The Beginning of the End

'It' hasn't actually ended yet. What is 'it'?  My life, as it is now.  Read on.

It's been quite a few weeks since my last blog.  All the holiday frivolity and busyness takes up a lot of time, dontcha think?  Even if I wanted to blog (of course I wanted to blog) I was too occupied to hold on to, let alone nurture, a coherent thought that had nothing to do with wrapping paper or red and green sprinkles.

So now that I'm here, sitting in front of the Christmas tree I haven't taken down yet, I'm not really sure what to blog about.  I mean, there are a gazillion subjects I could easily write about, but trying to add that personal twist in is always a challenge.  I decided its finally time to come clean and describe how I came to be...well...me.  How did I get all chemical-paranoid and organically-freaky?  Inquiring minds want to know, right?  I'm hoping so.  This is the first part of an undetermined series of blogs, maybe 2 or 3.  We'll see.


Part I

This is essentially what we call in Shaklee 'My Two-Minute Story'.  When we do a presentation we start out with how we were introduced to healthy living and/or Shaklee products, etc etc.  This is more or less the story I tell.  It's true, by the way.  And it's probably not very funny.

A couple years ago, at about 15 weeks,  I had my 5th miscarriage.  When I came home from the hospital I was an absolute mess.  Besides being physically messed up, I was an emotional wreck.  I had the usual post-tragedy questions...why me?  Why again?  What is wrong with me?  Why can't anyone give me any answers?  WHAT the F*CK?

When you're in the state of mind that I was, you'll desperately search everywhere and anywhere for some closure.  So when your doctor doesn't know the answers, where do you turn?  The all-knowing internet, of course.   I did search after search, looking for information, looking for an answer, finding tons of information and answers that didn't apply to me.  Everyone else HAD an answer, but for me there was none.  I sat at my computer and cried.  Like...Every. Day.  I was told 'try not to think about it', or 'it was meant to be', and no matter how well meaning those words are, they don't help. At all.

One day one of my searches brought me to a website I still frequent - www.ewg.org.  It's the Environmental Working Group website, and it is just chock full of informational goodness about everything that has to do with health and environment and chemicals and their effects on your body and the planet and everything else you can possibly think of.  They even have a sister website - Skin Deep Cosmetics Database - where you can look up your existing products and find out just how bad they really are.  I read.  And I read.  I followed links, searched searches, keyed words.  And I learned SO MUCH.  I've blogged about a lot of what I learned, and am still learning every day, and if I talk to you in person there's no doubt that you've heard it from me over and over again.  I like to beat dead horses, okay?  If I was to start telling you the things that can happen to your body from the products that you use in your home and on your body, we would be here for DAYS.  The chemicals we are exposed to in our daily lives have such a huge impact on our health and our bodies in ways that may never even occur to us! 

Of course fertility is one of them. 

That first day I learned that one of the biggest offenders is household cleaning products.  We are in our homes more than anywhere else, and that is where the majority of our exposure comes from.  We breathe the air, wear the clothes, sleep on the sheets, eat off the dishes.  Within a day or two I had all of our toxic cleaners boxed up and stuffed in a corner of the garage.  I went to the store and replaced them with non-chlorine bleach, laundry detergent without certain ingredients, and $5 bottles of all-purpose cleaner.  It was all shiny and new, and I was ok with it for a while even though it wasn't the most effective stuff in the world. But I was dedicated, so I stuck with it.

Then I learned about body products, too.  Chemical-filled shampoos and soaps and lotions, oh my!  Our skin is the largest organ we have, and it's absorbent.  So when we slather it with chemicals (or sit in a bathtub that was cleaned with toxic chemicals!), those chemicals all get absorbed into us.   

WTF are they doing in there?  Nothing but trouble. 

I dumped all our Herbal Essences and Bath and Body Works and Zest and Lever into a bag and went shopping again and replaced all those items with 'all-natural' options.  I had been having a major skin issue around that time too, and every time I would shampoo my hair, the skin on my shoulders would absolutely be ON FIRE.  When I switched to the natural, non-perfumed, non-chemical stuff, the burning subsided.  Of course, that is a whole different blog you can look forward to about Candida.  (Just check out this list of symptoms!  Candida is horrendous.  Contact me for help on this one.)

Is chemical exposure responsible for my miscarriages?  Who knows.  I'm sure it could never be proven that that is specifically what caused them.  All the chlorine bleach, optical brighteners, preservatives, synthetic scents, and everything else I've been exposed to my whole life... could I have come out completely unscathed?  I doubt any of us have.  Maybe that's why today's cancer rate is 1 in 2.  Ya think? 

I can't say that de-chemicalizing our lives has made a huge difference for ME, but I'm hoping that by keeping their chemical exposure as minimal as is possible, that MY children don't have to go through what I have had to.  That MY daughter doesn't have to deal with the heartbreak of losing baby after baby.  That MY son doesn't get cancer or a brain tumor or Parkinson's disease.  Considering the rate of exposure we all deal with from every direction, the least I can do is make sure they get as little as possible at home.  We are CONSTANTLY inundated with toxins in every shape and form...(don't even get me started on food!)  And if we have the choice we shouldn't have to live with them too. 

This is MY choice, and it is this knowledge and these experiences that have made me who I am today.


To be continued...

Enough with the Blind Eye!

For argument's sake, let's say that you read my last blog.  Let's say that you never buy food items from China because you were already aware of their many contaminations and other food issues.  Awesome!  Good for you, it's a step in the right direction.

Now let's say that you were at the grocery today and bought Ecuadorian bananas, mangoes from Costa Rica, and clementines from Chile.  Make yourself a mental picture of the workers who farm in those countries and harvested your newly acquired produce. Quaint, isn't it?  Straw hats, donkeys, Juan Valdez.

Now picture this:  thousands of Latin American families devastated by the pesticides and herbicides used to grow that pretty produce that now sits in your fruit bowl.  Atrocious sicknesses, infertility and sterility, cancer, paralysis, skin infections, headaches, lung damage, nose bleeds, and loss of sight to name a few.  Chemicals made by companies like Dow, Bayer and DuPont and used by companies like Dole and Monsanto.  Those companies then refuse to compensate the injured workers and their families and deny the existence of any problems.  American workers have also been affected by these chemicals and their injury claims denied!

No way can I sit back and eat my perfectly yellow banana and pretend this isn't going on.  Once you learn that the food you are eating has these chemicals on it, or that the people responsible for bringing it to you are dying for it, it's impossible to turn a blind eye to it. Twenty-five percent of the world's pesticides are used in third world countries and it this is where over 99% of pesticide related deaths occur.  Is this supposed to be ok?

 Today I read an article about this subject that came to me in a newsletter from a site called Natural News.  For the record - the article really pissed me off.  If you don't subscribe to the site already I highly recommend that you do so.  The headline caught my eye because of the blog I wrote the other day, and the subject has been on my mind.  The fact that this is going on all over the world and these American companies are taking such advantage of other countries well and truly offends me.  This isn't a case of another country poisoning their own soil because of their own lax policies.  This is American companies employing farmers and workers, producing food for export to Americans, and leaving their people sick and their homelands polluted for years to come.  It's so wrong.   

If we all needed another reason to buy organic and buy local (as if!), well there it is.  Read the article for yourself and look up the chemicals mentioned (try Wikipedia or EWG).  I did.  I also got the 'clementines from Chile' reference from my own fruit bowl.  I bought those clementines at my local Target, and let me tell you how I won't be doing that again.  

If you think that your government and governmental agencies are protecting you, wake up.  Open your eyes and watch what you're putting into your mouth.  Not sure why you should avoid pesticides and herbicides in the first place?  Explore here, and here.  Need more proof?  Find it here, here, here.  Support your local farmers, grow your own, and buy organic!  Support companies that are doing the right thing. You're making the world better for everyone by doing so!