This post is something I just wrote for my Happy Mermaid Skin Care blog, but it was very Faux Ma like, so I decided to post it on here too. That naked pregnant woman is me, by the way.

I grew up in Connecticut in an Irish, middle-class household with my 3 siblings and Mom and Dad. We had a pretty average American lifestyle. Mom cooked her delicious meat and potatoes meals about 5 nights a week, Pasta and meatballs was for Sundays. We had weekly visits for lunch or snacks at Mcdonald’s, Wendy’s, Dunkin’ Donuts, and an awesome Northeast chain unhealthy restaurant called “Friendly’s” that I actually ended up working at for a while. I had pretty awesome co-workers there. Well, back to my story. My Mom stocked the house with lots of veggies, but she also stocked it full of sodas, cakes, cookies, meats, and nothing organic. I’m not trying to bitch slap my Mom or anything. (<—- Catholic guilt speaking) But we definitely weren’t impressing any health guru’s or personal trainers out there with our diet. We were all involved with tons of Sports. I think that was mainly because my Mom wanted to keep us out of her hair as much as possible. Don’t spank me, Mom (<—I was raised Catholic).

I played Soccer, Basketball, Field Hockey for a while, and I was on the Swim team. I loved sports, still do. I run and do bikram yoga like a good girl 4 x a week. Now I’m just bragging. Despite all of these athletics, I had a horrible body image from age 11 until I was 22 years old. I blame this on my bad diet. I did not realize that health food existed growing up. All I knew was that I heard supermodels hardly ate anything, and if they did eat, they’d throw it up. So that is what I did. I ate all the delicious, unhealthy food my Mom and my school cafeteria served me, and I would vomit it all up. So I got skinny. It seemed like the skinnier I got, the more guys asked me out and noticed me. So that just reinforced to me that I was doing the right thing. Because life is all about sexual attraction, right? Then one day when I was 17, I threw up blood and passed out next to the toilet for a while. My Mom didn’t know. She thought I was in the bath. I freaked myself out so bad about this, I decided to tell her about my Bulimia. She knew about it, because she had caught me before, but I really made her KNOW about it this time. I demanded she get me some help, because rich little white girls have the luxury of making those demands, you know.

So my loving and concerned parents got me a shrink and a nutritionist, but they weren’t much of a help at all. So through my frustration about how crappy this “professional” help was, I stumbled upon a Natural Living book at a hippie bookstore. That was the beginning of my enlightenment about how to treat this ol’ body of mine. Everything was so simply stated, easy to learn and obvious. The same “your body is a temple” concept. It spelled out very plainly that meat and dairy product consumption was not intended for Human beings. I began realizing that the reason I felt the need to throw up was because of my binge eating of heavy, unnatural and unhealthy foods. I mean, I never threw up a salad before because that is healthy. I know the meat/dairy thing is a controversial topic, but whatever, I believed in it and still do. So I became a vegetarian. It was hard to avoid eating my Mom’s delicious meals, but luckily I was an angsty teenager, so this kind of felt like a bitchy rebellion I was going through. Plus it gave me tons of attention when people would ask me why I was the only person at the table eating a salad, and I’ve always loved attention. Being healthy made me feel strong, proud, vibrant, beautiful, glowing…but I’ve always had a great love for drinking alcohol. My books encouraging giving that up, but I am not ready to do that. Not sure I ever will be, being Irish and all.

So you may be saying to yourself, “When is this goddamn ho going to mention anything about all natural skin care?!”. I hear ya. I was wondering that myself while I’ve been typing this. A smart person would erase everything, start from scratch, and condense this post to be a more specific and appealing one-two paragraph piece on my skin care journey only. Oh well. Not going to do that.

I met my Husband in 2004 and he is a big old all natural living junkie. He made my lifestyle look so unhealthy and horrible compared to his super strict diet. Since I am super competitive, I couldn’t have him looking more healthy than me, so I read all of his crunchy granola hippie books and copied his lifestyle habits (well, besides masturbating to porn for hours) so that I could be just like him, a pretentious healthy vegetarian. I still eat meat occasionally in moderation, but for the most part I am a vegetarian. We have been happily living as annoying health freaks for our entire 7 1/2 years of marriage. Except for the beauty products I used, those were all generic up until 2009.

In 2008 I got pregnant with our first child, and that is when I got into the all natural world of skincare and cosmetics. Being pregnant does that to a lot of women. You get really worried about what is going in and on your body. And even more worried about what is going on your baby. We were so poor, but I required we only use the very expensive all natural baby soap, lotions, diapers, diaper wipes, clothing, etc.  I have let up a bit about that with the clothing, but not in terms of the skin care items. All of my research shows that what you put on your skin is just as important as what you put in your mouth, so I decided to become as much of a nazi about skincare as I’ve been about food.

With the discovery of my second pregnancy last November, I decided to turn my new passion for natural skin care into a business by creating my very own line of all natural skincare products because I had problems with the consistency, texture, scent, ingredients, quality, safety level and abrasiveness of a lot of products I’ve tried. I named the business “Happy Mermaid” skincare because I love mermaids, I’m a jolly person, and the whole idea of mermaids seems to convey the cleanliness of the all natural market, and the timeless beauty and moisture I am looking to bring to people’s skin and hair through my products.

Thanks for reading, and I’d love for you to keep checking my blog for updates on my Company’s progress. Feel free to comment or message me any ideas for products, questions, hell…even hate mail if you want. Click here: to go to Happy Mermaid Skincare