Aaron Perry
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In this episode, we’re “coming clean” with Lisa Bronner about the myriad ways we can detoxify our homes, offices, and lives, and create healthier, happier circumstances for ourselves, our families, and our communities. Whether in the bathroom, the kitchen, the yard, or the garage, there are so many opportunities for us to remove toxic chemicals from our situations and replace them with much gentler, safer (and almost always better smelling) natural products like Dr. Bronners soaps. In a lovely, mothering manner, Lisa guides us through these many opportunities and invites us to take steps to improve our lives and our impacts on the planet. It turns out these go hand in hand.
She also reflects on the multi-faceted story of the Bronner family – originally from the German-Jewish Heilbronner family, which includes shared ancestry with Albert Einstein. From her family’s direct experiences during the Holocaust, to the mental health struggles and institutionalization of her grandfather, soap-making scion, and spiritual activist Emanuel Bronner (known for his “Moral ABCs” and his famous “We are all one or none” wisdom), Lisa opens up her home and shares intimate stories with us. In her lovely book, Soap & Soul: A Practical Guide to Minding Your Home, Your Body, and Your Spirit with Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soaps, Lisa presents years-worth of accumulated knowledge, wisdom, and insights, including much gleaned from her long-running blog “Going Green With Lisa Bronner.” The book presents a variety of very practical frameworks for understanding labeling (and misleading labels), for detoxifying our cleaning products, for much safer body and self-care products, and for tips and tricks to apply in our homes and offices alike. Adorned with “Lab Coat Moments,” “Origin Stories,” “Ingredient Spotlights,” and “Ask Lisa:” vignettes, the book is an easy-to-approach resource that belongs in every home and workplace. When reading Soap & Soul, not only is the reader presented with ample, practical advice and way-showing, he also encounters several personal stories that soften, humanize, de-stress, and relax us on our ongoing journeys toward healthier, happier lifestyles.
About Dr. Bronner’s
Dr. Bronner’s is the largest organic soap-making company in the United States (and quite possibly world-wide) and happens to be the largest user of certified organic peppermint oil in the world as well. Dedicated to regenerative organic practices, to social enterprise structures and strategies for stakeholder wellbeing, to sustainable education and economic development in the agricultural communities its connected to world-wide, and to supporting a variety of social and environmental causes, Dr. Bronner’s is at the forefront of the “Regeneration Renaissance” celebrated by the Y on Earth Community and our many partners and collaborators around the world. See the list of “Related Episodes” below for direct access to several other podcast interviews with Dr. Bronner’s executives to gain more view and insight into the company’s innovative leadership.
About Lisa Bronner
The author of Soap & Soul, Lisa Bronner is a prolific writer, consumer advocate, and speaker on health and green lifestyle issues. Her blog, “Going Green with Lisa Bronner,” addresses diverse topics related to green living, from personal care and GIY (“Green It Yourself”) home cleaning tips, to essays on food and family, living lightly, mindfulness and daily life encouragement. She is the granddaughter of Dr. Emanuel Bronner, the founder of Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soaps, which is the top-selling natural brand of soaps in North America. She graduated from Duke University with a B.A. in English and taught English and journalism in Raleigh, NC before moving to California where she resides in rural San Diego County.
Resources & Related Episodes
Facebook @GoingGreenWithLisaBronner
Ep. 19 – Brigitte Mars & the Power of Herbal Medicine
Ep. 28 – Scott Black, Executive Director, Xerces Society
Ep. 54 – Katie Garces, Director, Beautycounter
Ep. 63 – David Bronner, CEO, Dr. Bronner’s – Healing Spaceship Earth
Ep. 69 – Ryan Zinn, Dr. Bronner’s Regenerative Projects Manager
Ep. 106 – Jackie Bowen, Executive Director, Clean Label Project
Ep. 111 – Gero Leson, Author, Honor Thy Label (Dr. Bronner’s Global Regenerative Relationships)
Ep. 112 – Layth Matthews, Buddhist Economics and Personal Well Being
Ep. 114 – Elizabeth Whitlow, Executive Director, Regenerative Organic Alliance
Ep. 117 – Michael Bronner, President, Dr. Bronner’s, The “Chocolate Episode”
Ep. 142 – Maria Rodale, Author, Love, Nature, Magic
Transcript
(Automatically generated transcript for search engine optimization and reference purposes – grammatical and spelling errors may exist.)
Welcome to the YonEarth Community Podcast. I’m your host, Aaron William Perry. And today we’re visiting with author Lisa Bronner, the author of Soap and Soul Lisa. It is so great to visit with you.
Thanks Aaron, I’m glad to be here.
We have a lot to talk about in the theme of cleanliness being next to godliness or goddessliness, however we like to think about this.
And I’m so thrilled we have the opportunity to dive in a bit to this beautiful resource that you’ve created for us in your book.
Thanks so much. I had a lot of fun writing it and it was a long time in coming and I had a big build up.
Yeah, it’s clear that it wasn’t your first time around the block with the subject matter. You’ve got deep expertise here and it’s a joy we can share this resource with folks.
Lisa Bronner is the author of Soap and Soul, a practical guide to mining your home, your body, and your spirit with Dr. Bronner’s magic soaps.
She is a prolific writer, consumer advocate, and speaker on health and green lifestyle issues.
Her blog at Going Green with Lisa Bronner addresses diverse topics related to green living from personal care and G-I-Y green at your self-home cleaning tips to essays on food and family living lightly, mindfulness, and daily life encouragement.
She is the granddaughter of Dr. Emanuel Bronner, the founder of Dr. Bronner’s magic soaps, which is the top selling natural brand of soaps in North America.
Lisa graduated from Duke University with a bachelor’s in English and taught English and journalism in Raleigh, North Carolina before moving to California where she resides in rural San Diego County.
Lisa, this book I really am, as I mentioned to you recently, recommending this to so many folks for tips and tricks we can use in our own homes, as well as our offices to get much cleaner results,
literally and figuratively, and really importantly detoxify our environments and our bodies.
And so this book is chock full of practical how-to recommendations, but it’s also a very intimate and authentic revealing of your own home and your own journey around some of the issues we all experience in our homes.
You’re parenting, you’re connection with spaces and places through the hours of the day and into the wee hours of the night.
It’s really so beautifully written and drew me right in and I’m curious what was the process like for you deciding how much to share, how much to kind of open your home up so to speak to the reader.
Well, there are a few things that led me to the point of sharing as much as I did about my personal life.
Well, part of it was that I wanted to write a book that I would be interested in reading and I wouldn’t be interested in reading a book that was just a bunch of recipes for home and body care.
First of all, I think that book’s already been written even though my recipes would be slightly different and definitely well tested and authoritative from the manufacturers.
I still wanted it to be something more, something you would want to sit down with in your comfy chair and read.
And the way to do that is through stories. I think storytelling is a very powerful method of persuasion.
And I guess persuading is fundamentally what I wanted to do.
I wanted to persuade people that it’s worth paying attention to the products and ingredients that you put on your body and bring in your house.
I wanted to persuade people that it’s possible to tackle all this.
It’s not, you know, I know people are busy or their budget constrained or they don’t know where to start.
And they feel like they don’t know enough. And so I wanted to persuade people that anyone can go on the same road towards cleaning up a product simplifying our routines.
And I also, there’s definitely a part that wanted to just be honest. First of all, it’s somewhat simpler to be honest because it’s less to remember if I’m not making it up.
What story did I tell them about this situation? I just told you the stories in my life.
I didn’t do a ton of research into how to write, but I did do a good bit. And as you mentioned, I am a teacher by training read a lot.
And I really enjoy books about writing. And every single author who gives advice about writing says you’ve got to write from where you are.
You’ve got to write from what you know. And so that’s what I had. And where am I? Well, I’m in my house. I’ve always worked from home.
I’m in the middle of a parenting journey. My kids are a little bit older than when I wrote the book, but there’s still a tool in the home.
I don’t have it all done. I’m not done. I have my house is, you know, still in process. My I’m still learning things that’s been a frustrating part of having written a book is I’ve learned things that call me and wish I could have gone in the book.
But, you know, and so all of that added up to wanting to share my story to write a book that was different than the zillions of green cleaning books that are already making up that section of the book story.
And the one thing I have the no one else has are my stories. And so I sat down to write them. I didn’t write them in order. I kind of had to go with where the inspiration was.
So probably the family room chapter was one of which is next the last chapter is like the first thing I wrote.
And so if that’s a matter, the book’s not not particularly sequential. So that was that was really special. And then the other thing I wanted to do in in our family’s company in Dr. Bronner.
So it’s founded in 1948, oh my grandfather, a manual broader and he ran it single. I mean, he had people that worked with them, especially because he went blind and he very much needed needed help, but he ran it.
He was the passion. He was the energy. He was a driving force behind it until he was brought down by Parkinson’s in the 90s, early 90s. And that’s when my dad stepped in and my dad officially took over in 1993.
And then my grandfather didn’t he passed away in 1997, but then my dad passed away in 1998 from lung cancer. And so my dad’s tenure at Dr. Bronner’s was rather short, but so, so important.
And just because he wasn’t in the timeline very long, he doesn’t always get get the time in our storytelling. And so it was very important for me to include him in the stories.
It’s very difficult to take a family business from its first generation into its second. That might be the most difficult transition to take what was one person’s passion when that person is gone.
And you know, is there enough without that individual? And so my dad with my mom at a side and my uncle Ralph, they made that happen. But my dad really was the the main person there.
So I really wanted to tell my dad’s story, which is in the chapter called the kitchen. My dad was a chemist, which might also mean he was a chef. I don’t know if all chemists are chef, but it was very much a one flew out of grew out of the other.
And so I wanted to tell my dad’s story and my parents’ story together. And so that was another thing that was important about the storytelling part of the book.
Yeah, the storytelling is so compelling. And the way you’re weaving together your own personal experiences with the sort of broader context of the broader family. And there’s there’s a page in the book that actually has your family tree going back several generations to the pile broader, even earlier sort of proto origins.
And yeah, it’s it’s such a beautiful family affair literally and in the ways in which Dr. Bronner’s as an organization now is really leading globally in terms of regeneration in terms of social responsibility in terms of big innovations around employee and organizational structures and strategies.
And indeed, with the wider community podcasts, we’ve had a handful of your colleagues and family members on previous episodes, your brothers, a Gary Layzone, and of course Ryan Zinn, the regenerative projects manager whom you think at the end of your book.
And, you know, wanted to call out specifically Garos book, he’s not a family member, his book, honor that label because in it, he kind of takes this deep dive into the history of your family, both in Germany and Europe and here in the United States.
And it sets, you know, there’s a context here over the last 150 years of world history that is very immediate, very intimate.
And in a way, you’re not only sharing your very personal experience as a mother in your own home, you’re also sharing your family experience through some very difficult moments and periods in our world’s history.
And I’m just wondering, what is that like for you, you know, as both an author now and a storyteller and a person with strong messaging for the world?
And how was that, you know, growing up for you to have this kind of public thing going on with Dr. Bronner’s, which is not your typical soap company, right?
Can you share with us what that kind of arc has been like for you?
Yes, certainly. And you’ve made reference to several things that, you know, that I was born into. We are fifth generation soap makers. My grandfather was actually the third generation of his family to make soap the first.
And honestly, I’m going to say the first that we know of was his grandfather and manual Howe Bronner in 1858 in what is now Southern Germany started making soap.
And then his son, three of his sons went to Howe Bron and had a very successful soap making operation that because they were Jewish, it did not survive the war.
And my grandfather had immigrated already to the United States and for about 20 years was a consultant and work for other organizations and didn’t really have the intention of starting a soap company.
He had a message that he wanted to get out. He was just devastated by seeing what was happening in the world.
His parents both perished in concentration camps. The family legacy, the properties were all confiscated and sold to, you know, Aaron hands as the letter said that was distributed at the time.
His, my grandfather’s wife, my grandmother, she died in a mental institution in the 40s, which, you know, is a terrible, terrible place to be.
And amidst all this tragedy, he was not invitered. He was not filled with hatred. Instead, he was impassioned to share with the world.
Look, we need to put aside all of our differences and all of these barriers that we have between ourselves and realize how much more we have in common.
And so he started the company, not as a business, but as a way to get out of message. He knew how to make soap.
He noticed that people were much more interested in soap and a good soap than in this message of world peace, but he put the message on the bottle and the soap became the messenger.
All throughout his life, he was, he was completely caught up with that label, refining it, perfecting it, making sure communicated as effectively, he was constantly changing it.
And so he was, he started this not, not as a business, but as an initial organization. In fact, he got in trouble with the IRS several times because he didn’t see himself as a manufacturer or a seller of products.
He saw himself as a, as a, as a more of a religious institution, not that he was founding a religion. It was more of a, of a philosophy.
If you read the label, which is something I recommend doing, but it definitely scratches your mind. He holds from all these different faiths and philosophies and scientific ways of thinking and, and shows how there are similarities across these different faith traditions.
And so, so from the beginning, we’ve been a mission organization. My grandfather was so impassioned with it that he had no patience for anything else.
So as far as my experience with it, my grandfather, Dr. Bronner, was my only living grandparent. And so my whole grandparent experience was Dr. Bronner.
Now, granted I read. And so I read in books about grandmother, grandparent, you know, archetypes and, and, you know, this, you know, comforting, nurturing, spoiling the grandchildren.
That wasn’t really my experience. When we got together as my grandfather, he really just wanted to talk and make sure we understood the moral ABC, make sure we understood that we are all one or none.
Exceptions eternally, absolute none. He, so that was my experience with it.
I didn’t really have a toehold into that as a child. It was odd. It, you know, it was, I didn’t have much to say back to him. I didn’t disagree with him, but I just didn’t have a conversation with him.
I didn’t really even realize what impact he was having. I mean, I knew this soap, of course, but, and I knew it was sold in, you know, crunchy camping stores and mom and pop independent health stores.
But my, as a child, I remember my uncle Ralph. So that’s my Dr. Bronner’s middle child, my dad’s older brother.
He was a storyteller also a very good, various, and he loved to go visit health stores. In fact, he was our sales force by himself. He was a teacher, but during his school breaks, he would go visit health stores in different cities and tell them the story.
And if it was where I was, he would grab me and pull me in and he would say to the, you know, person standing behind the counter, which, you know, might be the owner, but might just be some hired, you know, teenager that they had on staff at the moment and say, you know, do you know who this is? And it would be pointing to me. This is Dr. Bronner’s granddaughter.
I can be like, Uncle Ralph, you know, so embarrassing. They don’t know about that. And they would be like, oh, wow, you know, then they would pull out a bottle of soap.
So I didn’t, you know, I didn’t really grasp it until I was, I was old enough. And then unfortunately, he was already in quite a decline from Parkinson’s where communicating was very difficult for him.
But the idea of seeing beyond people’s exteriors and seeing beyond the faith that they adhere to to realize our shared humanity and our shared human experience, that all came to me a lot later.
And then fitting his story against world events, that was an education for me.
Because there were ways in which my grandfather would tell his stories that do make sense, but they are not the ways they’re told in the story books.
So like my grandfather, he actually was also incarcerated in a mental institution in the 40s in Chicago, outside Chicago.
The Elgin Stagas Island. And after a couple years there of hard labor, mixing cement, laying brick, also undergoing electro shock therapy, which probably is what contributed to his later blindness.
He escaped from that, but growing up, he would tell me about his time in the concentration camps. And then when I learned he immigrated to the United States in 1929, I was very confused, you know, with the lying, where they’re concentration camps in the United States.
I was very confused, but then I realized, you know what, his experience in Elgin, where people did die and people were horribly mistreated. And he was strapped down and let me wonder when electro shock therapy.
I mean, I can see why he called that a concentration camp. But it took me like a bit of learning my history to piece that all together.
But as I’ve learned my European history, and especially my German history, it’s been very interesting to see my family, my family’s backdrop against that.
Being in Germany, during the Unification of Germany in the late 1800s, during various different approaches to the Jewish population, which my family was.
There were various phases of embracing the Jewish population and then denigrating it went back and forth. So in the early 1800s, my family changed our name from Einstein to Halbrunner, based on the talent of Halbrun.
So, you know, we’ve had, you can look up the decree that made that happen and that’s where our family’s name comes from. And then, you know, you see my family’s progression wildfire where they started making soap in the in 1858 was pretty embracing of its Jewish population.
And things went well from my family there in Halbrun, where the three of the second generation went also fairly well integrated. They were extremely successful.
They were, they had three buildings to their factory. They distributed soap across Germany. They were economically very successful.
There was, again, a law that opened up trade to the Jewish people, which is an example of when my family, you know, had a good thing going.
And they were able to engage in the manufacturing. But then, of course, all that was dialed back in the 1930s and to see these historical moments and then that they actually impacted my family.
It’s really, you know, brought it, brought it all home. And then through the 1930s, like the, you know, crystal locks in the 1938 law that excluded Jews from economic life in Germany.
And then the law in 1939 that prohibited them from owning, owning property, you know, that, that pulled things out of my family’s hands.
And we’ve been able to go back to Germany and see all of this. We, the soap factory in Halbrun, it still stands. It has been sold a couple of times. So it’s not the family that now owns it, a wonderful family, been very welcoming to us and our exploration of their property.
One of our soap, actually several of our soap vats were still bolted into their floor and they sent us one.
We took it that thing a while that’s their customs. But we have it now in VISTA. So it’s been really neat to be able to learn history in this very personal way.
Absolutely, absolutely tremendous. Did you say Einstein before how runner?
Yes, yeah, I mean, it’s a fairly common Jewish last name.
Uh-huh. Wow. So in addition to all of this remarkable part of your family story, you’re potentially related to Albert Einstein also, huh?
I will say that my grandfather embraced that tenuous connection. I mean, I’m sure there is a connection. We don’t know the history that far back.
But my grandfather might have stretched it a little bit better for him to Albert Einstein as his uncle.
But there’s probably some sort of distant cousin relation. That’s been a really neat thing actually because my family is somewhat in the public eye.
We’ve had a lot of distant family members reach out to us. I mean, needless to say, my family was scattered by the war.
I mean, if you survived Germany, it was only because you left. And so the first generation that made soap, there were 11 children, I believe, born to that family.
And so three of them were the set that went over to Halbren, and you know, that’s my line is one of those.
But everybody was, there were a lot of soap makers. They all went into soap. But they all left.
And so bit by bit, we’ve heard from almost all of those 11 different branches down. And there’s just an crazy synchronicity.
There’s one of my cousins. He’s a cousin. I think we would say fifth cousin.
The only, the shared ancestor is a manual Halbrenner by generations back. But his family ended up in New England. And he is a regenerative chestnut farmer.
And so he’s in the similar space that, you know, my brother, David, and our company has championed so much towards regenerative organic agriculture. And here, you know, on his own track, he has ended up in the same, in the same realm. So that’s been, that’s been really cool.
There’s so much to track and so much to keep track of. I’m sure there’s some sort of software I could have. But right now, everything’s kind of in files on my computer. The different emails I’ve gotten from family members.
Yeah. Yeah. How wonderful. Well, yeah. And in some of the other episodes we’ve had with your brothers and others from Dr. Bronner’s, we’ve talked extensively about the amazing work.
The company is doing in the regenerative agriculture arena. And, you know, I love the labels on the soap.
So if I remember about 30 years ago, when I was first attending a permaculture workshop on a community farm in New Mexico, going to the restroom, finding this bottle with all of this stuff written on it and falling in love instantly.
And, of course, now you guys are not only in the crunchy outdoor stores and the independent co-ops, but you’re in a lot of the big mainstream retailers.
And a whole lot of us now, I think, are familiar with and use your products. And the breadth and depth of information on the labels is fabulous and leaves such an impression. And, you know, in that spirit, your book also shares so much with us about things we can do in our own home.
From, you know, the moment we wake up in the morning until the moment we go to bed at night and possibly even wake up in the middle of the night. I love that section when you’re talking about that.
And in here, you’re sharing these very important things for us to be aware of and take action around like the toxicity found in so many personal care products, home cleaning products, et cetera.
And you break it up and you organize it in such a way that it’s very easy to follow, to digest, to approach. I love how you include vignettes throughout the book, like lab coat moments and origin stories and ingredient spotlights and ask Lisa kind of pulling from your blog and green it yourself.
So it’s really something I’m recommending to people to get a hold of and read because there’s for all of us, probably even more we can do in our own lives and in our workplaces to clean and green even further.
And one of the things I really appreciate in all of this is the tender of friendship and kindness and gentleness and slowing down that you share.
So it’s not, you know, my experience is reading your book. It’s not like getting kind of beat over the head with, you got to do this and this and this and then this and this. And if you’re not doing this, my gosh, you got to X, Y and Z. And instead, it’s very much this, this, this invitation into all these things we can learn about and do to simplify our lives and detoxify our lives and frankly make our day to day quality of lives.
Life’s much better. Thank you for sharing that with the world. And I want to ask, you know, how do you temper the passion and knowing, you know, that there really is so much in our world that is really so dangerous for us and for our planet?
How do you approach all of that in such a calm, gentle, measured way?
But it’s, I feel like there’s a, well, I’m a teacher and when you’re a teacher, you have to take people from where they are.
You can’t take them from where you wish they were or where you feel like they should be because that’s, there’s no point to that. It’s not realistic.
They can’t suddenly jump 10 steps ahead. You have to take them from where they are and the thing is you want to keep them going.
So guilt is not a long term motivator. It might motivate us for a little bit, but there’s not going to be any joy in it.
There’s not going to be any long term commitment there. We might do a little bit to a swage how we feel.
But what we want instead is to make it, you know, something that benefits in not just in a feel good way, but in an actual way.
So make it fun, make it approachable, make it doable. And as you said, hitting people over the head with a, why aren’t you doing this already?
Why, you know, you’re the problem. You’re the one that’s causing climate change.
That’s not going to be something that anybody’s going to want to stick around and listen to.
People don’t tend to stick around and listen to being beat over the head if they have a choice.
And you do have a choice whether you pick up my book and read it all the way through.
And so I really wanted to make it approachable and doable just because that’s the only way to go.
I wanted to be effective. And honestly, it goes back to that point I made earlier.
I had to be honest because I came to this later than you would think.
You would think that with my family legacy, I would have known all this from the wound, not not the case.
I had to go and learn it myself in my own way and, you know, trial and error and having my own crises moments.
And, you know, that’s my story. So I can’t hardly expect anybody else’s story to be, to be much different.
We all are moving forward. And if I can help people take the next step forward to, you know, simplicity to safety even.
But to living a better, fuller, more vibrant life, that’s what I, that’s what I want to do.
I very much wanted it to feel like we were sitting down together and having a cup of coffee and talking about something rather than, you know, as I, you know, getting hit over the head or a chemistry lecture.
That being said, I love chemistry. I love, I’m, I’m an English teacher by training, but like I’m a chemist by by birth.
My dad was a chemist. Our garage was a laboratory. He had a laboratory and an actual one that picture a laboratory in your mind. That’s what it looked like.
Like all sorts of bottles on the walls and all sorts of devices. Things could bubble and spin.
You know, so I grew up with that. And I, you know, in my childhood and then a teacher by training. And so I want people to understand why this isn’t just a.
Do this because I say so. There are chemistry reasons behind why you should not mix cleaners.
Even green cleaners. Why you should not mix vinegar and soap. Why you should not mix abs and salts and soap. Oh my goodness. I so often walk into a health store and they’ve got the castile soap sitting right next to the abs and salts.
Like a suggestion to go mix and don’t mix them. That’s, that’s a recipe for soap scum. You’re like making soap scum.
And so I also think that there are a lot of people that, you know, they need to know why or else it’s not motivating.
And so I just, I tried to reach as many different reader types as I could.
In fact, I had a, I had a list. I wrote before I started writing, you know, somebody asked me, who are you writing this to?
And so I had a list of readers, like there were about seven or eight of, you know, people who might read my book, the, the mom, the young mom up to her eyeballs and dirty diapers and no sleep.
You know, what can I offer that person? The busy professional who wants to do better, but doesn’t have time. The, the curious, they, they want to know the why they want to dive deep into the science.
The budget conscious that wants to go green or wants to be more environmentally friendly, but they don’t have a lot of, you know, spare money to push towards it.
And so you mentioned the lab coat moment. Those are little experiments you can do at home to learn the concepts that I talk about.
So you can see I’m not making it up origin stories, you know, people like to see deeper into the products that they’re, that they’re using what went into this, where the things come from.
And so I wanted to share those two. So I had all these different people in mind and how can I help them? How can I reach them? How can I engage them?
So all of that kind of came together in the different, different parts. I picture somebody like opening the book and the, the athletes, which are kind of like a dear Abby.
Those are real questions I’ve gotten. And there are all those pages are gray. So like I’m the person who will flip through a book and look for the pictures or whatever.
So you could look, you could flip and look for the gray pages and you get all the ass leases or the lab coat moments. I’ll have a little symbol and you could flip through and find them all.
Yeah, I so enjoy and appreciate all of those different elements in the book. And I really loved the, the diagrams, how soap works, how soap is made. And I have, I had a working knowledge of this, but seeing the visuals for me just really kind of locked in.
What was going on with the various ionic charges and boy, the advice and recommendations is fabulous. And yeah, there’s, and I really appreciate the convergence of, you know, what makes sense for us in terms of our own health and well-being in terms of planetary stewardship and in terms of budgetary management right being thrifty.
And there’s a, an art of simplicity running through the book, the recommendations and through the, the soap products from Dr. Bronner’s itself, right. There’s, it’s sort of the opposite of complexifying and mystifying and bewildering people. And related to that, the advice you provide us around understanding labels across all products.
And understanding the various here in the United States, different federal agencies that govern various aspects of these products were interacting with every day.
The book is a real resource to help kind of untangle what is otherwise a pretty difficult set of variables to really kind of have a working understanding of.
But that’s, that’s my sharing from my own journey because you go buy something. Let me pick a hard one sunscreen and you go buy sunscreen. You’ve got the whole wall of sunscreen in the aisles. It’s like half an aisle.
And even within one brand you’ve got so many different options. What, what messages that you’re reading on a label means something and what don’t.
And honestly, as a consumer, I felt like I was being played with. I was being manipulated. You know, what, what, what they say means something that, that is like set. What, what are they trying to do with me with by like, they know I will think it means a certain thing, but it doesn’t.
And what, which of them have some sort of oversight behind it. Most of what’s on a label has no oversight. I mean, we do have, you know, truth and marketing laws, but they’re, they’re pretty easy to navigate around.
There are very, very few words on labels that have a meaning that you could make a stand on. Most of the words on labels are, are unregulated, not that they’re alive, but they’re not regulated.
So what the manufacturer intends by them might not be what the consumer receives. And so what I share in the book about in the section how to re-alabel is, you know, so that a consumer can know what they’re, what they’re reading and make an educated decision.
You know, one of my, one of my roles that Dr. Brotters is consumer education, because there’s just so much is on the consumer to learn. We, we want to think that there’s a law that’s watching over things, but there’s not like, especially when it comes to personal care.
Personal care sort of falls between the cracks is under the FDA for the most part with what’s in personal care. But the FDA is mostly focused on food and drugs. And even though personal care is in there, it’s neither food nor drugs.
And so it’s, it hasn’t, it just hasn’t been regulated. It hasn’t, and there’s no oversight. There’s no like safety commission that reviews, formulations or ingredients. All of that is on the manufacturer.
You know, there’s like some vague language and in the 1938 law, the 1938 law, which is what created the FDA and had a small section of personal care. And it says basically, manufacturers need to make sure that the products they sell are safe.
Well, safe is a very subjective words. It’s safe with those short-term, safe for the long-term, safe for all people, safe for all ages. You know, you’ve got vulnerable populations, people with allergies, you know, so it’s very vague. And there’s, there’s no framework for analyzing all of this.
It’s changing a little bit. There’s been a somewhat finally long and time and coming update to that 1938 law in 19, in 2022, something called Bokra.
That modernized that a little bit. But most of it is on the consumer to know what they’re using, what impact it will have on their body.
And what’s more complicated is there are some ingredients that are more scrutinized, but
they’re always scrutinized in isolation.
We never put products on our body in isolation.
Very rarely.
Maybe you’ll put your coconut oil, but for the most part, we put products on our bodies
in combination, combination within one product, and then combination across products.
Like, think about what you might have put on this morning.
You might have washed and that got rinsed off, but you might have put on some lotion.
You might have put on some sunscreen.
You might have put on a cologne or perfume.
You might have put on some makeup.
All of these things are actually combined on your skin and something called the cocktail
effect.
Gosh, that sounds lovely, doesn’t it, but it’s not the cocktail effect.
What combination is happening there?
And so it really is on the consumer to analyze all the products across the range that they’re
using and what combinations are happening on their skin.
That’s daunting.
That’s a lot.
Which is one of the reasons why I tell people to simplify, because who does time for
that?
On average in America, we put on 12 products a day, but I can tell you for a lot of
people it’s a lot higher, and products have about 12 to 13 ingredients each.
That’s a lot of ingredients.
So that’s one of the reasons why I tell people to simplify, because you just don’t have
time to track all those ingredients and what are they doing in combination with each
other.
Certain ingredients are fine by themselves, but not when combined.
So it’s just a lot, a lot to do.
But unfortunately it is buyer beware, both for personal care, less so for house cleaning,
just because the EPA, if something is a pesticide, if something is antibacterial or claims to
kill, it actually is overseen to the environmental protection agency.
So it’s not, because soap does not work by killing soap works by removing, so it’s
not under the EPA.
All of this is in the book.
And so it’s odd that we actually have a little bit more oversight to our house cleaning
products than we do to our personal care products and the things that are actually in contact
with our bodies.
But yeah, I could have written the whole book just on how to rate a label and product
safety and what to know when you go to buy something at the store, it’s a lot to say
there.
Yeah, so I appreciate this.
And clearly there’s quite a lot out there that we would probably do well to avoid.
And then there are some wonderful natural products and ingredients that have extraordinary,
helpful and nourishing attributes and properties.
And two, in particular that you call out in the book, I wanted to ask you about, to give
us a quick snapshot, hemp seed oil and regenerative organic certified virgin coconut oil.
Two great products.
Can you tell us a little about each of those?
Sure, sure.
So coconut oil was in my grandfather’s formulation from the 18, the 1940s.
I actually don’t know the specific formulations before then, but my grandfather used it from
the beginning in combination with olive oil to make the castile soap.
And so we’ve used it for a long time.
Hemp has a different story.
I’ll get to that one in a minute.
So we’ve used coconut for a long time in our soap.
Coconut oil is a tropical oil, think about a coconut tree.
It grows in the tropics, so most of the United States is not in the tropics, so it almost
always comes from overseas.
In 1999, David, my brother first took the company organic and took our major materials
organic.
And that was difficult enough at the time because there were no organic standards for personal
care companies, for personal care products.
There was only organic standards for food.
And so David used the food standards, used food grade coconut oil and olive and other
ingredients, to make our soaps and then certify them with Oregon Tilt as a certifier.
The USA didn’t like that he did that, and he said, they said, you can’t do it.
You can’t use a food standard for soap.
And David’s point was like, why do you care what I do with the ingredients?
So they are USDA certified organic ingredients.
And brother Mike would say, do you care if I make soap or soap?
You know, it’s going in a soap.
And so that was the first step was going organic.
And that was great.
And eventually, David was very active on the forefront of creating organic standards for
personal care.
And we now have done the National Organic Program and other things.
But really before that battle was done, he knew it wasn’t going to be enough.
The issue is that organic standards are great for the environmental input, no synthetic
snow, irradiation, no sewage sludge, no genetic modification.
But they’re absolutely silent on the topic of labor and animal welfare.
And so you can have a product that legitimately is organic, but the people who created it,
people who grew it or processed it were treated poorly.
They were paid unfairly.
They had unfair hiring practices.
They were unsafe.
And so before he was even done with the organic journey, he already knew we needed to go further.
And so shortly after that, Dr. Bronner’s committed to going fair trade with our major ingredients.
And so that was, again, the coconut oil, olive oil, palm oil as well.
And our mint oil, the largest user of organic and fair trade, mint oil in the world now.
The problem with this commitment is that these sources didn’t exist.
There were no fair trade and organic coconut producers that could supply us at the volumes
we needed.
And so our solution to that is we ended up founding our own mill in Sri Lanka called Serendipal.
It’s a sister company.
It’s been operating since 2008.
The opportunity actually came out of the tsunami of 2004, Garo, who you mentioned earlier,
who wrote the book, Honor, they label.
He was pivotal.
And he tells the story of how Serendipal was founded in the aftermath of the tsunami because
he found that there was this untapped resource of coconut farms that didn’t have a market.
And so we created our own supply chain there.
So that was excellent.
We did the same thing with palm oil.
We have a beautiful fair trade palm oil operation in Ghana called Serendipal.
We helped with a mint oil production.
We don’t own this one in northern India called Kavitramin.
So that was good.
But again, there are trade is silent on the topic of animal welfare.
So thinking about why is each certification only doing its small part, why is the bottle
getting a little crowded?
Well, there’s only so much space for all these different little logos.
So David partnered with a group from Roedale, the Roedale Institute, Longtime, Champions
of Organic Standards, and Patagonia, a life-minded company, Larger, Ms. Larger, and they founded
the Regenerative Organic Alliance with the intention of creating a new certification,
Regenerative Organic Certified.
That would encompass both organic standards, fair trade standards, and animal welfare standards.
It is a complex certification.
You have to have a lot in place.
And so it piloted in 2020, and two, three of our operations were a part of that initial
pilot audit, the Serendipal, the coconut oil in Sri Lanka, Serendipal, the palm oil in
Ghana, and Kavitramin, the mint oil in Uttar Pradesh, India.
All three of them achieved silver certification, which was the highest given out at the time.
There’s bronze silver and gold in their initial year.
And so that is why our coconut oil, which we use not only in our soap, we use it in
almost every product, but we also sell as a standalone ingredient, our food grade coconut
oil.
It is regenerative organic certified.
And so that’s where that comes from later this year, actually already, our chocolate,
which is a story into itself, is the first regenerative organic certified chocolate that
will be on the market.
Our chocolate spin on the market, but we’ve now achieved that certification for it as
well.
So that’s just a story of how Dr. Bronner has always been on a journey of how can we do things
better?
And from each mountain top, we see the next one, and the work is never done, but we’ve
got lots of energy and lots of people willing to be creative and work hard and put that
all together.
So, Hem has its own story.
Hem is a fantastic oil.
It’s just a superhero of an oil.
It is a plant, of course, but it’s got the oil that comes from the hemp seed is
got the closest fatty acid profile to what our skin naturally produces, which means when
our skin isn’t producing its oil, when our skin is depleted either because of our health
or our environment or whatever, that hemp oil is, hemp seed oil is a great replenishment
to it.
Our skin recognizes that it can make use of it.
It’s not some strange molecule that it can’t make put to work.
And so, David, actually, and I refer to David, David was my oldest brother when my
dad was declining 97 to 98 from lung cancer, if David had come on board already.
And so, when my dad passed, David stepped into the presidency 24 at the time, no, he just
turned 25 at the time.
And then eventually my brother Mike came on board and then my husband, Michael, but a lot
of this happened while it was just David.
My mom and CFO, my uncle Ralph, still sort of advising from Wisconsin.
So, David added hemp seed oil to the formulation.
It’s one of the very few changes we’ve made in the soap since my grandfather’s day.
And the reason was, he learned about it.
It became available at volumes that we needed, and it has this marvelous ability to heal
our skin.
On its own, it’s a pure oil, it’s not shell-stable, so you can eat it certainly, but you can keep
it in the fridge.
You can even apply it straight to your skin, but again, you have to keep it in the fridge,
so a little bit odd to stop by the fridge on the way to the bathroom, but you can.
But it’s a great addition to the soap.
It’s part of the super-fatting of the bar soap to make it extra nourishing to our skin.
At the time when David chose to add it, he knew this, hemp seed oil was actually classified
as a Class I narcotic, because of its relation to, well, cultural and the cannabis, the
plant, as well.
It has no THC content, or it’s certified not to, so all of it’s tested.
But there was definitely some rural with the DEA over that, David, was arrested twice
over that process of saying, yes, we can use this.
It does not make our soap psychoactive.
You could drink the hemp oil.
It’s not going to cause a high of any sort.
So that’s got its own story.
Hemp seed oil became legal to use shortly after that, and now, as of 2019, it’s legal to
grow hemp seeds, hemp in the United States.
We had been sourcing it from Canada prior to that.
So that’s got its own story that I’m pretty sure girl tells an honor that I label also.
But it’s just a marvelous oil, it’s one of the few.
If you look at the vitamin and nutrient profile of hemp seed oil, it looks like it’s trying
to impress you.
It’s really got a lot in it.
Yeah, it’s such an extraordinary plant and healer in so many ways.
Let me remind our audience.
This is the YonEarth community podcast.
I’m your host, Aaron William Perry today.
We’re visiting with Lisa Broner, the author of soap and soul and a member of the illustrious
Broner family.
I got to mention that we’ve a number of other podcast episodes if you’re interested
in even deeper dives on some of these topics.
I’d recommend the interview with Scott Black from Missouri Society, some of the impacts
of toxic chemicals on insects and invertebrates in particular.
Of course, we’ve mentioned both David and Michael Broner, Lisa’s brothers have been on
separate episodes.
Michael’s being the chocolate episode.
I learned a lot about chocolate making in that one.
And Ryan Zinn and Geral is also from Dr. Broner’s have been on separate episodes as well.
And then wanted to shout out to Jackie Bowen, the executive director of Clean Label project.
She and her organization are also doing a lot of work around our education as consumers
and advancing how we’re stewarding ourselves and our planet, our communities, vis-a-vis
the chemical choices we’re making.
And of course, have to give a shout out to Elizabeth Whitlow, the executive director of the
Regenerative Organic Alliance.
We’ve had episodes with Yichau Rui and Jeff Moyer from the Rodeil Institute.
At the time, Brigitte Mars, a sweet piece on hemp and cannabis, Katie Garces on beauty
counter again talking about the importance of understanding these various chemical choices
in our self-care and beauty product decisions.
And got to give a big shout out to some of our key sponsors who make our Y-Earth community
podcast possible, as well as the rest of our regeneration to renaissance work across
culture, ecology, and economy.
This includes Chelsea Green, publishing, Weyley Waters, a Roman therapy have been fused
to Roman therapy, soaking salts, profitable purpose consulting, earth coast productions,
Patagonia.
And of course, Dr. Bronner’s, and we’ve had so many wonderful gatherings in the last
couple of years where we’ve been able to share the chocolates and the soaps that Dr.
Bronner’s has provided.
Also a very special shout out to many of our monthly supporters and ambassadors who are
supporting on a monthly basis, the work that we’re doing.
If you’d like to join and you haven’t yet, you can go to Y-Earth.org to sign up at any
level you’d like.
If you do the $33 level, we’ll send you a jar of the Weyley Waters soaking salts as a
thank you.
And we now have a Patreon page with lots of additional goodies and benefits.
So if you’d like to check that out, you can there as well Y-Earth community.
Now to connect with Lisa and her work and to get a copy of soap and soap, you can find
her on Facebook at green with Lisa Bronner.
You can go to LisaBronner.com, you can go to soap and soapbook.com.
And of course, you can also learn more about Dr. Bronner’s and their products at DrBronner.com
and also on Facebook and Instagram with at Dr. Bronner as the handle.
This Lisa is a convergence from my perspective of so many important themes and threads and
topics that affect each one of us day in and day out and over the course of our lives.
And I really am struck by the abundance of useful information in your book.
I highly recommend that folks get a copy of soap and soap and actually find a cozy comfortable
spot because it’s such a fun read and be prepared with your notepad to take some notes
because you’re probably going to get some nice simple strategies, tactics, life hacks,
some folks like to call it to make some of these choices and changes in your own life.
And I was struck to Lisa that one of the things you speak of in such a poetic manner toward
the end of the book, I think if I’m recalling correctly, is this kind of cleaning and decluttering
of our lives.
In addition to what we can do with cleaning products and self-care products, you were getting
into more of the philosophical and less material aspect of something I think that’s probably
really important to many of us.
And the phrasing of superfluous voices and hurry in our schedule really struck me and
just stuck out for me.
Can you tell us a bit about those two and what your insights are around those?
Yes, absolutely.
You know, it’s interesting because as I said, I work from home, my kids are in school,
so I’m home by myself a lot.
And yet at the end of the day, I can feel like it’s been so noisy.
And you know, how can that be?
I haven’t talked to anybody.
I’m just like, darling, my cat.
But it’s because we have so many voices that are coming into our days and sometimes
uninvited, but sometimes we just jump right into the middle of them.
You know, why after scrolling for, you know, 20 minutes, half an hour on social, but even
on a news website, why do you feel so inundated?
And it’s because you’ve had all these voices coming at you, voices that probably for the
most part you don’t care about, and they certainly don’t care about you.
They don’t even know you.
And every one of those voices that we hear is a decision that we have to make.
Am I going to listen to it?
What are they saying?
Did I understand that?
Do I have to change?
Is there something else I should be doing?
All of these, you know, questions and each one of those voices represents.
Do I let this one in?
Do I push it out?
If I’m going to push it out, that takes some effort.
So when we let all these voices into our lives on a regular basis, it just gets exhaust.
And we experience decision fatigue, which means we make bad decisions.
We lose our, we wear out our self-discipline muscles, and then we work all that well,
which makes us even harder to push these voices out or to do anything about them.
Everybody gets susceptible to thoughts that we know are wrong or incorrect ideas that
we’re not doing it well enough or that we should be doing something different or that.
And these are, I mean, hearing these from people who don’t know us and don’t care.
And instead, we’re not listening to the voices that do know us, that do care about our
well-being.
You know, it should make a lot more difference if somebody that I love and care about says
to me, you know, I think you need to make an adjustment in your life here.
I think you’re going in the wrong way.
Rather than hearing it from some faceless voice online.
And so I think we need to be a little bit, a lot more vigilant about the voices that
we let into our lives, especially the ones that we just, they just kind of wander in and
we don’t show them the door.
I think, you know, I’m on social media, I get that it’s fun, but a little bit, a little
bit.
And then I think it’s good, you know, it’s like a suite.
And to send that on its way, just, and make sure that the voices we do care about have
first precedence in our day.
That’s one of the things I talk about in the bed and bathroom chapter is make sure that
the voices that you hear first in your day are the ones that are the most important to
you, the ones that build you up and fill you up before you have to go out and start encountering
the voices that drain you and deplete you.
So and the same thing for the end of the day, end of the day with the voices that are important
to you.
The people doesn’t have to be a live and a person person.
It could be something writing, but make sure that you give them your attention and don’t
trust them out because you’re too bogged down with this just massive voices coming in.
I don’t want to say social media is the only thing because I do think that news entertainment
is some sort of nifty phrase about that, I can’t think of what it is, but I think that
can also be a bit of a jumble in our experience.
The news is important, I do read it, but you have to be intentional about the voices that
you let into your life, declutter them, you have to do this regularly because it builds
up, close down some apps, close off some websites, make sure you are prioritizing the good
voices.
The same thing about hurry, I’m a mom, I have three kids, and there’s a bit of a bragging
scene about how busy we are and to say, I went to this and this and this all yesterday
and I didn’t get home until 10 o’clock and we didn’t earn the car.
I remember even the high school bragging about how little sleep we got, I was up till
10 doing that English project or I stayed up all night, I don’t think we should be bragging
about that.
I think we should be bragging about, I got my work done in a steady way over days and
I got a good night’s sleep last night and it feels really good, I’m not good at this,
I am sharing with you from the midst of my journey and my struggle, but I do think decluttering
the hurry, ruthlessly eliminating the hurry, I think that’s, I didn’t make that up, it’s
in the book but I put that in someone, ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life and that’s,
you know, the image in my head is always art when I think about that.
If you have something important in your life but jammed up against something else, you’re
not going to be able to see it just like if you have a beautiful work of art but it’s
fine by sign with all those other art and all those different styles, you’re not going
to be able to see it and appreciate it, you need some white space, you need some blank
around it to frame it and to give you some context and I think that’s the case for our
activities in our lives, we need to give them some white space to make them, you know,
live their full potential to, you know, make them a joy and not a task to do, we need
to give them some blank, I’m a big fan of downtime, of zero time, I’m pretty busy but,
you know, Sundays, I, you know, try to, try to give myself permission to sit and not
do anything that has to be done just to let things simmer, you know, if you cook, you
need to let things simmer and that’s the same thing in ourselves, we have to, we have
to let things simmer and you never know what’s going to come out of them after that,
things that seem pointless, suddenly have some purpose and it all works out. So, as I
said, I’m still working on both of these, you know, too many voices, I think maybe less
than the norm, I’m still working on decluttering the hurry, it was something I have to say
I learned from the pandemic, I have my calendar from March of 2020, it was packed, so like,
a walk calendar I had on the wall from that my kids could see, all their activities, you
know, everyone has a different color and then as that month progressed and things just started
getting crossed off, then finally, you know, my entire month was crossed off and the days
which I’m empty, it was a strangest thing, you know, the stillness, it was, you know,
but I learned something from it, I had not gone back to that level of busyness, I learned
a lot from the benefit of stillness because it was, it was nice, that part of it, that part
of it and all, but that, the stillness was nice and seeing my kids, yeah.
So, I so appreciate this and, you know, as a fellow author, I so appreciate how you,
know, bring us into these, these, these moments, these delicious, profound, unique moments
in the course of the book and I have to, I have to share both in my novel, Veritas and
in our foundational tone, why on earth, Dr. Bronner’s has mentioned more than once in
each, I don’t have counts for each, but I know they’re, the Dr. Bronner’s has mentioned
in there frequently and in the story of Veritas, the main character Brigitte Sophia goes through
this journey that has her slowing way, way, way down and something opens up, of course,
I was doing quite a bit of writing during COVID, during the pandemic, but I’m so struck
by the, the eloquence of your writing in this book and as we wrap up our podcast discussion,
Lisa and I’m like, I’m thrilled we have the opportunity to have a shorter, behind-the-scenes
segment for our ambassadors and it folks, if you haven’t joined the ambassador network
and you’d like to just go wider, thought-of-word and get started, it’s easy, I, I’m strictly
Lisa, toward the end of the book, the way in which you bring us into this moment, it actually
reminds me of a book we’ve recently read and podcasted about with Maria Rodel, who’s
Graham Poth, the Rodel Institute about her shamanic experiences gardening, you invite
us in to this moment, late at night, I don’t know if it was like two or three in the morning,
where there’s this, the stillness, this, this quietitude where the, the, the, the busyness
of doing has dissipated, right? And, and it’s as if the space itself is transformed into
a place for being and comfort and, uh, sanctuary and peace. Uh, gosh, thank you for including
that in this amazing resource, uh, because it was such a, a profound and delightful moment
and it really has stuck with me. Can you unpack that for us a little more? What, what is
that that happens for you so late at night? Yeah, it says, um, that’s something I actually,
uh, first heard from in a book before I experienced it from myself, um, so Ray Bradbury
book, I used to teach it when I was a English teacher, about something wicked this way comes.
And the main character, uh, the old man talks about, that 3am is the midnight of the soul.
And in the book, it’s kind of a negative thing. It’s, uh, that more people die at 3am, I don’t
know if this is true, but in the book, it says that more people die at 3am than any other time of day.
And so it was the first time that I heard, uh, this idea that there’s something to that
middle of the night. Uh, and then my husband, Michael, talks about being awakened for the watch,
the watch of the night, which is sort of a, you know, medieval concept. Um, and I have to say
that I didn’t appreciate it until I had kids and I was up with my children in the middle of the night
and then, you know, later I kind of, uh, will go through one sleep cycle and not, not necessarily
go straight into the next. Um, and although, you know, I, I do cherish my sleep a whole lot,
ask my kids, um, uh, there is something about that moment that’s different from any, what’s
possible any other time of day that quiet in the middle of the night. I mean, the middle of the day,
it can be quiet, but somehow it’s not. You just feel the energy and you feel the movement
of the, of the day around you, but the middle of the night is just, there’s a beauty to it. Um,
and things are just, things are just different and I really appreciate that. Um, my mind is still
there, my spirit is still there, uh, and, you know, I don’t like not being asleep, uh, necessarily,
but there’s a, there’s a blessing to it as well. Um, so I don’t know if it would be that way for
everyone, but maybe it’s a bit of a perspective, you know, if you stop being mad at your body for
not being asleep and instead think, what’s the, what’s the potential of this moment? Is there
some peace that I could be enjoying that I would miss out on if I were just asleep? Um, I like that.
I definitely did not appreciate this in my younger years. Um, I know what neighbors have,
keep what lights on it. Now I live, you know, over two acres from between neighbors. So houses
are a little bit more distant, but, uh, I, you know, see these friendly lights across the way and
that’s always, that’s always nice too. Um, so, yeah, so that’s, you know, it’s important to think
about what we’re putting on our body and the physical stuff, but, uh, we can have all of that
in great shape, but if we don’t have the intammable stuff, uh, taking care of two, then we, we won’t
feel that the peace and the freedom that they want to. Yeah, I so appreciate, uh, wrapping up here,
your discussion about the end of day routine, also where you focus in on the, the tadas instead
of the to-dos and to share some tadas from our conversation. Here are my, my notes for those
who are watching the video. Um, you know, we’ve covered so much, Lisa, and thank you so much for
taking the time, uh, to visit with me and, and share, uh, so much with our, with our audience,
and we’ll all, uh, summarize this in the show notes, of course, but this idea of, uh, being
kinder and gentler to ourselves, uh, is something that really comes through the whole arc of the book.
And the way you, uh, inspire and suggest that simple reframing, subtle, uh, adjustments,
can do so much for us. And I, I just so appreciate the way you’re celebrating at the end of the day,
the tadas, and instead of being concerned about the, the items that are just maybe still on the
to-do list. Um, as a way to wrap up, could you unpack that for us a little bit? And then of course,
if there’s anything else you’d like to share with our audience, please, the floor is all yours.
Thank you. Thank you, Erin. Yeah, the tada list was something, another thing that came out of my
early mothering years, um, especially after number two. I, I, I accolade it all right to number one,
the number two really threw me for a loop, uh, because I was outnumbered during the days. Um,
but, you know, I would have these intentions for my days and a great list maker make this beautiful
to do list. And then at the end of the day, none of that, none of that would have gotten done. And it
was discouraging and frustrating. And, you know, I feel like on paper, I’m living a worthwhile life,
like on the list of, you know, raising kids and, um, you know, enjoying nature and things like
that. Um, but why, you know, why can’t I get anything done? And so one day, an exasperation,
I’m like, all right, I’m gonna write down what I did today. It wasn’t just lists that I intended
to do, but I’m gonna write down what did I do? How did I spend my time so that when my husband comes
home and says, what did you do today? I don’t look like a deer in that life. Um, and so it had
things on it. Like, I took a shower. Um, we ate breakfast and lunch. Uh, we read some books. We, um,
played outside. We looked at a flower. We played with a dog might have cleaned up a dog mess,
might have cleaned up a mess. The messy, you know, kid situation, um, dealt with something that
was unexpected and put all of that on the list. And, and then it added up to a pretty good list.
And I was, okay, well, that is what I did today. You know, I wasn’t sitting around eating
bombons and reading a romance novel. Um, I was, I was taking care of life, even if it wasn’t the,
the tasks that I had thought I was going to do that day. Um, and so that really helps to redeem
a day that feels like it took a left turn. And, uh, you’re looking at that list from the morning
and you’re thinking, wow, I did none of that. It needed to get done and I didn’t do it. Um,
but instead to make a list of what you did and realize that sometimes just getting through the day
is an act of great courage. And, um, having the presents to say, I’ll try again tomorrow is,
just takes a lot of bravery. So, uh, so that’s where the Tadalis came from. And literally,
I have new books of Tadalis and they’re not impressive things, but they took a lot from me that day.
Um, and so I highly encourage that for anybody who’s feeling like they’re in a rut,
like their days, never turn out the way they want that, um, um, they wonder and that the question,
what did you do today is a terrifying question, um, but it will give you, give you something to realize
that you did. And little things are worthwhile reading the book with a child, uh, taking the time
to go for a walk or to stand and breathe in the afternoon, uh, sunset, you know, those are
worthwhile things to do as well. They have the, the presence of mine to be still, uh, and not to get
buffeted by external forces, you know, that’s something to put on your Tadalis as well. Um,
and so, um, you know, my kids are, they’re older now, but that’s something in our house.
There’s a couple of things you can call out and everybody will come. One of them is come look at
the cat, big cat lovers. We always go see what cute thing the cat’s doing. Uh, but the other is
the sunset, you know, um, we’re making dinner, doing your homework, whatever it is you’re doing.
And someone says, hey, go look at the sunset. Uh, that’s something we’re all going to pop outside
for. Make sure we, uh, take in that moment because no two are alike. Um, so in the midst of all this,
I realize I, I enjoy talking about these aspects of the book a lot, but if, if people have a bottle
of Dr. Bronner soaked in their hand and they’re wondering, what do I do with this? Why does it say 18
and one? You know, how come there’s a list like and wash myself and my dog and my floor? You know,
that’s weird. Um, the book will tell you all of that too. Uh, it has all the uses and recipes.
So I don’t want to skip all of that because it’s not quite as, you know, philosophical. That’s in
their tubes. Absolutely. Yeah, at least that, yeah, the book is such a great resource. Well,
what a pleasure. What a joy. Uh, so much to celebrate, uh, visiting with you today. Lisa, thank you so
much. Thanks, Aaron. It’s been a lot of fun to get to dive into all of these. I’m so glad you’re
interested in them too. Absolutely. Thank you. Take care. Bye bye.
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