Back in January, I wrote about my friend Liz, who was diagnosed with breast cancer. She has now completed her first round of chemo and is on to her second. She’s keeping folks posted on her blog, http://helptohealmama.blogspot.com/ It’s been so amazing to see how many people are coming out to support her, whether through…
Holistic Health
Just take those sugary characters off the shelf
Long before I’d even come close to letting my son watch a Clifford video, his eyes lit up at the big red dog on the Cascadian Farms cereal box. Come to think of it, that was probably even before I ever let him eat any cereal. (Any cereal always been gluten-free and character-free, and I’ve…
The 12 days of spring break
On all twelve days of Spring Break, Mother Nature gave to me: lots of pollen falling from trees. There were only supposed to be ten days. And they were going to be full of activities we don’t have the time or energy to do when school is in session. But then there was pollen. So…
Putting a public face on “holistic”
Welcome to the April Carnival of Natural Parenting: Compassionate Advocacy This post was written for inclusion in the monthly Carnival of Natural Parenting hosted by Code Name: Mama and Hobo Mama. This month our participants have shared how they advocate for healthy, gentle parenting choices compassionately. Please read to the end to find a list…
Busy in the birth world
While the International Cesarean Awareness Network (ICAN) was having its big conference in St. Louis this weekend, Birth Matters Virginia was putting on the Healthy Mothers, Healthy Birth Summit on Saturday, and Ina May Gaskin was leading a rally on the Capitol Sunday with her Safe Motherhood Quilt project. Both D.C.-area events aimed to shed…
Birth activists to hold conference and rally
“Midwifery and Homeopathy” was the subject of a weekend workshop I attended last year at a conference sponsored by the National Center for Homeopathy. The information I gleaned from presenter MJ Hanafin, and later from an interview with Miranda Castro, author of Homeopathy for Pregnancy, Birth and Your Baby’s First Years, put me on the…
Food dyes: FDA misses the opportunity to help children
I was so excited to hear that the FDA was taking on the issue of food dyes and considering banning them or requiring a warning label. People deserve to be protected from foods that cause such havoc in young brains. Unfortunately, the FDA voted 8 to 6 last week not to ban artificial food dyes…
Taking care of myself: GAPS diet update
Spring hasn’t fully registered here in chilly but blossom-filled Northern Virginia, but I think my stomach is finally on the mend. I started the GAPS diet on February 6, and I am still in a modified introductory stage. I’m only just now even considering trying to eat any raw foods (besides juice, and avocado). It…
Advocate for local food at Farm Food Voices 2011!
On Wednesday, March 16, local food advocates will convene on Capitol Hill for a grassroots lobby day. If you care about where your food comes from, join them! Farm Food Voices says: “Join a coalition of organizations, local food advocates, and small family farmers from across the country to lobby federal legislators on local food…
Healing my gut and finding my bliss
Read more about Real Food at Kelly the Kitchen Kop who hosts a great Real Food Wednesdays blog carnival each week! I’m looking for my inner “healing junkie.” Have you found her? She seems to run and hide the second the baby wakes up, like right now. (A day later…) But it’s not the baby’s…
Top 10 Natural Strategies for Conception (aka How to Get Pregnant!)
Welcome to the March Carnival of Natural Parenting: Natural Parenting Top 10 Lists This post was written for inclusion in the monthly Carnival of Natural Parenting hosted by Hobo Mama and Code Name: Mama. This month our participants have shared Top 10 lists on a wide variety of aspects of attachment parenting and natural living….
Foundation airs its criticisms of USDA and presents alternative guidelines
Read more about Real Food at Kelly the Kitchen Kop’s Real Food Wednesdays Blog Carnival! On Monday, February 14, the Weston A. Price Foundation made its criticisms of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s dietary guidelines crystal clear. For anyone who had assumed the governmental agency must be doing its best to ensure the health of…
Hirshhorn nurse-in a huge success!
At least I got in some lactivism this weekend! It has been a long string of days with a dramatic, exuberant, clingy, whiny and non-stop-talking almost-five-year-old and a not-much-sleeping, perennially-teething (but happy!) six-month old. So I will save the full report on yesterday’s nurse-in at the Hirshhorn Museum for another time (will link if it…
WAPF to release alternatives to USDA guidelines
At 9 a.m. on Monday, February 14, the Weston A. Price Foundation is holding a press conference to explain its concerns about USDA dietary guidelines and to offer its alternative. WAPF’s Healthy 4 Life guidelines can been viewed in this pdf or ordered in a $10 booklet. I’m so excited that this information is finally…
Saved by DIY beauty products
Prior to having snow cancel 2.5 days off of school (and all local evening activities) the week before last, I got to attend a wonderful Moms Night Out with my chapter of Holistic Moms Network, starring special guest beauty mixologist Amy Fromm of Interlaken Soak Company. I met Amy back in the spring when my…
New food labels tell only part of the story
If the food industry has its way, shoppers will soon see an at-a-glance view of a product’s nutritional profile on the front of the package, separate from the complete nutritional information. The mini-profile will list the calories, fat grams, milligrams of sodium, and grams of sugar in big numbers (sometimes with a highlighted important “nutrient”…
When a friend gets cancer
I didn’t even know what the term lymphedema meant when Susan Niebur of Toddler Planet blog told me she was working out a deal to have compression sleeves made available to women who can’t afford them. I hadn’t ever met Susan, but I knew she was in a rough place with a recurrence of cancer;…
Thyroids of a feather…
When I wrote an essay titled “Attemptus Interruptus” about having to postpone conception to deal with Graves’ Disease, autoimmune hyperthyroidism, I had no idea that the woman I referenced in the second-to-last paragraph would face the same disease. I was best friends with S in eighth grade and spent most of the summer of 1987 on her…
Feelin’ the Holistic Moms love
What a surprise I got tonight when my Holistic Moms co-leaders and members presented me with flowers and a (gluten-free, dairy-free, soy-free, refined-sugar-free) cake at our monthly meeting! We decided not to do a huge anniversary party again this year after last year’s blow out, and I wasn’t really missing all the stress! But they…
Spreading the gluten-free gospel
I’m so excited for tonight’s Holistic Moms meeting on Special Diets! Going GF (and also dairy-free, soy-free, and corn-free) has made such a difference in my physical and mental health! Cheryl Harris of Harris Whole Health will be speaking on the reasoning behind gluten-free diets, dairy-free diets, the GAPS diet, the Specific Carbohydrate Diet, and…