in the panhandle of West Virginia. My dad had gone off the deep end into some strange hippy stores and health fads and he was bringing me with him.
He had already persuaded me to start ingesting cod liver oil and apple cider vinegar years before. And let me tell you, I’ve had the recent incarnations of cod liver oil and they are nothing like the vial liquid I was expected to swallow.
Then he started on this “Eat Right for your Blood Type” diet that had him eliminate all dairy and wheat from his daily meals, as they were presumed to cause some sort of inflammation to O blood types. I, of course, had the same blood type, but at 10 years old, was not about to give up my Reese’s Puffs cereal and milk.
During this time he would somehow track down dusty old health food stores and purchase rice milk in shelf-stable cartons, which he would drink sprinkled with clove oil. I would sometimes partake, mainly when I was sick. Garlic was the other cure-all in our household.
Other items he would bring back and leave for me on the bathroom sink included tea tree oil, witch hazel, and later in my teens, the most ineffective natural deodorant one had ever used. His personal experience with deodorant has continued to devolve, as he now only uses gin that he decants into an atomizer. Yes….that’s my dad. Smart, funny, and surprisingly unconventional.
For decades, he has had essential oils infusing the air in just about every room of the house. Little did I know at the time, but he had become a Young Living distributor in the mid 1990’s just so that he could purchase large quantities of their essential oils for our family. He never once sold any of their products, and had never had the intention to do so. He just wanted the best quality essential oils (which were the only essential oils to qualify for the AFNOR standards mind you!) and there was no other way for him to get them in those days.
By the time I hit eighteen, I had developed an interest in his health nut ways and when he dropped me off for college in Morgantown, WV, we quickly found the local Co-Op and stocked up on some random essentials like Burt’s Bees Tomato Toner, Mountain Ocean Skin Trip Coconut Lotion, and lots of spelt pretzels.
The year was 2005 and the concepts of green living and organics were slowing creeping into urban areas, but not so much in the Appalachian region where we were. The following year, I made quarterly trips into the then unfamiliar city of Pittsburgh, to visit Whole Foods. I was like a tourist there, slowly moving up and down every aisle, eagerly absorbing every square inch of product laid before me. The most fascinating part to me was the beauty section which was brimming with so many brands boasting non-toxic and all natural tags I could hardly keep up. Dr. Hauschka, Pangea Organics, Gabriel Cosmetics, and Larenim!
I was obsessed, and from that point on, I devoted much of my free time researching these products and this lifestyle on the few corners of the internet devoted to this new-fangled green life. Saffron Rouge was an early website where I discovered beauty brands like Jurlique, although I couldn’t afford to buy them so I would just memorize every ingredient and try to recreate them using inexpensive ingredients I could pin down.
By 2007, I was twenty years old and quickly becoming obsessive about everything I put onto my skin or into my body, which was exceedingly limiting seeing as I lived in a small West Virginia city which was reluctant to let this natural wave in. I remember shopping our local Kroger and creating meals based on all of the marked down grass-fed, holistic, organic, grain-free what-have-yous that were on manager’s special. No one else was buying the stuff, so I scooped it up and made the most of it. We did at least have a farmers market, where I eventually met an old farmer who was willing to sell us raw milk, if we crossed state lines into Pennsylvania where it was legal to do so. So, we did. And for a long time, that was the only milk we drank.
In 2011, we (oh, I met my husband somewhere in those years!) said goodbye to the now burgeoning city of Morgantown and moved up north to the small Rust Belt town where my husband was from. There was not a single trace of green living there, and I am pretty sure you would get shunned or beaten if you were to ask where one could find rice milk in the area.
While at first I was dismayed, I slowly got used to the idea of not being able to access “clean” things and began to integrate conventional foods and body care items back into my life. It certainly was cheaper and easier than struggling to find what I needed.
Today, seven years later, I have found a pretty good balance, or what I like to call a “semi-green” life. I order items I really care about (like my “healthy” deodorant or organic chicken bouillon) online and do the best I can with what this area has.
I’m happy to be aware of the things that I consume and what I put in and on my body, but I am also happy that it doesn’t run my life. After all, life is hard enough without the added stress and money-drain that the scare-tactics of this new organic life can bring with it.
How do you feel about natural and organic products? Do you use them or do you think it’s just a bunch of hype? Let me know in comments! I’d love to hear your take.
