My Green Mom Manifesto
(AKA I'm not Really a Hippie)

When I was nine years old, my family moved to Washington state. While we fully embraced mandatory curbside recycling, we still held quite a few of the practices of the "eccentric" locals at arms length. Things like eating organic and buying local. We called them the "crazy hippies", "tree huggers" or "the earthy crunchy granola types." They did things like wear [almost always] non-stylish clothes from organic fibers, didn't shop at Walmart, bought organic whole grain foods, used [what seemed to be] sub-par beauty and sanitation products, ate flaxseeds, wore birkenstocks and planted trees. They extolled the virtues of mud and natural "unprocessed" things.

To illustrate how different my family was from these people: when we were learning about "junk food" in elementary school and how things like boxed mac & cheese, corn dogs, spam and hot dogs were processed "junk foods" that you should only eat on occasion, I was left wondering 'Well then what do you eat? That's what I would call dinner.' We were a white bread eating, high fructose corn syrup consuming, walmart shopping, plastic everything family.

My journey has been gradual. When I first moved out of my mom's house to go to college, I met friends whom I regarded as relatively normal people who ate whole grain bread products and drank soy milk.


"How can this be?" I thought. "That's hippie food. Normal people don't eat that stuff."


While reading Eating for Life with my youth pastor's wife, I started learning about the difference between processed and whole grain foods and decided to try them myself. I was a vegetarian so already ate a lot of vegetables but found when I moved to whole grain pastas and bread, using butter and olive oil instead of margarine and cooking a lot of my food myself instead of always eating at McDonalds and Taco Bell or ordering pizza....I felt great. It's amazing how you go through life never knowing how awful you feel until you feel better. This is exactly what happened to me.

Nearly a decade later, I'm a mom who uses cloth diapers and glass bottles. I bring my own bags to the grocery store. We use non-toxic cleaning agents and avoid phthalates when we can. We're using a modified vaccine schedule instead of the one pushed by the CDC. We agree with Dr. Sears' approach to "night parenting" and it's how we taught our son to sleep on his own. My son was exclusively breastfed (or bottle fed expressed breast milk) until he started real, whole foods. When we started solids (or the pureed goop they call "solids"), we skipped the over-processed white "rice" cereal and jumped straight into pureed fruits and veggies like avocados, mashed bananas and pureed sweet potatoes that we made at home. We invest in organic and non-Genetically Modified foods for both the health of our family and to support farmers who are doing things right.

When people find out that we do these things, I can see them write me off as one of those people who I used to write off. They think I'm fighting the way real Americans do things in vain. They think I prefer ineffective, more arduous ways of doing things that surely must cost more. They think I'm a hippie. But really?
I am SO not a hippie.
I was not raised with that world view. I like food that tastes good. I don't own a single pair of Birkenstocks or hemp clothing. And I (at least occasionally) shop at Walmart.

So why am I doing all this stuff? For lots of reasons. But at the root of all of this, it's because I am a Christian.  I realize this sounds odd because, in America at least, we tend to associate Christianity with rabid Republicanism. Rabid Republicanism with denying the existence of global warming. And the denial of global warming with actions that maximize things like pesticide use, SUV's, plastic grocery bags and refusing to recycle.

So what does Christianity have to do with it? 

In the very first chapters of the book of Genesis, God makes people and puts them in charge of the Garden...the earth that he created. They are to "fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground." We as human beings are God's chosen guardians and care takers of the Earth. Like the master in the parable of the talents in Matthew 25:14-30, I believe that one day God will ask for an accounting of what we have done with the things he entrusted to our care: Our finances, our children, our resources and our planet. Did we take good care of them? Are they flourishing and doing well under our stewardship? Or are they sick and neglected? Did we make decisions that were convenient instead of decisions that were right? Did we care about the things God cares about? Or only about the things we care about?

It is my goal to care for the things God has entrusted to me the best way that I can. To use our resources wisely, to avoid known toxins when possible and not create large piles of trash that won't go away for anywhere from 550 - 1,000,000 years.

Like many things, this is a journey. I do not profess perfection. I do not aspire to judge others. I do use this space, though, to talk about some of the choices my family has made, why we have made them and hopefully inspire you to consider the choices you make and whether or not what you are currently doing what is really the best choice for you, your family and your values.


It's easy to get overwhelmed. But just like anything, if you take it one step at a time, you find it's not as hard as you originally thought.


Are you new to this journey? Here are some links to places I found helpful when starting mine....


"The Dirty Dozen" - Which foods are most important to buy organic?

Healthy Child Healthy World's 5 Easy Steps

Dr. Sears on Vaccines

Genetically Engineered Crops from The Center for Food Safety

Ways to Reduce Toxic Chemicals in Food Packaging from A Soft Landing

My Green Mom Manifesto
(AKA I'm not Really a Hippie)

When I was nine years old, my family moved to Washington state. While we fully embraced mandatory curbside recycling, we still held quite a few of the practices of the "eccentric" locals at arms length. Things like eating organic and buying local. We called them the "crazy hippies", "tree huggers" or "the earthy crunchy granola types." They did things like wear [almost always] non-stylish clothes from organic fibers, didn't shop at Walmart, bought organic whole grain foods, used [what seemed to be] sub-par beauty and sanitation products, ate flaxseeds, wore birkenstocks and planted trees. They extolled the virtues of mud and natural "unprocessed" things.

To illustrate how different my family was from these people: when we were learning about "junk food" in elementary school and how things like boxed mac & cheese, corn dogs, spam and hot dogs were processed "junk foods" that you should only eat on occasion, I was left wondering 'Well then what do you eat? That's what I would call dinner.' We were a white bread eating, high fructose corn syrup consuming, walmart shopping, plastic everything family.

My journey has been gradual. When I first moved out of my mom's house to go to college, I met friends whom I regarded as relatively normal people who ate whole grain bread products and drank soy milk.


"How can this be?" I thought. "That's hippie food. Normal people don't eat that stuff."


While reading Eating for Life with my youth pastor's wife, I started learning about the difference between processed and whole grain foods and decided to try them myself. I was a vegetarian so already ate a lot of vegetables but found when I moved to whole grain pastas and bread, using butter and olive oil instead of margarine and cooking a lot of my food myself instead of always eating at McDonalds and Taco Bell or ordering pizza....I felt great. It's amazing how you go through life never knowing how awful you feel until you feel better. This is exactly what happened to me.

Nearly a decade later, I'm a mom who uses cloth diapers and glass bottles. I bring my own bags to the grocery store. We use non-toxic cleaning agents and avoid phthalates when we can. We're using a modified vaccine schedule instead of the one pushed by the CDC. We agree with Dr. Sears' approach to "night parenting" and it's how we taught our son to sleep on his own. My son was exclusively breastfed (or bottle fed expressed breast milk) until he started real, whole foods. When we started solids (or the pureed goop they call "solids"), we skipped the over-processed white "rice" cereal and jumped straight into pureed fruits and veggies like avocados, mashed bananas and pureed sweet potatoes that we made at home. We invest in organic and non-Genetically Modified foods for both the health of our family and to support farmers who are doing things right.

When people find out that we do these things, I can see them write me off as one of those people who I used to write off. They think I'm fighting the way real Americans do things in vain. They think I prefer ineffective, more arduous ways of doing things that surely must cost more. They think I'm a hippie. But really?
I am SO not a hippie.
I was not raised with that world view. I like food that tastes good. I don't own a single pair of Birkenstocks or hemp clothing. And I (at least occasionally) shop at Walmart.

So why am I doing all this stuff? For lots of reasons. But at the root of all of this, it's because I am a Christian.  I realize this sounds odd because, in America at least, we tend to associate Christianity with rabid Republicanism. Rabid Republicanism with denying the existence of global warming. And the denial of global warming with actions that maximize things like pesticide use, SUV's, plastic grocery bags and refusing to recycle.

So what does Christianity have to do with it? 

In the very first chapters of the book of Genesis, God makes people and puts them in charge of the Garden...the earth that he created. They are to "fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground." We as human beings are God's chosen guardians and care takers of the Earth. Like the master in the parable of the talents in Matthew 25:14-30, I believe that one day God will ask for an accounting of what we have done with the things he entrusted to our care: Our finances, our children, our resources and our planet. Did we take good care of them? Are they flourishing and doing well under our stewardship? Or are they sick and neglected? Did we make decisions that were convenient instead of decisions that were right? Did we care about the things God cares about? Or only about the things we care about?

It is my goal to care for the things God has entrusted to me the best way that I can. To use our resources wisely, to avoid known toxins when possible and not create large piles of trash that won't go away for anywhere from 550 - 1,000,000 years.

Like many things, this is a journey. I do not profess perfection. I do not aspire to judge others. I do use this space, though, to talk about some of the choices my family has made, why we have made them and hopefully inspire you to consider the choices you make and whether or not what you are currently doing what is really the best choice for you, your family and your values.


It's easy to get overwhelmed. But just like anything, if you take it one step at a time, you find it's not as hard as you originally thought.


Are you new to this journey? Here are some links to places I found helpful when starting mine....


"The Dirty Dozen" - Which foods are most important to buy organic?

Healthy Child Healthy World's 5 Easy Steps

Dr. Sears on Vaccines

Genetically Engineered Crops from The Center for Food Safety

Ways to Reduce Toxic Chemicals in Food Packaging from A Soft Landing

 
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