Natural Self Care

My husband and I have this little cabin off of the Greenbrier river in the southern part of West Virginia. We recently went up there for 4 days. My son goes to a year round school and he was on intersession and we decided to take some family time.



There is a place about an hour from our cabin called Beartown State Park. We have never been but had heard great things about it so finally decided to go this visit.



There are few places on earth that make me wax poetic at their shear natural beauty. Of the places I have been privileged enough to see with my own eyes, Ireland and West Virginia are the two winners hands down. It is so easy for me to see as we drive by miles and miles of green rolling pastures and rocky cliffs why so many Irish immigrants found their way home to West Virginia. They remind me so much of each other. West Virginia lacks that special lushness that comes with the constant dampness that is Ireland, but it is a very close second. It is the only state I have been in that I can easily forget I am in America (a quality that I cannot even give to some foreign places I have visited!). Indeed, to me, she is almost heaven.



I must confess, I am a constant planner. A constant “got to get there”, “what next,” “what’s the plan” sort of girl. Of all the qualities I have, my complete and almost total inability to stay in a moment is the thing that saddens me most. I am always impatient to “get there” and once there impatient to “get home.” Sigh. I feel like I lose some much in the in betweens. So our drive to Beartown was an hour, which typically would have had me calculating the entire time. What time we will get there, how long we will stay, where to go for lunch, how long that will take and then what time that would put us home. However, as we drove, windows down on THE most gorgeous day I have felt on my skin in ages and ages, I resisted. At first, I felt a little uncomfortable and then in a moment, we rounded a bend, and all my eyes could see was this amazing vista of changing trees, red, yellow and green against a lush green pasture with the most lovely shadows dancing upon it.

From that moment on I relaxed in my skin and soaked up the joy of that rarity, this ability to be present in the moment. I soaked in the kids gasping at mountains and clapping at cows and giggle at “butt” jokes. And this ride was magical. It was like a whole weekend of relaxation wrapped up into one moment. And in that moment I felt a joy I forgot my soul could possess. I could feel those tattered nerve ends heal. I could feel a deeper breath and I could feel my shoulders relax. And I took it all in. Sigh.

So once we go to Beartown I was completely immersed in the joy of just being. And what unfolded for me, was something, typically, I would have said, “was pretty.” However, that day I could really see it all, and not rush through to get to home. And what I saw dropped my jaw. It was amazing. Tristan found himself occupied looking for fairy holes and Joel and I just walked about almost in a daze of the beauty of it. When we were done we just sat about not wanting to leave just choosing to soak in one more minute or two. It was magical.

The rest of the day was driving and lunch and playing in a creek behind the little Mennonite shop. All lovely, loveliness. By the end of the day I felt like I had gone for a hour and a half massage on a rainy day and came home to nap. I felt drunk from it. And what a lovely buzz it was. Sigh.

So where on this earth do you relax and are able to be in the moment? How long has it been since you were there? Can you challenge yourself more to stay present?

The Beginning

I started making products long before I started a company. It started, in its most basic form, with me trying to make bath oils that wouldn’t irritate my skin. Then I had babies. My son had terrible eczema on his legs. None of the lotions that the doctor recommended were working great and I didn’t want to start him on steroid cream. So I started to do some research. Several attempts later and many friends volunteering to be Guiney pigs, I had a cream that really really worked for him.




Fast forward 3 years and another baby later and it is Christmas. A friend gave me some ginger bath salts she had made. I smelled them and they were heavenly. I asked her to give me the recipe. She said, “It is so easy.” So several days later when I was laying in my bath luxuriating I thought, “isn’t it amazing that something this simple and pure is so wonderful.” That was the moment, the birth of Sweet Cheeks and I haven’t looked back.



When starting a business though, my primary drive was not to make money. I was a stay at home mom that felt a little disconnected from the world. I wanted an “in” back into that world that would allow me also to stay focused on my family. So, for me, I wasn’t just about producing a widget, I could sell. It was about producing a product that had value, and even more so, building a company that had social value. So I looked at everything with a critical eye. How would I package my product in a way that had the least amount of impact to the earth? Were my ingredients sustainable? Was it not only a good product but and excellent one? Did the product mirror my core beliefs?



Then there was the question of what to do with the money. I wanted a company that invested in life, in humanity. I wanted my company to add value to the world in ways other than just the products it made. I knew that my company would eventually set up a fund to focus on giving a part of the profits back to the community. This fund is a long term goal however, once Sweet Cheeks is operating in the positive, it is my first order of business. I know I don’t want to be part of a world in which we don’t reach back, each one of us, and offer a hand to the person that needs it. That said, I felt that was not only my responsibility as a person but as a business owner. Plus, it feels to me like an opportunity to make a real difference. And who can’t get excited about that?

So there I was, I had my business, I had my products and I had a mission. Now I just had to figure out how to find my market. When I started my company I was extraordinarily lucky that I had women in almost every area to help me realize my dream of having a business instead of just making products for friends and family out of my kitchen. Each time I felt unsure of how to move forward another woman would jump in and offer their expertise from Jeanne Wilson with Markbeech Marketing who helped with my logo and marketing ideas to Patience Salgado who took my product photos and started getting Sweet Cheeks noticed.


Everyone donated their time because they believed in what I was doing. They kept assuring me that my love for good all natural products had a place in the Richmond market. Despite being surrounded by a bevy of amazing business women to call on, I was having a hard time getting a foothold in the Richmond market, except for a faithful, but small, following. I knew my products were among the best around; I just needed a way to reach people that valued all natural products and cared about how they were packaged. Then out of the blue, Franklin Goose approached me. It was the answer to all my problems. They were a nationally recognized brand. They had huge presence the market place I was trying to establish myself in and their company values mirrored mine. I loved also that Franklin Goose is a woman owned business. The president lives in Richmond and their first store will be opening soon in Carytown. I sent samples in for them to review and now am carried on their site. It has been amazing. I can’t wait to see what will happen once the store goes live, but I know it will be amazing.



I didn’t know it when I started selling with them, but Franklin Goose really makes it their mission to give little start ups like me a chance in the market place. They try to find people, and in particular work at home moms (WAHM) that are making amazing products, but need a national site with traffic like theirs to be able to make a living at our craft. I guess in short, they were a company that reached back. I was glad for the hand.

I believe it is my passion for what I am doing and for being a good steward to the earth which has allowed me to attract a company like Franklin Goose. That passion, and a whole lot of amazing help. It is nice that small little companies, like me, have an opportunity to affect change in the marketplace because of companies like Franklin Goose that share a common goal. Together we are able to start offering Richmond natural & organic alternatives.

It is funny, I sometimes wonder if, when Franklin Goose started if they felt a bit like I do now. They knew that there was another way to be in corporate America. There was another way we can define what it means to be an American company. We can be good corporate citizens. We can add more than we take. I hope they did, I like the thought that we started off the same concepts, and hopefully one day Sweet Cheeks will be opening their first shop… just around the corner.