When wellness becomes a weight: My Crunchy Lifestyle Story (pt. 1)
My Crunchy Lifestyle story:
It’s been a little while since my last post — the one where I shared about stepping back from social media to rediscover what it truly means to me. That season of quiet gave me space to look inward, to question not just how I show up online, but why I do what I do. Focusing on the messy middle is where my heart landed and I am excited to share what has been stirring.
As I’ve been sorting through those layers, I realized that to understand where I am now, I need to revisit where it all began. The story I’m sharing today takes me back to the early days of motherhood — to a time when my pursuit of wellness started with the purest intentions, but somewhere along the way, became something heavier to carry.
This post is part of my blog series, A Little Less Toxic: My Breakup with Crunchy Perfection — a personal look at how my well-intentioned pursuit of a “perfectly” non-toxic life slowly became a weight I couldn’t carry. In each post, I’m sharing pieces of my story — the good, the hard, and the in-between — and how I’m learning to trade pressure for peace, one choice at a time.
When I first became a mom, something shifted in me. I suddenly cared about every single thing my baby came into contact with — things I had never thought twice about before. Funny enough, I wasn’t even that focused on it during pregnancy.
It began innocently enough: a switch to a gentler laundry detergent. A swap of the cleaning products under my sink. Then came a few food changes based on “better” ingredients. It was a slow, manageable process, guided by my own curiosity and research.
Then came my second baby — and an introduction to Young Living essential oils.
It felt like the missing puzzle piece I didn’t even know I was searching for. The products gave me tangible ways to make non-toxic changes. The community gave me meaningful friendships during a season of nap schedules, park walks, and endless boo-boos.
And in classic “me” fashion, I went all in.
So fast, in fact, that my husband didn’t quite know what hit him. Every time he turned around, something familiar had been swapped for something new. Gone was the laundry detergent he recognized, the hand soap we’d used for years, the old pantry staples. I was on a mission — and I wasn’t slowing down.
When Health Got Complicated:
In 2014, our world tilted. Our daughters, just two and four at the time, received health diagnoses that changed the course of our family’s life.
It was a whirlwind — countless appointments, new medications, treatments we didn’t yet understand, and a future full of question marks. I unpack the details in this post: 2014: The Year of Unplanned Changes.
When so much was out of my control, I clung tightly to what I could control.
I dove deeper into researching ingredients, reading labels, and replacing anything that didn’t meet my new standard. I began educating others, sharing Young Living, and building a team of incredible women who were just as passionate as I was. That sense of community and purpose gave me something to hold onto — something I could do when everything else felt so uncertain.
The Downside of “All or Nothing”
Here’s the thing about me: I’m an all-or-nothing kind of person. It’s one of my greatest strengths — and one of my greatest struggles.
Back then, I didn’t realize how quickly passion can turn into pressure. How striving for the “best” can so easily slip into perfectionism. And how living “all in” can sometimes mean living out of balance.
In recent years, I’ve been learning to live more in the grey — to let go of that crushing standard of perfection and embrace a more balanced, grace-filled approach.
It’s been a journey… but one worth taking.
As I look back, I can see how what started as a sincere desire to create a healthier home slowly became a source of pressure and exhaustion. In my next post, I’ll share how that tension began to show up in everyday life — and what it looked like when “wellness” stopped feeling well at all.