Why I've Chosen Plant-Based Skincare (and why you should too!)

My passions are rooted firmly in an essentialist lifestyle and in the pursuit of less.

Through many years of learning about myself through life’s ups and downs, I’ve identified the life I want - a life where I focus on my family, my health, my home, and cultivating meaningful experiences. A life where I safeguard my mental and physical health; a life where I help others do the same. Together with my family, I’ve cut out what isn’t essential in order to make way for what’s important. I’ve been in pursuit of less since 2013. 

Early on in my journey, I encountered a severe barrier to reaching optimal health.

I was diagnosed with Ankylosing Spondylitis (AS), an autoimmune disorder that causes inflammation around the spine, attacking the bones and joints, and can affect the arms and legs as well. AS also causes inflammation in the skin, intestines, and eyes. My symptoms included lower back pain, overall body stiffness, sciatica, and joint pain. 

After many years of doctors and medications, I began to see a naturopath who steered me towards plant-based living to lower the inflammation markers in my body. I had to drastically reduce the stress in my life, as well as eliminate dairy, eggs, fried foods, and most meats from my diet. I began to choose healthier options and plant-based alternatives.  I can safely say that I’ve been in remission from my AS symptoms for almost 4 years! It was hard at first, but now, 7 years later, plant-based living is such an easy choice to keep my body healthy.

Choosing natural plant-based skincare

I’ve either been pregnant or nursing for the past three years. During this time, I became aware that what I put on my skin goes directly into my body and its systems. As the skin is the largest organ of the body, I needed to start treating it with goodwill just like the rest of my body. 

I’ve always prided myself on my low-maintenance skin care regimen.

Since my youth, I’ve existed on facial-care samples, gifted holiday-themed lotions, and pilfered hotel soaps. Once I began growing babies inside me, I became more concerned with what I put on my skin, and I started intentionally seeking out natural, organic, understandable plant-based alternatives. For a time, I became attached to a skin care line which seemed to be natural; however, I could never read or understand the ingredients.

Then, I discovered Peak Scents. 

Peak Scents only uses pure plant-derived herbs, vitamins, and minerals. The products are simple and straightforward to use. This company uses plants as nature intended: as a complete resource for natural healing. Whenever possible, Peak Scents uses old-pressed, raw, non-GMO organic oils, vitamins, and extracts in their products. They never use chemicals or chemical preservatives, instead opting for food-grade preservatives. The ingredients are clearly listed and easy to understand. Peak Scents reflects my values and passion for plant-based living, which makes it easy to choose this skincare line. 

DeeAnn Tracy founded Peak Scents in 1993. 

DeeAnn Tracy

She grew up in her mother’s apothecary shop in the 1970s, long before the essential oil craze, CBD hype, and renaissance of natural and holistic healing. DeeAnn was incredibly inspired by her mother’s desire to heal the world with the power of nature. It was her mission to learn about the earth and how to use herbs the best way. DeeAnn and her sister grew up in awe of their mother’s close relationship to Native American culture, and would often accompany their mother when she consulted elders about herbs.

It was through these intimate experiences with Native American culture and the outdoors that DeeAnn developed a deep, appreciative relationship with nature. The peace and comfort of the earth was acutely palatable to her, and the effects of this were amplified as she met people in her mother’s shop who ventured from all over the world who sought nature’s healing powers. 

DeeAnn on the Grand Canyon

After a brief interlude where DeeAnn explored Western medicine and stepped away from natural remedies, she returned to Flagstaff to manage her mother’s store. She also began working as a Grand Canyon river guide where she again experienced a strong community brought together by nature. 

After a time, she began noticing how her river guide community was suffering from terrible rashes due to the sun, the wind, and the heat. 

“The sunscreen they bought in stores wasn’t cutting it. In fact, the chemicals in those products just made it worse. I saw this happen, and I knew that I could help…I didn’t see a business idea. I didn’t see my future. I just saw my community suffering from something I had the knowledge to fix. So I started making healing salves, passing them around to the other guides for free. As they worked their magic, I decided to make a sunscreen to share with them as well.” - DeeAnn Tracy

The more natural products she created and shared, the more people loved it. From there, Peak Scents was born. DeeAnn’s company emerged out of a deep love and necessity for healing, nourishment, community, spirit, and energy.

Just like DeeAnn, I’ve traveled on a path that led to me natural healing. For me, it makes perfect sense to choose Peak Scents products because they are completely in line with my personal belief that all people can achieve wellness through a compassionate and reverent relationship with nature, our communities, and ourselves. 

If you are interested in learning more about Peak Scents and DeeAnn Tracy, you can visit the company website. And, if you would like to purchase any of their products, please enjoy 20% by using the code EVERTHRIVE.

Things You Probably Should Know about the Power of Music

An article about music might seem a bit off-topic for a blog based on slowing down and focusing on the important things in life. However, for me, music is a part of the important things in life!

All of our histories are highlighted by music in some way. Even if you don’t listen to music, and never have, I’m guessing you’ve been exposed to music via advertising, the radio, while browsing the aisles of your local shopping outlets, while dining at a restaurant, and countless other venues.

My history has been fairly rich with the presence of music. As a child, I grew up listening to my dad play guitar and piano, and compose his own music as well. My brothers and I all learned to play the piano. I was a member of a few choirs, and I chose to be in musicals for extra-curricular activities. I also took ballet lessons for a number of years - we were taught to allow the music to move through us, in order to transport our grace and fluidity to the next level.

As I grew older, and reached high school age, my friends and I devoured music on the radio, made mix-tapes, then CD mixes, and drove from the suburbs to downtown Chicago to see our favorite bands play in crowded, smokey venues. In my moody teenage bedroom, I would immerse myself in musical baths of my choice, depending on what mood I wanted to elicit. Its power over me was immense.

I was never without music. I had a Walkman, then a Discman, then an iPod, and now I can get music anytime on my smartphone. Music has always ornamented my life, highlighting certain moments, making some more memorable than others. Music, to me, is almost synonymous with memory. In fact, to process music, the brain uses the same processing technique as emotion and memory. 

Trying to remember how to play piano, Dad’s house, 2016

I listen to music less often now, but when I do, I still feel its effects, perhaps just as potently as I did when I was young. 

We humans have always sought music and art to express ourselves. By playing music, we celebrate life, we honor the future, and we mourn what has been lost. Music invokes memories from the past, transports us to different times and places, and makes us feel incredible joy. According to neurologist Oliver Sacks, “Music imprints itself on the brain deeper than any other human experience.”

Music is so influential that it has purportedly brought up birth weights in premature infants, elicited positive effects on plant growth, and aided in the recovery of patients suffering from brain damages. Music has also been documented in boosting performance in sports, improving literacy scores, and helping patients recover from heart attacks. 

Music is clearly exceptionally powerful. 

However, in addition to boosting our mental and physical health on many levels, music can also bring about negative outcomes, such as profound sadness, over-stimulation, hearing loss, memory triggering, emotional flooding, and distress. For example, studies have shown that music can create false memories, confusion, and anxiety in dementia patients who are hoping to recall their lost selves. Music’s adverse effects can multiply and snowball into potentially serious psychological and physical distress, depending on preexisting conditions.

Warped Tour, 1999

As a teenager and through my early 20s, I often used music as a way to escape instead of face reality. Music had a way of altering my mindset, causing me to view both the world and my place in it much differently. The music I chose to listen to, coupled with the circumstances surrounding my consumption of the music, may have had a role in some of the choices I made at the time.

Music has a way of putting us under a spell and forcing us to move against our wills. This can be clearly seen in the very young and also very old. Studies on older infants and toddlers show that when little kiddos hear music, they start to wiggle around and “dance,” as though moved by an unseen force. This also happens to the elderly, as seen in dementia patients, showing that music can make people say or do things that have no relation to reality.

Advertisers have been using music’s powerful effects to their advantage for decades. The familiarity of a song can have powerful sway over consumer behavior. Marketing and advertising firms (and other institutions that use music to rouse an audience) are very successful in eliciting a desired emotional response, and they are very aware of the type of music that might create it. For example, they know that certain major or minor key tunes can manipulate emotion:

“Different melodies, chords, or key changes in songs can elicit responses. For example, strings playing short and sharp notes in a major key were found to elicit feelings of happiness and excitement in 87% of respondents. Meanwhile, a shift from major to minor keys provoked a sense of sadness or melancholy in 83%, and 90% found acoustic guitar sounds to be caring, calm and sophisticated.”

From “Science of Sound: How music makes advertising more memorable”

Part of living mindfully is being a mindful about what we expose ourselves to. In addition to being aware of the effects of “too much” in terms of our digital lives, our possessions, our schedules, and our mental loads, we should also be aware of music’s powerful effects.

Music can wield incredible power over our minds, bodies, and emotions. To quote Stan Lee from Spider Man: “With great power comes great responsibility.” This power can do wonderful, beautiful things. Music has the wonderful ability of accentuating and enlivening our days, providing richness to our earthly experience, and ornamenting our realities, but we need to be aware that music’s power does not always work in our favor, and can actually bring about negative effects.

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I’m not a music scientist, nor am I a licensed psychologist, so the opinions above are my own, highlighted by research I’ve done. I personally find the effects of music to be very fascinating. What about you? What is your personal history with music? I’d love to hear what you think about any of this, or if you can add to the discussion. Please leave a comment below or email me at ali.everthrive@gmail.com

Bring Back Christmas

Ah, the holidays. The year many of us travel thousands of miles to visit with family, cook for what seems like 24 hours, and endure complex present-opening rituals with polite “thank yous” for gifts we didn’t really need. Then, we clean up in a resentful, zombie-like state. Everyone goes to bed exhausted, drained, and looking forward to “Not Christmas.”

Does any of this seem familiar?

If you’re like me, you’re left wondering:

• What happened to the warm, fuzzy holiday cheer?

• Why must I go through all this trouble when all I wanted to do was spend meaningful time with my family?

• How didn’t I have a meaningful conversation or connection with anyone?

• Am I just a Grinch, or what?

I really don’t like feeling like this. Getting family together at the holidays shouldn’t be a trouble or a burden. The phrase “worth the trouble” doesn’t really work here. After all, spending meaningful time with family shouldn’t be trouble at all. Sometimes we try to hold onto past traditions so tightly that we miss other opportunities that would better suit us. If there doesn’t seem to be a point to the current rituals, then Christmas really is a burden after all.

What’s the point of the holidays, anyway?

Last year, my husband Josh and I ended up staying at home in Fort Collins for the holidays. This wasn’t the initial intention; we had planned on traveling to Michigan to see his family. Unfortunately, a relative in Florida became ill, and Christmas in Michigan was cancelled. We were sad about this, but in the end, we didn’t really mind, as plane tickets from Denver to Detroit were incredibly pricey at that time of year, and I, being four months pregnant, was dealing with daily in-and-out nausea. The thought of sitting through a potentially turbulent flight made me want to vomit anyway.

Instead, we spent Christmas at home. We made waffles. We watched Christmas movies, snuggled our dog Chauncey, and enjoyed the day on the couch, relishing the slow sanctity of our little cocooned family. We thought about our baby, the future, and how far we’d come to get to our happy present. We called our families, and shared holiday joy with them all. For dinner, we went to a local Thai restaurant where the service was exceptionally languid, but since “slow” was the theme of the day, we really didn’t mind at all.

We really did have a simple, heartfelt, and natural Christmas. The only thing missing was the rest of our family.

Christmas should be simple, heartfelt, and natural.

This year, we are traveling to see my family in the Chicago area for the holiday. And, to everyone’s excitement, we’re bringing 7-month old Everbaby with us. He just started sitting up, exercising all his vocal chords, and executing slow 360’s on the carpet. He has a great will to explore, and he casts a sweet, soft smile at everyone he meets. I can’t wait to see Everbaby sitting before the Christmas tree, adorned with twinkly bubbly lights and ornaments from my childhood. I can’t wait to watch him take it all in! I hope we can experience his many firsts slowly, without rushing. I want to wrap our whole family up in a blanket and snuggle them and share our joy with grandparents, aunts, uncles.

This year I’m going to Bring Back Christmas.

I’m going to bring back Christmas for my son, and for a sustainable future of holidays to come.

• This year, I’m going to decline participating in holiday traditions that leave me feeling exhausted, empty, and overwhelmed.

• This year, I’m going to stop living outdated expectations of the holidays.

• This year, I’m going to support a simple, mindful, meaningful holiday where both connecting with loved ones and connecting with the spirit of Christmas is the focus.

  Will you join me in bringing the holidays back to the basics, in whatever way that means to you?

Let’s Bring Back Christmas