Organic Girly

Soccer-style kicks. Little hops on sidewalks. The resounding sound of “Crunch. Crunch. Crunch.” For many of us, this is our experience with the broken fragments of glass that oft line our curbs, our parks and our natural homes. And for most of us, these pieces of green, brown, blue, amber and more, are castaways—swept up by a street cleaner or slowly buried under a pile of leaves. 

Connecting the Past to the Future

Yet, it’s the little things that can go far—in sharing beauty, in being of use, in telling a story of something larger than itself. For Laura Bergman, a reclaim artist and Founder of Bottled Up Designs, these abandoned remnants are gems for the rescue. Earrings. Necklaces. Artifacts of beauty. As much of a historian as she is a designer, Bergman crafts her eco friendly jewelry with a deep love and appreciation for the story behind it. “It’s a truly unique way to preserve the past while helping the future,” says Bergman. 

For the complete article, please visit my column on EcoPlum…

(Photos courtesy of Sybren A. Stüvel—thank you!)

Balance.  Just the mere mention can cause a tinge of angst.  You see, the very notion of balance has been an ever-moving seesaw since I seriously thought about what it means to be truly balanced.  That was seven years ago.  I worked for an organic company rooted in the idea of balance—balance for your health, balance for your beauty, balance for our planet.  I wrote about balance and talked about balance.  Ironically, I never felt I lived in balance.  In fact, looking back, always striving for the perfect point of equilibrium probably made this vague concept even less attainable. 

Pointing to its very elusiveness, the Merriam-Webster Dictionary cites nine definitions.  It’s described as “physical equilibrium”, a means of “judging or deciding”, “mental and emotional steadiness” and of course “an instrument for weighing”, to name a few. 

Immediately, I cross out the ideas of weight or measurement devises.  I try to stay away from scales.  Frankly, I feel less out of balance—mentally and emotionally—when I stand on one.  Instead, I think about inner balance.  Waking and sleeping.  Feeling happy and sometimes sad.  And, on the current subject of detoxing, indulging in copious chocolate chip cookies, only to let it all go for deep green liquid chlorophyll.  

 Life on the Edge

 As humans, we’ve been conditioned to live on the edge—aim higher than high, stay up long enough to see the sunrise and sunset (possibly with the help of a double shot espresso), push harder up the mountain of life.  After all, isn’t progress—stemming from life on the brink—what evolved us to the advancements of today?  “To a point,” I’d respond.  As we know from reports of temperatures sliding up and down, land mass eroding and water flooding, our world can use a little loving shift back to balance—a return to us living in harmony with the same planet that’s invited us here. 

As for you, and I, how can we live closer to a place of balance?  Sorry to say, I don’t have an absolute answer.  We’re all unique, and balance for one is something else for another.  Although one thing that we do all share is nature—the forest, the ocean, flowers and trees.  And, I believe, it has a magical way of bringing us back to ourselves in the moment.  To me, that feels a lot like balance. 

Living on the edge (and the final day) of liquid-only living is showing me that balance is simply the healthy middle point between perfection and imperfection.  It doesn’t demand that we sit in a magazine-style lotus pose with hands perfectly mudra-edover our knees.  Instead, I like to think it’s about tumbling and getting up.  Ready to face the next fall with grace, humility and compassion. 

So thank you, dear detox, for these lessons.  And now, it’s time to keep your company with food.  I’m craving good, healthy balance.  

With Love,

Organic Girly

(Photos compliments of Karrah Kobus (top) and Keoki Seu (bottom).)

Lately, by which I mean the most recent five decades, our reality has become defined by the less-than-realistic slew of “reality” shows.  The Real Housewives of… (fill in the blank with your local metropolis) and The Bachelor are a far cry from Candid Camera (remember that pretty real show?) in the 1940s.  So the multi-billion dollar industry leads salt of the earth, apple-munching people like myself to wonder what IS reality?

Let’s drift back even centuries further, before the time of the first synthetic fertilizer—originating in England in 1841, and even pre-1973, when the cotton gin catalyzed monoculture and mass industrialization in the U.S.  Hippocrates may be a man worth visiting, which takes us all the way back to Greece in the 3^rd century BC.  While known as the father of modern medicine, the irony is that he practiced far from what we typically witness in an emergency room today.  Nature, he innately believed, had a deep healing power—a real, potent energy that could, in fact, heal real people.  Imagine that, holistic health from living plants in lieu of its alter ego—the destruction of life via chemically derived compounds.

In the face of today’s ever-expanding industrialization, Hippocrates’ ideals are utterly convincing to an admittedly oft tree hugging cosmopolitan.  Heal disease with real plants; nurture nature, which equates to caring for us humans too, with real nutrients; quench our thirst and hunger with real fruits and veggies that are really full of opulent reds, yellows, purples and greens; and cover our now, more than ever, sensitive skin with real fabrics colored with real, natural vibrancy. 

Reality doesn’t have to be contrived.  Reality can simply be.  Nature made, with a little help from people like us along the way.  That’s what I’d like to see—real, raw footage.  (Sorry MTV, in 2011 we need a new Real World).  We just need to go behind the scenes, into the dirt, the river, the recycling bin and the threaded needle to propagate more reality.  And who knows, you may just be caught on camera doing good. 

What’s reality to you?  I’d love a glimpse at the real in your real life.  

(Photo courtesy of Rain Sunshine and our friends at Flickr.)