My essential oil journey... aka why the fuck am I so into oils now?

So, as you may know, since having hyperemesis gravidarum in 2013 and 2014 in my pregnancy with Beth... my immunity was totally shot. It feels like I've had a cold, fever or throat infection ever since. Whatever came anywhere close to me, I would catch and be out for a week or two at least. Em reached out and offered to show me how to use essential oils, and she told me her story of rebuilding her immunity with essential oils.

She told me the most beautiful story about giving her kid’s teachers an essential oil diffuser with Onguard essential oil blend in the classroom to stop her kids getting sick… and the classrooms suddenly and radically reducing the amount of kids being absent from school with sickness. Such a noticeable difference that other teachers had noticed, and asked what those classes had done… and then adopted the Onguard and essential oil use so it’s now used in every room in the school, and all the hallways smell of it! (Which, to me, is totally delightful… if you’ve smelt Onguard, you’ll know what I mean… it’s this beautiful blend of uplifting oils including Wild Orange!)

The funny part is - I knew about essential oils… I mean… I am a damn hippy after all… but I didn’t get how smelling something would help anything… I’d also bought essential oils from a different company before a couple of years before and didn’t quite “get it” or how to use them. Anyways, my mate gave me a bunch of helpful advice, and I started using them… first to build my immunity, then I started using them with my kids for sleeping and building immunity against colds from school, then with cleaning the house, then I started using them to cleanse and uplift our home’s energy and everyone’s moods, then I started anointing myself with them as a spiritual practice of self devotion… all of a sudden, I was oil mad. I’d slather myself up and walk around in a joyous oily haze.

I learned that it’s not just about smelling the oils, or diffusing them - though that’s a part of it - you can also apply them topically (like to the soles of your feet) and even take them orally (though this has to be done with care and only in specific ways with specific oils). Once I got that, I started really feeling the results.

I went away on health retreat and even took my diffuser with me and a big case of oils… which ended up being SO helpful… I diffused oil when I was homesick and needed something to smell like home. One glorious night, I got the oils out and me and my other retreaters lathered up and got essential oil foot massages and were all on a glorious blissful high for hours.

I started telling other mates about it… especially the ones with shithouse immunities! One of them messaged me when she was away for a girl’s weekend… one of her friends with her had gotten sick, and my mate was convinced she’d get sick as well. Luckily, she’d taken her On Guard blend with her, and dosed the shit out of herself… meanwhile texting me “If I can get out of this weekend without getting sick… I AM A TOTAL CONVERT!” She did, and she is.

For me, it hasn’t “fixed me” completely - I’m still going through tests to see if there’s something else at play… but I’ve noticed enough of a difference for me and my family that I’m a convert. My kids adore it… they both have diffusers in their rooms now, and ask for a blend to be in it when they go to sleep. When I get new oils arrive in the mail, I sit down on the floor with the kids, and we smell them, and look up what kinds of plants they come from, and watch videos about how the plants are harvested. Having essential oils diffusing through the day definitely improves our moods, and I now use them in my office to stimulate my productivity and focus as well!

It made so much sense to me… as an earth and plant lover… to harness the powers of their essential oils. It makes me so happy to be out in the garden among the rosemary and lavender and know that the preventative medicine and mood lifters I am using are from the plants I adore so much.

How it has helped me + my family:

• It's improved all of our immune system - mine is still not great after being so damaged but it's definitely on the increase. I use OnGuard in all its forms - diffused, applied topically, swallowing beadlets and capsules, washing hands and clothes with OnGuard hand wash and detergent.
• I sleep better + wake up with more energy (instead of feeling like a truck has run over me) because I apply Frankincense to the soles of my feet before I go to sleep.
• We use Ice Blue for instant pain relief for aches, pains, muscle strains and bruising.

Having said that: I will neverrrrrr be one of those people that think everything can be cured with an essential oil. I had way too many (well-meaning but completely misguided) people tell me that my hyperemesis gravidarum (LINK) could be cured with peppermint oil (or ginger. Or dry crackers. Or some woo-woo reiki healing.) And it was totally frustrating and hard because I would have LOVED for that to be the case. But I needed some serious heavy duty western medication to survive that pregnancy. And honestly, I believe there’s a place for all of this - eastern, western, woo-woo medicine. That we don’t need to choose between them. We can use all of them as tools for better health.

So yeah, you’re going to find me over here, on probiotics, getting weekly intuitive healing sessions, dosing myself on essential oils... AND continuing to love the support of my anti-anxiety medication and going to the doctor!

Anyways so I got into the oils… and because I adore learning about business models, I asked Em if she could share about her essential oil business. I LOVE finding out how different businesses are structured. And she shared about how she’d spent years trying to make money different ways both online and offline, and that she’d really needed to find something that supported her and her family. So when she found this business, she decided to really give it a red hot go… and within a couple of months was making $20k a year… and less than two years in, is making $120k a year while doing it part-time so she could parent her kids. She obviously adored what she was doing, and it got my brain ticking, because I had a close friend who was looking to do… SOMETHING. Who wanted to make money outside of a job, she just weren’t sure WHAT. So I started investigating it as a business opportunity for her. I wanted to make sure that if I was telling her about something, I knew that it was a good one… plus it was exciting for my funny little brain that loves to work out business models!

At this stage, I definitely wasn’t thinking about it as a business for me... I already have two of them between the workbooks and the Academy! Both of them are multi-million dollar brands, so if I was considering anything, it needed to be at least a million-dollar income stream for me.

Anyways, as I was doing my research… I realised just how much possibility there was… I discovered there were a number of my friends and associates (and even clients I had done private coaching with in years past) who had gone on to create 7 figure income streams.

And as I was doing this, I realised how beautifully it would work for so many of my clients who had so much passion to create an income for themselves and their family… they just needed the SOMETHING to sell.

And I realised just how much I’d love to support people on that journey… that it would be a new, different, more collaborative way of working… utilising all the skills I’ve gathered over the years. That it felt really exciting because it would be concentrating totally on two things:

1. Helping other people with their businesses to make sure they got results and could achieve their dreams for themselves and their families
2. Introducing more of the world to natural therapies and essential oil goodness like I’d experienced!

I read more about the company, and really loved how their values aligned with mine. They are philanthropists, they are wildly generous with their advocates (i.e. their affiliates) and they work to ensure farmers across the world get fair trade.

So I'm here... and I'm excited!

So much oily joy!