If you are reading this I imagine you are a concerned mama (or papa) trying to keep everyone in your household alive during flu season. I definitely hear ya. We went through it a few years ago, and it is still pretty sharp in my mind. This post explains what I learned about supporting my family with natural remedies while they healed from the flu – without pharmaceutical intervention.
Welcome to my updated review of Truly Free (formerly “My Green Fills”) nontoxic laundry detergent. 🙂
I am updating this post after FIVE YEARS of using Truly Free, and I’m happy to say that with years now of baby and kid-stained shirts and smoothie and grease splashes of my own, I am even more grateful for a nontoxic, natural laundry detergent that works!
I remember the first time I switched to “natural” laundry detergent in 2008, shortly after my cancer diagnosis. It seemed pretty decent and not much different than my old Tide or Gain (except a lot less toxic!) Then I had kids and…YAH. This is where my “natural” laundry detergent was put to the test.
At first, I doubted myself at times- that perhaps I just forgot to put the detergent in the washing machine?? That’s how little of a difference the detergent made on my baby’s stains! It had nothing on diaper blowouts and dried, day old spit up. Onesie after onesie was ruined, even after pretreating it.
And over the years it had just gotten worse and more frustrating as my kids grew and stains became more fierce.
Thankfully, with Truly Free I’ve finally found a non-toxic laundry system that works, and I’m going to talk a little about that today. 🙌
Each fall I make a big purchase of all of the natural remedies I use to keep my family healthy through the colder winter months here in Georgia.
These are seriously my family’s secret sauce for prevention, quick healing, and avoiding the doctor since the birth of my first daughter in 2009. As with any natural remedy, they need other action steps such as sufficient rest and sleep, excellent nutrition, and consistency with use. But I bet you already knew that. 😀
We are adjusting back to normal life this week. The Truth About Cancer: LIVE event was as expected, AWESOME.
(Streaming NOW through Sunday, October 15th online for FREE .)
If I were to sum it up, it was different than last year in that I met so many other people with similar healing stories as mine. I talked to Chris Wark about this while I was there and he agreed- stories like ours (cancer healed with no chemo or radiation) are becoming much more common!
We met so many and several with Stage 4 cancers with multiple metastases that have completely healed with non-toxic therapies. All ages too, young and old.
I hope this encourages you tremendously. People are choosing natural therapies and healing!
I spoke to over 100 people on behalf of HealingStrong and get the feeling we are going to be adding 20-25+ new natural healing support groups before the year is over. Maybe more.
It’s awesome to be a part of this “movement”…
Here are a few pics from the event. 🙂
This is Part 3 in my vaccine series discussing how we made our decision on which vaccines we give our children. You may also want to check out the other two posts in this series: Part 1: Risks, Benefits, Responsibility and Part 2: Hepatitis B and Hib Vaccines.
So, to be perfectly transparent- this was the vaccine I most deeply considered. I was scared of my child getting whooping cough and diphtheria sounded horrible, too. Drug manufacturer propaganda tapped into my mama fears big time. Remember that commercial with the grandmother dressed up as a wolf disguised with killer whooping cough? I thought I was putting my baby at THAT kind of risk.
Nowadays everyone, even pregnant women are recommended for TDaP boosters (the adult version of DTaP) every ten years to help out with the “whooping cough problem”.
Today we are going to look into what’s really going on with pertussis and discuss the details of the other diseases that the DTaP is recommended for: diphtheria and tetanus.
I really didn’t know what else to name this post. It is simply what it is. That time God spoke to my husband in the chemo room.
To any of you visiting here for the first time and also to you all that have been hanging around with me for a while, you need to know that I haven’t written about this in the seven years since I started my blog. I have very rarely ever talked about it publicly even though this experience is what cemented our decision to pursue non-toxic therapies for my cancer in 2008.
I was concerned that by sharing it, our story would be dismissed as ridiculous, too religious, or just plain weird.
So I just left it out of the conversation.
But then a few years ago at the 2013 HealingStrong conference, something AMAZING happened and I changed my mind. Spine tingling amazing. And I started talking about it. I am so excited to share it with you today.
This is Part 2 in the series on how we made the decision about vaccines for our family. You can find Part 1 here and I strongly recommend reading it to get our family’s backstory before reading on. 😀
If you read my last post then you know that after months of research and amidst my healing from cancer while pregnant, we decided to delay vaccination for our daughter at birth. We had a lot on our plate and did not feel comfortable making such a big decision that we couldn’t reverse. When we decided this we weren’t necessarily sure HOW LONG we would delay but knew we weren’t comfortable with either decision yet.
I left off in my last post with our decision to delay vaccination at birth. So let’s pick up right there.
If you’ve been reading my blog for a while then you know I’m a bit hesitant to engage in this whole vaccine discussion publicly. And I imagine I’m not the only one here who feels that way.
A few months ago I attempted to publish this series and discuss vaccines for the first time ever on my blog.
But the fear kept me quiet and I decided against it.
Time has gone by and I still haven’t been able to shake the conviction to talk about it publicly, even if I have to deal with some backlash.
So I decided to simply just tell my story. This is MY story. MY family. I figured that I would share it and let you know that although this is not medical advice, it is what I’ve learned along the way. I hope you all find it immensely helpful in sifting through this uncomfortable but very important decision.
I want to preface this post with the fact that I did my best in linking up the studies I bookmarked, books I read, and notes from talks with our pediatrician, as well as other references over the last almost ten years of research since my first pregnancy, but as any mother of three little ones would know- there’s just not enough time for perfection.
So to sum it up, my disclaimer is: Ponder on my words, but DO your own research. Our family dynamics, health histories, and living circumstances are all so different.
OK, here we are. And I’m really going to press the PUBLISH button this time. Here we go…NOW. 😀
I’m writing this post on a four hour Amtrak train ride from Boston to New York, wrapping up a nine day trip with my husband. 😊 Travel strategy is fresh in my head, and since it’s been a few months since my last post, I wanted to catch up with everyone here!
Today I’m sharing a bit of what worked and what didn’t along our travels these last seven days. To make this trip happen, we DROVE 🚗 from our home in Atlanta in our minivan to South Florida, dropped our three kids off with my parents there and took a PLANE ✈ to New York. Then we took the AMTRAK train 🚄 to Boston and then back to New York where we will catch a PLANE 🛬 back to South Florida and will drive back home to Atlanta. 🚗
Phew. And YES we are very grateful for my parents wanting to binge watch their grandchildren. 😜
PERFECT isn’t a thing….especially on vacation.
I am proud to say that we are not PERFECT people. I ate steak once on this trip. And had a bit of ice cream. And on the Amtrak I ate a microwaved sandwich. Oh Lordy Be I was starving. I even joked to my husband…”you know <insert any alternative health blogger here> would say that they just FAST if there’s nothing healthy to eat”….as I bit into my rubbery sandwich. <sigh>
These are obviously not everyday healthy choices and definitely not anti-cancer. But it has been 9 years since my cancer diagnosis and 8 years since remission. It’s nice at this point to occasionally have a treat that I enjoy and loosen the obsessiveness and intensity this lifestyle can create.
I still struggle with guilt sometimes about eating food I typically don’t eat (especially sugar when I rarely do,) but I’ve learned over the years that if I choose to do it, I’m going to let it go and enjoy the moment.
I’ve also learned that I don’t eat a lot of it. With sugar in particular too much of it makes me feels sick. Even if I order the kid-sized portions I usually don’t even finish that.
It’s nice to open up a bit to you all today. Sometimes it is easier to keep the stuff I eat that I’m not so proud of to myself, but I’m a real person and MOM to three kids. It’s nice to RELAX the rules and rigidity sometimes.
Searching for online alternative cancer support? I’ve learned that it’s pretty normal to feel alone when you choose to treat your cancer naturally. It comes with the territory. 🙂
You eventually get used to it- feeling a bit like an outcast amongst even your closest loved ones. But it’s our doctors and medical team that can be the most discouraging since our choice is one that goes against mainstream belief about cancer treatment. A community of cancer “thrivers” who are coming from a similar place as you are would be amazing, right? Thankfully nowadays this is totally a reality.