And Then I Said “Younger Self, listen to me”

Too much, women lie to each other to soften the blows of life.

We—you and I—do it. Not so much anymore, but when we were in the throes of our twenties, we did it. I get why we did it, because when our best girlfriend is a puddle of hurt and anger at our feet, we just want to make it go away.

You’re fine. It wasn’t your fault. You did your best. You’ll get over this. Something/one better is waiting.

What we–you and I–have learned is that none of those words are helpful. When someone’s life falls apart, it’s not a thing to be gotten over. We can’t just leave pain behind us, like it never happened. Neither can we pick up our brokenness and carry it with us. We have to mend.

The thing is, mending is hard work. It requires courage and strength and faith.

So we have to be careful what we say to our sister girl in the puddle of hurt and anger at our feet. It’s not our job to make it like it never happened.

Our—yours and mine—friend is having some of the worst trouble of her life. There are no easy ways through the trouble, nothing to do but walk straight through, and for a while.

At your age, we—you and me—would have saddled up the posse and rode into town to make it all right. We would have used our words of fire and anger to declare that this will not stand.

We would have slowed her healing and hurt her more than helped.

Crosses are part of life and they have to be carried. If we try to save people from their crosses, we only make the way longer and harder.

So the other day, when she said she wasn’t sure she could survive the pain in her heart, I told her the truth: You—the person you are today—are not going to survive this. But I promise that you will defeat that death and rise again wiser, stronger and more whole.

She won’t walk this alone. I will be a witness. I will raise my hands in prayer and call down the power of Heaven. I will give her space to reflect in her darkest days. And when she rises triumphant, I’ll be there to rejoice.

I wish I could say that we–you and me–learned this from a book.

But we didn’t. We lived it. You still have those times ahead so just remember that you have chosen your sisters well.

You are all women of the Resurrection and you know the way.

We’re posting as part of Suzanne Eller’s livefreeThursday! See more posts on Twitter at #livefreethursday

Safer Anti-Aging Skin Care

In the words of that immortal beauty sage, Truvy Jones: Honey, time marches on and eventually you realize it is marchin’ across your face.

Sisters, that day is here.

I am not going to fight aging. But neither am I willing to sit idly by.

I have amazing genes on both sides of my family. My mother and my aunt look nowhere near their ages. Good stuff.

But the good stuff could always use a hand up.

My problem is, have you looked at anti-aging stuff lately? No Bueno. As if skin care conglomerates believe women are willing to take the risk of dangerous chemicals and toxins to look younger for a few more years.

One of the biggest mom job make-up companies—Mary Kay Cosmetics—refuses to disclose their skin care regimen ingredients, despite pressure from several watchdog groups.

I attended a “party” with one of the top sellers in our region in the last few months and she gleefully explained that the make-up remover will not just remove make-up from your face, but crayon from the wall and red wine from the carpet!

My face stopped her cold.

“Yes?” she asked.

“Why on earth would I put that on MY FACE???!!” I asked.

Here’s my line of thinking—if the make-up is so petroleum based that I need an industrial strength cleaner to get it off my living, breathing skin—then I’m O. U. T.

Even Arbonne, which touts its all-natural status, is not completely clean. Only 9 of their products have been evaluated by the EWG’s Skin Deep Database, which ranks safety based on ingredients. And the sole anti-aging product scores in the most dangerous category for developmental and reproductive toxicity.*

If you don’t know Skin Deep, it’s worth a visit. I have the app on my phone, which allows me to scan bar codes of products and instantly see whether they are safe based on cancer, allergy, and developmental and reproductive concerns.

This is how I know that most of the anti-aging products available in stores (from Walgreen’s to Nordy’s) are not safe.

You know already what Dana and I did. We made some ourselves.

Regenerating Skin Serum

I got Natural Beauty ($15.95 new) on Amazon. I ordered all the oils from Amazon, as well, using my Prime membership for faster shipping. And they have the 2 oz glass bottles ($21.99 for six). I did not buy the dropper tops because I thought that would be messy. I bought the pump tops and they work great.

Recipe:

Add all oils to bowl. Mix well. Transfer to bottle ($2.66 each).

4 teaspoons kiwi seed oil ($9 for 2 oz, $.75/tsp)

2 teaspoons rice bran oil ($13.50 for 12 oz, $.19/tsp)

1 teaspoon pumpkin seed oil ($13.99 for 8 oz, $.30/tsp)

1 teaspoon argan oil ($9.95 for 1 oz, $1.65/tsp)

1 teaspoon borage oil ($14.49 for 4 oz, $.60/tsp)

1 teaspoon vitamin E oil ($5.50 for 4 oz, $.23/tsp)

5 drops essential oil (optional)

Total cost (excluding essential oil): $8.82

Apply over a clean face morning and evening. Follow with sunscreen in the morning and anti-aging face butter at night.

Anti-aging Face Butter

Holly Berry Dairy is one of our local goat milk soap and lotion makers. She just started making fabulous unscented body butter, which is not yet available on her website, but for this recipe any natural and unscented lotion or body butter will work. The folks over at Goat Milk Stuff also make an unscented tub of lotion.

Recipe:

To 2 oz of unscented and safe, natural lotion, add the following essential oils**:

6 drops sandalwood

6 drops helichrysum

6 drops geranium

6 drops lavender

6 drops frankinsense

Mix thoroughly. Apply morning (follow with a sunscreen) and evening over Regenerating Skin Serum.

Some of these oils are the most expensive essential oils on the market, with a combined cost of $254.50 as purchased from DoTerra. But a .5 oz vial has 228 drops. So a $75 vial of helichrysum can make 38 batches of anti-aging cream.

Yes, the initial overall investment is a big gulp–$336.92. But I made my first batch in May and am only half way through. So if each batch lasts four or five months, we are looking at a cost of $70/year for a natural, safe and effective anti-aging regime.

Come on, ladies. We’re worth it!

*I can, however, highly recommend Arbonne’s baby sunscreen and their mascara, which both scored a 1 on the Skin Deep scale and work wonderfully.

**All of these oils are available for purchase from our very own DoTerra website at http://www.mydoterra.com/danaalvarez/#/

Dating

When you move, there’s this: making friends.

Before we moved, I thought about it, but more like “Oh, we’ll make friends!” or “The kids will make friends!”

Not once did I remember that making friends is like dating.

I HATED dating.

We are a very social family. We say the garage door is always open because the front door is just too stuffy. Come over, come in and bring your kids, dogs, food and drink.

In California, after ten years, we had gotten to that super comfortable place where the house didn’t have to be flawlessly clean to have guests. Everyone knew their way around the bathrooms and the kitchen. The kids didn’t ask for something to drink, they just rolled into the house and got it.

Every time we have someone over now, it’s still the early stages. I feel like the house has to be spotlessly clean and the kids have to be well-behaved and I spend a lot of time pointing out the bathroom and the getting kids a cup of water.

Because we want people to come back, you know. And first impressions are important.

Usually I’m holding my breath and hoping that someone doesn’t say or do something that’s a deal breaker. Those little conversations between moms that have the potential to cause problems—“No, we don’t drink soda”. Or “Yes, I can my own jam”. Or “That’s right, the kids have their own TV downstairs”.

Tip-toeing through a minefield.

Exhausting.

So far, lots of lovely folks have come through our garage and with some of them, I’ve even started closing bedrooms doors instead of insisting every room be spic and span.

I just wish I could fast forward a year and all the awkward getting-to-know-you stuff would be over.

In other news, we have snakes.

It's true that this little guy is less than a foot long. But does that really matter? — It’s true that this little guy is less than a foot long. But does that really matter?

Something to do with living on a previously uninhibited hill with two seasonal creeks and major construction above us.

Those of you who live where snakes also live, can you shoot me some advice on how to live with the stress? Especially the kind that rattle. We have a very fearless cadre of husbands around us who dispense of snakes at the merest shriek, but still. I heard a story at bunco the other night about a snake curled up under a car in a garage.

A garage that is right down the street from me.

Saints preserve us. Why does it always have to be snakes????

#cheersfromsouthernoregon

Harassed

I’ve been reading so many great articles supporting women. These articles challenge the use of gender to put down someone else (“Stop being a little girl!”), call for the end of devaluing powerful qualities in women and little girls (“She’s bossy,” versus “He takes charge,”) and my favorite, the Always commercial that you can watch here, which challenges the notion of “She hits (or runs, or plays) like a girl.” That last one is my favorite because I can hit the smack out of a volleyball. You WISH you hit like me.

Although it is refreshing to hear and read people discussing these things, on Tuesday I was reminded that there still are differences in the way that people treat men and women, and that sexual harassment is something that creeps its way into our everyday lives.

As a high school teacher, formerly in a school setting, presently in a tutoring setting, I find myself locked in a room with 30+ teenagers on a regular basis. There are some things that are super cool about this, like their eagerness to learn (sometimes), their willingness to please, their creativeness, and their sense of humor. I have taught some really great kids. However, there are some not-so-great things, too, like their defiance of authority, the chip on their shoulder, their disinterest, and their hormones. Oh, those hormones. The girls can sometimes be ultra-sensitive, or cool and stand-offish from one day to the next. And the boys can be giggly, or have a crush on anything that walks in front of them, including me. In fact, when I was a new (read: much younger) teacher, many of the boys would ask, “So, Ms. B, when are we going to go out?” to which I would reply something smug like, “Please. You couldn’t afford my dry-cleaning.” I even had a student that, on every single piece of paper that he turned in to me for an entire year, wrote his name, his phone number, and “call me.” I always laugh off those incidents because they are light-hearted and innocent.

But there have been a few other times where the “joke” has crossed the line. Tuesday was one of those times. In a tutoring class that I teach, there is a group of boys that have been skating close to the line. They’ve been flirtatious, asking me to come to their male-beauty pageant, showing me the dance they’ll be performing which I asked them to stop due to too much pelvic thrusting, but on Tuesday night, on the sign in sheet, one of them signed in as Ron Jeremy, the pornography star. As I checked the sheet I didn’t react, knowing that that’s exactly what “Mr. Jeremy” wanted. But I was angry. If the student had signed in as Luke Skywalker, Michael Jackson, or Ronald McDonald, it would have been funny. But Ron Jeremy has a sexual tone that is absolutely inappropriate for a work or classroom setting.

And you know what? I’m tired of it. I’m tired of discussing it. I’m tired of telling students that this sort of “joke” is inappropriate. They KNOW it is. I’m tired of telling administration about the student that drew an erect, ejaculating penis on a paper that he turned in to me, only to have the incident brushed off as “an error in judgment” and that I need to “lighten up” and “not take it so seriously.” I’m tired of this behavior being swept away, when we know that it is wrong. I’m tired that I am a 39-year-old woman with 15 years of teaching experience and (almost) a Master’s Degree, and I have to put up with sexual harassment from a 17-year-old punk.

And don’t even get me started on what I’ve put up with from principals and district officials. A principal once asked me if I liked the way his “ass moves” as he walked up the stairs in front of me. There was a time that an assistant superintendent of our district leaned in for a hug, but rubbed one hand over my 7-month pregnant belly, looked me in the eye and said, “There’s nothing sexier than a pregnant woman.” I’m tired that this sort of behavior isn’t absolutely abhorrent and that parents, administrators, and district offices don’t drop the hammer on the offenders. I’m done talking about whether or not this happens. It does. While we are all sitting around deliberating what is or is not harassment, women are being harassed. I’m tired of people looking the other way. I’m tired of the offenders being moved and/or promoted and not punished. I’m tired of “sensitivity training.” I’m tired of “Mrs. Alvarez has a problem with Mr. X” I don’t have the problem. He does.

Some friends of ours have an older boy who has a pretty smart mouth. Whenever he says something that he shouldn’t, his parents respond with a “Hey, that’s inappropriate.” That’s it. And he says “inappropriate” things all the time with no consequence. He’s a good kid overall, but he can say whatever he wants and never gets called out on it. I wonder what he says when his parents aren’t around and what he will say in the future.

It’s time, parents. It’s time to start teaching our children that in a world of tongue-in-cheek remarks and innuendo, it is not only inappropriate, but unacceptable to make sexual jokes. It’s unacceptable at school; it’s unacceptable in the workplace. It’s time that we not only expect more from our sons, but that we demand more.

Still Planting, Still Growing

We’ve just passed up our two-year anniversary here on Full of Graces. Last week, Jen and I were talking about some of our favorite posts that we have written. Immediately my mind jumped to the post I wrote about Planting Trees. I remember that we had just moved into our new house and the kids were so little. My husband’s parents gave us a bunch of trees, nine to be exact, to plant in the bare landscape of our back yard and I had purchased three beautiful lavender bushes and a jasmine to plant as well. As we (and by we I mean my husband) were planting all of these lovely things in our yard, it really felt to me like we were planting roots. It felt monumental, like this was now our home. We were both so eager to have a big yard for our kids to run around in, to have a safe neighborhood to Trick-or-Treat in, and we were sure that this place was it.

Two years later, now, our roots are definitely taking hold. The trees are growing slowly, and beginning to show signs of giving fruit this year. The lavender and jasmine bushes grow like crazy and fill our evenings with their beautiful fragrance. We’ve added a vegetable garden that nourishes our family. And as I sit out on the patio, rain or shine, morning, afternoon, or evening, I am so thankful for all of our roots. I’m thankful for this beautiful place to raise our girls, but I’m also thankful for the intrinsic roots that ground us all together. I’m grateful for the family and friends that have graced our home at Christmas parties, birthday parties, and dinners together, and that fill our lives with everyday laughter and love.

Our roots are beginning to run deep. And our lives are beginning to truly flower. Thank you for being a part of that.