#homesteadbody | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

homesteadbody · 8 years

Text

finding homestead body.....

in hindsight, i can see the path i was actually walking (but never knew lol) that led me to homestead body. one significant moment on the path happened one morning after reading an article in the daily paper. the article was about a goat that had both the wit and fear enough to escape his inevitable demise at a local slaughterhouse. the article was so disturbing to me for many reasons - but mostly because the paper had put a "funny" spin on the goats situation. the picture that was posted alongside the article was of the goat being caught down the block by a slaughter house employee. he was holding the goats hind legs in the air squeezing both ankles together and was dragging the goat backwards down the block to his fate. the goat was looking back at him terrified trying to keep up with the man or he would have been dragged on his chest and belly down the block.

when you think of a moment in your life that was pivotal and changed your course forever - you never forget it. that moment for me was seeing that goat looking back at the man laughing with terrified eyes. I made a vow to never eat meat again. Seeing that goat's face. i will never forget it. there was a path that was laid out before me that morning - and i walked on it never looking back.

becoming a vegetarian was incredibly easy for me - i never missed being a carnivore - not even once (this will all come 360 - i promise). i was actually repulsed by seeing an animal product as food. i remember that goat all the time - i can see him clearly. think of it though - he was scared, he was smart, he was going to feel the slaughter - just like humans - so why are we killing them to eat? because they aren't able to convey in words that humans can understand that they are scared and feel pain? they do have a language - it's just not ours.

so - i was very excited about jumping into a new way of cooking and became passionate about it. the pulse of my nutritional exploration was plant-based and being a self-proclaimed "foodie" - i was good at it. clean eating for me was using primarily plant-based, gluten-free, organic and non-gmo ingredients.

i kept walking on that path and i began reading everything i could about nutrition, health, and integrative medicine. i read the greats - T. Colin Campbell, Mark Hyman, David Wolfe, Susan Blum, Neal Barnard, Joshua Rosenthal, and Andrea Beaman to name a few - and i was thinking about and very eager to learn everything i could about how our beautiful earth gives us what we need naturally to be healthy - and to stay healthy. this was the right choice for me, and i had full support from my husband and our children. there was no stopping me at that point.

but -both my husband and myself - being raised by our grandparents from Italy - food was a very big part of our culture. the dinner table was important - most important (next to sunday mass)! every family memory and event from childhood is based around food. i would wake up to the sounds and smells of my grandparents already beginning dinner at 8:00am in the morning. i can still hear the garlic being tossed in the hot oil - it was a sacred dance between the two ingredients. the smell would fill the air and envelope my body in a warmth called home. i see my grandmother rolling the meatballs on sunday morning and tossing them in the breadcrumbs. our job (the kids) - was to roll the meatball around the breadcrumbs to coat it and place it in the pan. holidays and sundays were special events - although in our house every sunday was a holiday with food. the culture of food ran through our blood and is a part of who my family is.

the biggest change for my family after i stopped eating meat was no more italian sunday. they missed the meatballs - although i tried to compensate with eggplant balls (wasn't the same for them). it was modified now - no prosciutto, no lard bread - my family was grieving for a culture they missed. but through it all - they remained supportive and began a transition that was relevant for them (maybe it was because i was doing the cooking and they were hungry lol??). although i tried - i couldn't pull off the breaded seitan for chicken cutlets (my husband and son put their foot down on that one!) but, they actually began to like the clean food i was putting on the table. more so however, they acknowledged how good they felt after my new "clean" meals - no bloat, no overstuffed belly - just good! whew!

following that path to homestead body was inevitable at that point.....although little did i know it yet. one day ross (my beloved husband), and i were with dear friends in the mountains and they introduced me to a woman selling products for the body that she made herself. of course i was very interested - so i bought an unscented body butter. I loved the ingredients - so simple: shea butter and some oils. there wasn't a lengthy list of ingredients that i could not recognize - just a few simple ingredients. i took my new venture home and sat it on my counter to look at it and read and reread the ingredients. i tried the product - it felt very nice on my skin. i was intrigued. the next mission began - my skin (and everyone else's within twenty feet of me).

i opened my bathroom cabinet and began taking out one by one all of my favorite products - some of those products i spent over one hundred dollars on for under one ounce of product. the ingredient list was long and mostly undecipherable (save for the ingredient "aqua"). i couldn't believe that all these years i was actually paying to put what was mostly chemicals on the largest organ of my body.....my skin. this was another turning point in my life. and that very thought was the birth of homestead body.

now what?

so here i was - i had already made the change with what i was putting in my body.....now i wanted to make the change with what i put on my body. the latter was going to prove to be even more challenging than the first.

i found myself not wanting to use any of the products i already owned - nothing was going to work for me anymore. i took my new butter that i bought at the fair in the mountains - but none of the ingredients were organic. they were "natural", but they weren't organic. now this bothered me. i thought - if i won't eat a strawberry or a lettuce leaf that's not organic.....why would i put these natural ingredients that aren't organic on my skin? dilemma.

so i set out to find and buy organic skincare. there are many fine products on the market - but i was having a hard time finding exactly what i wanted: every ingredient to be organic and completely vegan. many of the products on the market had ingredients that were only partially organic, and half of those products may not be vegan. perhaps they'll contain beeswax, or goat's milk, or honey. they may be wonderful products - but not for me. for me at that point in my life - skin and body care was like being in the kitchen and cooking using only organic plant-based ingredients - except.....i was in the bathroom!

my path took me further into the kingdom of types of ingredients out there - organic or not - there are different types. for example - one can purchase shea butter in so many different forms - most likely because of price-point and how it smells in its natural state - strong and nutty. some forms are raw-unrefined-organic - that's great! or raw-refined-organic.....hmmm - now what does THAT mean?? red flag. how about raw-refined-ultra deodorized and not organic? yikes - i don't think so. this whole new world included butters and oils. i had a lot to think about. would i want to make a delicious soup with only half organic and unprocessed ingredients? no never. so why would i put products on my skin that were not in their truest form available - completely unprocessed and organic? i wouldn't.

i was on a mission and searching for something i wanted to put on my skin - but really wanted to put on my skin (remember that strawberry?). i began researching and reading and learning everything i could, and then began making my own products. i wanted to make products for myself and for my family. i wanted to be sure that what we all were putting on our skin was basically everything i set out for: every ingredient was to be 100% USDA Certified Organic, plant-based, non-GMO, raw, unrefined, cruelty-free and vegan. no compromising.

i started with butters, and then moved to deodorants, balms, and face serums. the butters were the most difficult because i was using only unrefined shea butter - which means it smells nutty - which means it's difficult to mix scent into without smelling like you are masking the scent of the natural shea, plus, natural shea is not pure white - it does get lighter when it's whipped - but it's not pure white unless it's refined to process out both the smell and the color. of course this was never an option for me. my patient family and were testers for the last eighteen months. i can tell you this - their skin is smooth (and in some cases healed of scarring from the shea butter). then there was the deodorant. this was one of the bigger challenges of my life i think! making a deodorant that can be a stick that spreads but doesn't fall apart, and a deodorant that can keep you from smelling bad. i can tell you that i have been told to go wash my pits during development (i never took it personal)!

making the change

i hear myself saying this all the time to people when i am speaking about pure organic skin care. I talk about how making the change with body care products was similar to when i made the change with food. it was different. it was so easy to pick up a pound of ham at the deli and toss it on a roll for lunch. it was easy and cheap and fast. now that is a big one - the time factor. eating clean takes time and effort - washing, peeling, cutting produce and then preparing your meal. the change of convenience and cost were the challenges i faced when i made the change with food. one has to become resourceful and creative and very patient....but you know it's the right choice for you and all worth it.

like making the change with food, making the change with natural skincare was not the easiest! the products i was used to buying were convenient: just the right consistency, your favorite scent, great price point. but look at the ingredients. do you know that I grieved my favorite scent for eight months before it started to smell like a fabricated fragrance - which it was. from all the testing i was doing with the shea butter - the shea began to smell what it is - clean and my old favorite scent (i really did grieve for eight months) smelled like a chemical. this is the truth - a truth i never thought i would understand and know to be true for myself.

pure raw and unrefined/unprocessed body butters are different. they are in fact.....a butter. they are thick, they are naturally oily (which is good stuff), and they change with the temperature. if you left your butter in the car on a hot summer day - it melts (just bring it back into a temperature of 70 degrees and it solidifies again!). if it's cold in the house - it's a little harder than usual (your hands will warm and melt it right up). It's thicker than most store bought body butters because our butters do not contain water to soften them up. shea butter is a tremendous moisturizer for the body and has so many benefits for the skin (see ingredient section). once in your hands, it warms and melts into your skin. the natural oils are absorbed and your skin is left feeling soft, silky and beautiful. there is nothing bad about shea butter - it's really an amazing gift of nature.

homestead body

i find that if we look at the clues we are given all throughout our lives (so much easier in hindsight) - especially the little clues that aren't obvious - we will understand the path we are on - or the path we may want to consider. homestead body was founded on an understanding of the path i was led to.

we are a husband and wife team - and i must say that creating homestead body with my husband - ross - has been as special as loving him and being his wife - so beautiful. we have both been completely dedicated to making products that are clean - clean body care. but as important for us - clean conscience - no animal products - cruelty-free and vegan.

with love....g + r

#make the change #homesteadbody #organic skincare #clean skin

0 notes