My Origin Story – I Drank the Kool-Aid Too

Written By Nurse Mary  |  Blog 

I was listening to a podcast interview by 2 innovators in the entrepreneur space. They talked about the importance of being able to tell others your story. I have often shared my why but not sure that I have ever truly shared where I came from – that I used to follow a lot of mainstream, conventional ways of thinking. I didn’t know there was too much wrong with processed foods and actually thought most medications would help you more than hurt you. I’m kind of a long way from that now, and that is why I’m so passionate about getting back to nature and eating things the way they come from the earth…

Some of you may know that I grew up on a farm. My Dad went to college for Horticulture and my oldest brother went to college for Animal Husbandry between the 2 of them they had a lot of knowledge about big farming. The catch is most of what they learned about sustainable farming they learned on their own in later years.

I watched my Dad run a dairy farm where I worked, even from a young age, I had chores in many different areas of the farm. Back in those days, my Dad used chemicals on the fields to keep the weeds down in the corn, to keep the smut off the corn & to keep the weevils out of the Alfalfa hay that we grew, etc…

When it came to the dairy cows we used whatever drugs we needed to keep them well, from Antibiotics to keep them from getting Mastitis to whatever vaccinations were recommended at the time. We really didn’t understand the downstream impact these things would have on our land, cattle, and future generations of people.

Even though all the time I grew up we had a garden and ate from it, canned and froze stuff from it it was looked at as good economics. My parents had all of us kids to help with the garden and lots of mouths to feed. It was also better nutrition than we could have bought at the store in a can or a package but I don’t remember that being the main focus. I remember it being because it was a big cost saver. The side effect of lots of homegrown food, wild game, and homegrown meats is that all 10 of us grew up to be well-adjusted healthy adults.

We were all creative and some of us run our own businesses today. We were quite entrepreneurial.

From growing up this way I went off to nursing school continuing to learn about managing disease and how drugs worked. We spent a lot of time in nursing school learning pharmacology. I’m sure there is even more training in pharmacology in nursing school now. The truth is I came out of nursing school with a very mainstream view of health. We had a nutrition class or two but the instructor talked in a monotone and had such a heavy accent that I could barely understand him. Needless to say, I didn’t get enough out of the class to feel confident in nutrition.

Looking back we did a lot of things right growing up but I’m not sure I still understood the impact of the “why it was important” kind of view.

It wasn’t until I was married and had our 1st baby that some things happened that began to make a shift in what I understood and believed about health. During that time I was looking for some kind of work I could do from home and stay home with our child. Someone introduced me to an MLM that was herbs and supplements. It was Enrich – have any of you heard of that company? I loved what I was learning, I loved many of the products. Because of my nurse’s training and schooling, I was a good researcher and I dug into the information about the herbs and was all in. Sorry to say, I was not a good salesperson, I was too focused on the product facts and didn’t understand the importance of sharing my personal experiences, my story of how this knowledge changed my life and that of my family.

Back then the internet was a baby, remember dial-up? That was the best ever where we lived. I had a friend from childhood that I re-connected with and she was looking for people to write health articles for a Nutri-counter company that she was working with. With my love of research and my medical background, I got to nerd out on how things work, write the article and my friend was my editor. She would often come to me and ask me to write this or that in simpler terms so that anyone could understand it. It was fun and I became a published writer and well, “the rest is history” as they like to say 🙂

After I’d written a dozen articles she said I could put them on a website of my own. Wow, what a journey that was. Do you remember the 1st WiSiWyG FrontPage? Those were the days, borrowing and tweaking code from all over the internet… OK so I digress just a bit here 🙂 It sure would be fun to hear your comments if you remember those days and are still in the game…

Then I met this amazing natural practitioner – Evelyn, we built her a website so her customers could buy online, one thing led to another and now I have her products at my office and I manage the website and all the mailouts. From this point, my knowledge grew. I really love it and continually learn about the herbs and how eating healthy and living a healthy lifestyle with movement in your day can make such a big difference in your life.

You know, there is one thing though that even after I began learning about natural remedies I still kept coming back to the medical model. What is your medical diagnosis, how can we “fix” you from there…

Then doTERRA the essential oil company that I like to use came along and said – you are no longer allowed to make medical claims. I felt frozen, how am I going to help people? It forced me to look at signs and symptoms of what is going on in my own body, of what is going on for other people etc…
We had to learn to talk that way too. Then a shift happened again, this whole experience made me realize health is not about “fixing disease” it is about finding balance and health, vigor for life, a reason to live. What is each one of us’s true purpose in life? Another blessing hidden in a distressing time!

At that point I realize, it is not my job to be a supplement salesperson. To fit a supplement with an ailment. It is my job to “help you in your day” to encourage you to do the hard work, to love yourself enough to do the hard work to make healthy choices. If you buy a few supplements along the way that is a bonus. When I realize that, it was finding my true purpose in life. When I figured out my purpose now I was capable of helping others find wellness with the use of natural solutions whatever that looks like for them. It made me curious to understand other people’s purpose in life. I look forward to getting to know you and where you are in YOUR journey to better healthUntil Nest time – Be Well!

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