Selfies aren't my thing. I don't do it much, but I'm fascinated sometimes with what I see in the mirror compared to what the camera captures in a split second. Not even a second apart from my viewed reflection, the two are most often vastly different. Which is truer? My perception or the concrete image captured? Is one right and the other wrong?
Had I not started with giving up cream of... soups, Lipton's onion soup mix, baking mixes, and Crisco two years ago, I wouldn't be where I am now. Baby steps; it starts with teeny baby steps. Wanting to give birth free of unnecessary intervention and exclusively breastfeed were the initial tipping point for me, really. Had I gotten into nutrition at the same time, it's interesting to think how my experiences might have been different, my life more healthy in general. So basically, I got "crunchy" after having a baby at home. Odd, because to most people that seems like the pinnacle of "crunchiness." Nope, not for me.
I may seem to blend in with skinny jeans, makeup, and smocked-clad kiddos, but I'll share a few ways to spot a hippie mama no matter what the wrapper looks like:
- There are jars of things fermenting on various surfaces and in dark, cool nooks of her home.
- There are cloudy bowls of grains, beans, nuts, and/or seeds soaking on her countertops.
- Her two year old differentiates between cow, coconut, and mama milk.
- You snoop in her bathroom and find a "medicine" cabinet full of mysterious amber bottles of varying sizes, tubes or bottles of little white pellets with funny names, bags or jars of things that appear to belong in the kitchen spice cabinet, and jars with hand-written labels.
- Her kids breastfeed baby dolls.
- She offers to let you add things to her co-op order.
- She is who you go to about weird shit that your pediatrician or family doctor blows off or cannot accurately diagnose.
- She thinks gut flora is paramount.
- She doesn't put much on her face/skin that she would not put in her mouth.
- She uses words like birth, premature cord clamping, intact, and child-led weaning to normalize the normal, physiological order of things.
- Everything is homemade, preservative and dye-free, and maybe grain or gluten-free to boot.
- Her family sleeps in one big heap or plays musical beds often.
- Her husband asks if there is any "real" toothpaste or shampoo.
- Sweet almond oil, wheat germ oil, diatomaceous earth, brown rice flour, honey, coconut oil, emu oil, a clay or two, and various essential oils are all part of her skincare routine.
- If coconut oil, breastmilk, raw apple cider vinegar, baking soda, or bentonite clay can't fix it, she is lost.
- She calls stopping on the side of the road to pluck some medicinal plant "wildcrafting."
- When browsing her bookshelves, you quickly realize most of her library consists of books on birth, breastfeeding, attachment parenting, homeopathy and herbs, essential oils, whole foods, chickens, gardening, and "prepper" style survivalist books.
- You cannot find a can of comet or clorox wipes everywhere.
- She cooks with much demonized animal fats like lard, tallow, bacon grease, and butter.
- She makes her kids wash off hand sanitizer.
- Her husband can double as a doula or lactation adviser in a pinch.
- She hoards glass jars.
Does this sound familiar or wildly foreign? What would you add or change?
The spectrum of being a hippie, interchangeably holistic or healthy, mama is widely varied. Anchoring one end, you might be where I was a couple of years ago--mostly mainstream and happy with Betty Crocker cake mixes and Good Seasons Italian Dressing packets. Holding down the other end of the spectrum, you might be far beyond my somewhat middling tendencies and grind your own grains for bread, sprout everything, and make, grow, and/or cull pretty much everything that goes onto or into your family.
Either is fantastic, and I applaud your dedication and curiosity! Ask me questions if you want to know more. I would love to pick your brain over a cup of tea if you are the rabbit racing ahead of me.
The journey, and it's certainly been one, has been more like traveling the narrowing gyres of a big, loopy spiral. On the outer edges, it seems complicated, dizzying even, to peer down into the center. In truth, the center is a pinpoint. Things narrow or clarify as you get closer to the center, and the whorls around you look complicated and exhaustingly long. This spiral begins in the chaos of conventional wisdom, media fads, and cultural pressure and narrows into stability, self-sufficiency, and freedom.
