Abby’s Story

When I was a young adult, if I could have looked through a window to my future life, I never would have imagined that I would be regularly drinking cayenne powder in juice or applying a castor oil pack to my aches and pains.  I would have never thought that I would know even what slippery elm was or that it can be used for lots of different health issues.  What even makes it so slippery anyway?  Or why on earth would I even dream of putting cayenne pepper on a open wound??

When I started off my adult journey in college, I had grand plans of someday becoming a professional orchestra director or that I would be performing my clarinet on grand stages all around the country.  I wanted to do big things and reach for the sky, and I was well on my way to approaching the start of that goal.  There was a pivotal moment in my life when I was deciding which graduate school to attend and how far away I wanted to be.  However, once I started going down that path, I realized that the life it would lead was a very lonely one.  My friends and family being left behind would only see me a few token times a year, and I quickly realized that was not the life for me.  

Fast forward a few years…I was a music teacher at a small Christian school, fulfilling my “directing” dream when the year of Covid hit.  Everything shut down and life just stopped.  I wasn’t so much afraid of the virus, as I was of the craziness that brought people buying up toilet paper like it was the new currency.  As much as this was a crazy time for some people, it was actually the best time of my life, because I met the love of my life…Tyler James.  I knew it was love at first sight when the first activity we did together was target shooting.  While everyone else was worrying about which type of variant of the virus they were gonna catch, we were spending every day together hiking and enjoying getting to know each other.  

Before I knew it, we were married and pregnant with our first little girl.  And now, instead of dreaming of directing the Baltimore symphony on a grand stage, I’m changing poopy diapers and sticking onions in my kid’s socks when they get sick.  But you know what?  I wouldn’t change it for anything.  But the more important question is how did I get to this “crunchy” phase of my life? (as the cool kids are calling it these days).  After all, growing up, we were just like any other normal family…Eating out several times a week, having ice cream all the time, packed school lunches with PB and J, and sour patch kids….Lots of sour patch kids.  Don’t blame my mother.  She tried her best to get me to eat healthier foods, but I was always a picky one!

I was living the dream!  Eating what I want, staying 110 pounds.  No effort in cooking, exercise or thinking about my health.  But when I got pregnant, that was the first time I realized my health could directly affect someone else.  I didn’t care enough about my own health, but when it came to my baby, I was willing to try anything.  Thus the journey started of checking labels, and trying to avoid most packaged foods.  I really only planned to do this for the first 12 weeks of my pregnancy, and once the risk of miscarriage was past, I was going to go back to normal.  But my regular eating habits of pasta, pizza and oreos didn’t seem so normal anymore.  

Now when I looked at food labels, I couldn’t unsee things like high fructose corn syrup, msg, and Red 40.  There was no looking back, but how much more did I want to know?  One evening, my husband and I came across several documentaries talking about the evils of sugar and GMOs.  I was hooked after that, but I couldn’t help also feeling overwhelmed by the monstrosity this food industry had become.  How was I supposed to protect my family when literally everything was trying to kill us?

Since then, I’ve had times of being really strict, but also struggling with how hard life hits  with 3 pregnancies in 4 years.  It stressed me out that I couldn’t keep up with the demand of healthy living.  However, I also began to realize that our previous food choices hadn’t left us bed ridden before, so we’d probably be fine as we fluctuate during harder times.  I rest on that, and the fact that God has protected us so far.  For now, I continue to learn and take opportunities as they come, in hope to take baby steps in making better choices for my family.  If you’re still reading this, I congratulate you on reading my long-winded monologue, but I wanted to share a bit about myself, where I came from and what I’m trying to do.  The purpose of this blog is to share little moments and thoughts I learn along the way as I delve deeper into this “crunchy” world.  I hope you’ll tune in for our future blogs as we dive into various topics, and take away something new that can benefit you.