My Journey to Living More Consciously

There are a few specific moments when I was first stepping into consciousness that stand out to me.

One of those times, circa 2007, my step mother let me borrow a book called “The Inconvenient Truth”, which I read in a day. When I finished I remember he looking at me and saying somethign along the lines of :

” I can’t sit here and do nothing.” She said she was going to start with plastic bags.

She wasn’t kidding either.

Every single day since she has carried reusable bags for her groceries. I watched her start hand washing and hang drying her resealable storage baggies, and admired her dedication to making one small simple change.

Even if it didn’t seem like a lot, it was something. So I followed suit.

Before that day I had only ever looked at “using less” or “saving energy” in terms of saving money. I always looked at disagreements over the thermostat or turning lights off when you leave the room as a means to reduce the electric bill. It never clicked that there was so much more being wasted.

It was the conversation after the book that really helped me to see what the true cost of our modern day luxuries are. How simple it is to make one tiny step.

I remember realizing that day that, maybe, there were things in life more important that saving a dollar…

…but also that, by saving a dollar, maybe I was saving a whole lot more than I realized.

To this day I make it my goal to never use anything in life only once.

I have the mindset now that nothing is disposable, and to be honest, nothing is. Unless you use it like it is. Unless you believe it is.

I vividly remember one specific drive home from my summer internship in 2009. I was driving fast like always when I was trying to beat rush hour.

There was this care in front of me that was driving ridiculously slow. I mean, it was the highway, and this grandma was going maybe 45mph?

I got frustrated.

I couldn’t get around. The friggin’ car in the next lane wasn’t going any faster! So there I was, stuck behind these two cars, blood boiling. In hindsight I remember how stiff I would get when I was driving aggressively. My hands wrapped around the steering wheel, jaw clenched, curse words flying from under my breath.

When I finally got past these two cars I  stepped on the gas and got up to my cruising speed of 78mph as fast as I could. That’s when I saw her. This little old lady.

She looked just like my grandmother.

Her silver curls were brushed back out of her eyes and she was wearing this bulky white sweater in July. I smiled at the sight of it. My Grammy was very likely wearing the same outfit.

She was terrified.

I could see it in here eyes when she looked at me. I could see her grip on the steering wheel. What I saw was my family, someone I loved, doing the best that she could.

My true desire in that moment was that she knew I was not a bad person.

That under normal conditions, in other places, I would never put her in a position that would make her so scared.

This feeling came over me like a tidal wave. I thought about her the entire drive home.

I wished that she got home safe.

I spent a lot of time looking, not just at myself but also other drivers. I started realizing that truly SO MANY OF US become a seriously ugly version of ourselves when we are driving. I remember not wanting to be that person anymore.

What I love about this story is that I genuinely believe that this was the first time I realized how fast and how un-present I was in my life. How easy it was to get lost in the rhythm.

I started yearning to connect more with the present.

This was the first day that I realized that life isn’t just about paying your bills and going through the motions. It’s about collecting a series of beautiful moments that you can be proud of, and I was missing a lot of them.

Another moment that stands out to me is the nearly decade-long rabbit hole a local vendor at my farmers market sent me on in the summer of 2013.

We were talking about deodorant.

I remember when she told me about the toxic chemicals in conventional products sold in stores. I am not going to lie I did not believe a single word she was saying.

Neurotoxins? Carcinogens? In our grocery stores? – I mean, come on.

Surly if that were happening there would be a reverse campaign, you know, like the one that went down where we all learned that Cigarettes caused all those kinds of cancers.

She wasn’t lying.

I went home, started researching, and to this day I continue to be surprised about the ridiculous lack of regulation and surprisingly harsh and harmful chemicals that are used in products that we use every single day.

I cannot stop learning and reading about it and asking myself how on Earth so many companies are getting away with this madness.

What started with a woman at my local market telling me about why I should buy her deodorant, quickly migrated into a passion to remove these crazy chemicals from my life. They were in my deodorant, toothpaste, cleaning products and hair care. Literally everywhere.

I was shocked.

I tried lot’s of new products in those days and was super disappointed. All the stuff with green labels were expensive, but not only that a lot of them didn’t even work.

I swear I tried them all. Especially the deodorants.

My transition was gradual, and despite how much time and effort it took to find a simple deodorant that I liked I wasn’t discouraged. I never felt this sudden urge to purge my home and start over. I simply let myself run out of the products I had and tried to find something that was even a little bit better with my next purchase.

Hundreds of times, year after year. By 2016 I felt like a whole different person, and today, pft. Everything I was using in my home from my cookware to my underwear had changed.

I got scammed a lot, especially in the beginning. I bought products I thought were better only to find out it was the same old crap in a green bottle and the word “natural” on the label (p.s. that word is meaningless more or less all of the time). After years of research and testing and trying what is out there I am happy to say I actually love and approved of the products I’ve finally found.

Now, after nearly a decade of practice and more time scouring the depths of the internet, I am proud to say that I have become more and more guarded about the products I purchase and invite into my home than ever.

I don’t just expect these items to be safe, they have to have purpose and intention.

This journey in learning the truth about what’s out there paralleled my work in Manufacturing Operations where I excelled in the art of “Continuous Improvement”, which I eventually learned is actually the art of saving money at any cost to the customer.

The true shock and awe that would take over my face as my eyes started opening to the reality of the how business was done started moving to my heart. I was feeling called to do more and spent years devising a plan that would allow me to work for myself doing something I loved.

The true shock and awe that would take over my face as my eyes started opening to the reality of the how business was done started moving to my heart. I was feeling called to do more and spent years devising a plan that would allow me to work for myself doing something I loved.

2016 I started working for a company called Beautycounter, a beauty brand with more passion for cleaning up the makeup and skin care industry than I had about everything in my life up to the point, combined. I was blown away by what I was learning.

Enter: Live Video.

In 2017 I started going live everyday on Facebook and did so for three full years sharing the most shocking and mind blowing facts I had learned over the years.

Those courses, videos and blogs that I created during that time covered everything from:

How to find better products
Ingredients to avoid in certain products and why
The truth about industry standards and product label claims
Strategies for reducing waste
How to be a better recycler
Detoxifying the air in your home
Learning how to indoor garden
Homesteading
And, of course, embracing your natural hair.

Over the years I have done thousands of hours of research and shot hundred of hours of footage on living more simply and responsibly, but more importantly more consciously. I have come to acquire a literal gold mind if information and until now I had no way to organize it all.

Enter: This blog.

If you’ve ever lost yourself, or if you’re like me and never took the time to truly get to know yourself in the first place, you can probably remember the first few times you were present and grew.

Those are the stories that inspired this blog. The very first moments I started finding myself and my passion for the environment I live in, the impact I make, the people I love and my own true potential.

I want to share those learning, that footage, and my story with you, from the very beginning in a way that is evergreen and won’t be buried by the algorithm in Facebook land.

This is a blog about consciousness, sustainability, environmentalism, self worth and self discovery.

I’ll be laying out the steps that I took to get to a place where I can truly say I am conscious. I am simple. I am a homesteader. My impact is bigger and footprint is smaller than ever before, and it is only getting better.

It’s not all sunshine and rainbows. There were more fumbles and muck ups than I like to admit, times of regression, steps and products that felt like a step forward but were actually complete scams.

I am so blessed and happy to have you on this ride with me.

I love you!

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