as we near our 5th year anniversary of our business, it only feels right to share a few chapters of the story.
shortly after our first son was born, i was hungry for community - STARVING for it actually! i was in the throes of ppd/ppa as a side effect of the unnecessary interventions & obstetric abuse i faced with our hospital birth & had no young mothers around me to lean on.
it was around that same time i was going through an incredibly deep relational hurt that made me realize how hard it is to have successful female relationships. the enemy really knows how to get a foothold in sisterhood!
so there i was, dealing with a colicky baby who slept in 45 minute increments, wondering if what i was feeling was normal & assuming it was because everyone kept telling me how great i was doing. it sure didn't feel that way... matthew found me more than a few times on the bathroom floor with some of the worst panic attacks of my life. i didn't recognize it being postpartum depression or anxiety until i was out of it (we'll get to that). my mind couldn't wrap itself around the exhaustion & fight or flight of a constantly screaming baby paired with hormone explosions, a husband working 40+ hour work weeks, & also being so incredibly in love with this new season with a little human to care for - all jumbled up together!
fast forward to being 4 weeks postpartum, aka 4 weeks of sleeping in 20-30 minute increments myself. we started asking our pediatrician hard questions & ultimately got told to find a new practice because our ideas of a healthy baby didn't line up. we had tried everything to get our boy to be happier but nothing we were pointed to by the "professionals" was giving him (or us) relief.
so through one of my 2am social media scrolls i came across an account of a young mom with one baby boy at the time. she was sharing about essential oils & all of these wonderful things they did for her & her little family! i was confused because i had oils from a dozen brands & none of them did for me what she was sharing about, so i started watching & listening to everything she had to say!
eventually i learned that not all oils are created equally, along with the fact that the "natural" & "plant based" cleaners we had used for years actually were still filled with toxins that all fell under the umbrella-term of FRAGRANCE on the label, & that that was most likely the cause of my lifelong chronic migraines, painful periods, frequent colds, etc. i certainly didn't want all of that around my baby either!
out of curiosity (& a major leap of faith) i convinced my husband that we needed to try it out. that, yes, i really thought it would be worth it to use a chunk of our paycheck from his job as a fry cook on more oils because these ones were ~different~.
so we went for it! a week later, our box of oils & samples of clean products arrived.
& yall, that 5 week old baby who could only sleep for 45 minutes before waking up screaming...he slept 5 hours straight the first night.
it was the beginning of finding freedom & empowerment in motherhood.