How I Got Here
My daughter made me do it. No, seriously. She was in graduate school, and, as she would tell it, I was moping about not being able to find a willing audience for my kitchen experiments. She asked me, well, why can’t you? And, according to her, I did not have a satisfactory answer. She told me she wanted shampoo, and said I better be the one to make it. So I did. I made a rosemary shampoo with essential oils and castile soap. It smelled amazing, and it was definitely stimulating to the scalp! But it turned my hair to straw. To fix the straw hair, I made a conditioner with a coconut oil base… and then I had greasy hair with straw-like ends. During those first few attempts, I learned that my products would take some trial and error, and that coconut oil is not easy to get out of hair.
I never did get that shampoo recipe right, and gave up completely on the conditioner. I still give it another shot from time to time. Next came eye makeup remover, which actually turned out great! Given the trajectory the shampoo experiment took, one might wonder why my first lateral move would be to put my products near my eyes. The honest answer is that I was tired of buying overpriced eye makeup remover. Now I use my eye makeup remover, and so do my friends and family. In my case, the third time was the charm (and no one lost an eye).
In what feels like a past life, but was actually a short time ago, I was a front end investigating social worker. For close to 30 years, there were many long days, and an abundance of stress. When I was able to get away, I usually went to the beach or my garden to regroup and regain my sanity. I liked to nurture plants that made me happy… or didn’t die immediately. I grew roses, sweet peas, lavender, basil, and rosemary, to name a few. I displayed my flowers in the house and cooked with my herbs, and what I didn’t use I gave to friends and family. I derived a great deal of healing from this practice, which nurtured my curiosity about the full potential of plants. I kept my day job, and for a long time, I kept my curiosity to myself. Then one day, my experiments, starting with The Great Shampoo Fiasco of 2017, began in earnest.
When I retired, and my second life began, I bought a home that had belonged to a master gardener. It came with raised beds, a pond, a stream, trees, and a greenhouse. Now that I had space for my plants, I got right to work. I spent hours with my hands in the dirt getting to know my new hardiness zone, and observing the movement of the seasons. While I was developing my new garden and making new plant friends, I pursued several in-depth courses in herbalism. I was committed to understanding as much as I could about Mother Nature’s true bounty, about plants and the magic they worked on the body, mind and spirit.
I learned and learned, I read anything I could get my hands on, talked to other herbalists, went on plant walks, and learned some more. I became the obnoxious friend who offered unsolicited advice about everything health related. As time went by, I invented more products with the plants I grew, and gave them to my friends and family. Lo and behold, they liked what I had created. My friends and family told their friends, and then people actually started to buy the things that I made.
I feel incredibly fortunate to have the ability and privilege to learn more about nature every day. The plants are my teachers and I am their humble and willing student. I am blessed to dream up products to make, and to finally answer my calling. There’s nothing I’d rather do, no place I’d rather be. I’m grateful. I’m here.
