A Serenity Prayer for the Crunchy Mom

Give us the serenity to eat processed food at our in-laws home, the courage to quit vegetable oil, and the wisdom to log off.

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Wanna know one of my proudest moments as a parent recently?

This summer my six-year-old daughter was at a birthday party and she had no idea how to open a Capri Sun or what it was.

I’ve spent six years trying to keep anything red-dyed, sugar packed, plastic wrapped away from her. And there she was, the crunchiest kid at the birthday party staring cluelessly at a little orange straw. Though sometimes it feels judgemental and even elitist to admit something like that, but I at that moment I thought:

“I may suck compared to ‘GMOFREEsally’ on Instagram but I must be doing something right!”

At that moment I felt like I was doing kind of okay? But also, measuring my success as a mom by pouches of untouched fruit juice is getting claustrophobic. I feel like my pursuit of a truly ‘non-toxic’ lifestyle for my kids has recently tipped over to something that feels less empowering and more crushing.  I’m not sure where the line is between the two but it feels like I’m toeing the line almost daily. And now, more than ever I want to ignore the line altogether.

My journey into “non toxic living” is long and convoluted but it started where most women who grew up in the 90s started….on a quest to lose weight. My quest for the perfect body slowly morphed into an emphasis on health. And it wasn’t hard to find information about how most of the Standard American Diet was slowly poisoning us.

What started as a weight loss journey slowly transitioned into a quest for improving my health and trying to lessen symptoms I’ve had my whole life by addressing the root cause. I traveled through a maze of different diets, supplements and doctor with not much to show for it but an empty wallet and an overflowing medicine cabinet.

In the beginning making changes in my life felt easy and straight forward: opt for the shortest supply chain, read labels, eat whole foods. Done!

I felt empowered. I had found a mission and was passionate enough about it that my husband and I even went so far as to buy a small homestead/farm where we raised chickens and pigs for meat to bypass the industrial food system as much as two people with full-time jobs could.

I wanted to make a difference. I taught the dangers and drawbacks of the industrial food system to my middle school students. I think the way we harvest and consume food is essential knowledge for young kids, especially if we want systemic change faster. This passage from enlightened farmer/activist Joel Salatin sticks with me:

“A farmer friend of mine told me recently about a busload of middle school children who came to his farm for a tour. The first two boys off the bus asked, "Where is the salsa tree?" They thought they could go pick salsa, like apples and peaches. Oh my. What do they put on SAT tests to measure this? Does anybody care? How little can a person know about food and still make educated decisions about it? Is this knowledge going to change before they enter the voting booth? Now that's a scary thought.”

My journey into non-toxic and “preservative free” food led to also replacing things in my house like make up, household soaps and other personal care products. Again, this was easy and simple and inexpensive to switch out for me. I didn’t find it stressful. “Why wasn’t all of America living like this? “ I wondered, as I replaced my luxury moisturizers with unscented lotion .

My care-free self sustaining bubble burst when my kids became toddlers. Now my commitment to toxic free living is some amorphous Babadook monster that is banging down the door, filling me with dread that I’m not doing enough. Instagram, surprise, is no help. Ten years ago reading and learning about the ways I could keep myself and my kids healthy felt like empowering!

Now I scroll my phone and it’s like a pastel tide of content telling me everything I come in contact with in my house is out to kill me and my children and I can’t afford to do anything about it.

The food they eat. Is it organic? Dye free? Pasture raised? Raw? Bioenergenically grown?

The air they breathe. Mold! Fungal Volatile Organic Compounds! Also now gas stoves cause asthma?? 

The shows they watch.  Overstimulating! Understimulating! Causes ADHD! 

Even the personal care products they use. No fluoride! No parabens! Plastic?? Are you new here???

Does this sound exhausting? It is. 

:) :) :) :)

What’s worse is here’s the non-tox-living paradox for me: even though I’m hyper vigilant about these things, I also feel like I’m sort of lazy about it?

It feels like I’m failing because the filter on my fridge water isn’t good enough (also it probably has mold), my air purifiers aren’t the “good ones”, my bread isn’t home fermented sourdough, my kids eat chicken nuggets—they haven’t touched a vegetable in months if not years. 

I’m caught between two worlds. The real world where most people I interact with don’t bat an eye over their kids eating normal kid things like Doritos, fruit snacks and capri suns. 

Then the online world where I’m a piece of shit when my kid eats a peanut butter and jelly sandwich (with white bread that’s probably full of seed oils. Do you know about seed oils???? Ok, I’ll stop. ) A little voice in my head is telling me “you should be doing more. your kids are going to grow up sick. Ignoring this isn’t doing you any favors”. 

But these thoughts are at war with the reality of life. Does the $3,000 air purifier actually make us healthier or does it just give me the feeling of more control? Would I pay $3,000 for more peace of mind? If could afford it? Probably, yes.

My husband likes to remind me, “we’re all going to die someday!”

But I paid my therapist $120 an hour to tell me the same thing in a gentler way: she said no matter what we do there are bad, scary things out there. You’re never going to make that go away. There is no “100% safe”. 

Sometimes I feel like I’ve taken all the anxiety about not being able to control what happens to my kids, the earth, my family, the rising seas, exploding sun and tried to pack it all into non-toxic living.

Just relaxin’ at home

Yes, we’re all going to die. And maybe at it’s core, this is my attempt to say, “everyone is going to die…except us!!!”

I don’t believe everything we do to improve our health is in vain—that would be like me saying “fed is best because we’re all going to die anyways”, but I think we all need to find our own personal line where the pursuit of the “non-toxic” life crosses into being- well, toxic. At times I’m envious of people living in the blissful ignorance that I experienced before I fell down into the “natural living” rabbit hole. 

A simple rule I try to follow:  I need to be okay with doing the best I can with the resources I have right now. More homegrown foods not less, more local produce not less. Less dyes not more. Less fragrances not more. It’s imperfect but it’s doable.And if there is content or articles or instagram accounts that are causing me anxiety about things I can’t change right now, I have to unfollow them. Some would call that avoidance but I think it’s saving my sanity.

Realizing that I have no control is scary but at the same time liberating. 

I have to be okay with just doing the best I can. Sometimes the best I can do is peanut butter and jelly for lunch with a small(er) helping of seed oils.

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