Shaynation forever.

Death by suicide leaves so many open wounds. One of my dearest friends recently chose to end her life. I post this only in the hopes that it may bring understanding and peace to some, and as a cry for help from the chronic pain community. Our health system is one of the most destructive things I have ever witnessed in my life, and the options we leave for people in daily agony are not enough. People are fighting every day to survive, against their own bodies and against a system that literally does not care for their suffering. A system that will watch you slowly dying while begging for help and not blink.

Stay strong #shaynation.

Anyone who knew Shalyn knew she was a fucking warrior. She told me stories of past traumas that wrecked me just in the listening, let alone the thought of her living through it. She morbidly laughed when she told me that she had reduced more than one therapist to tears within the first half-hour of her sharing her past. When I told her you are one of the toughest motherfuckers I have ever met, she said “I didn’t get much of a choice.”

For years Shay had been a marathon runner, destroying her ankles in the process. This past year, she suffered a horrific fall that required intense reconstructive surgery to her “good” ankle, which — in classic Shay fashion — she dubbed Shankenankle. She was told recovery would be a very long, painful process. After Shankenankle happened, she was tormented by being a semi-functional cripple. The struggle was compounded by the national crack-down on opiates, which left her on bare-minimum dosages that were constantly in threat of being taken away. She and I had a discussion last month during which we jokingly and not so jokingly talked about the fact that, old as we are and fucked up as our bodies are, this is the best we are ever going to feel. It’s all downhill from here. Even the sight of a puddle would give her major anxiety because she was so afraid of another fall. Her job required her to stand for long hours, and she couldn’t work the hours she needed to meet bills. She was in so much physical pain all the time, and she suffered from severe PTSD and anxiety that she managed to largely camouflage with her vibrant personality.

Personally, I think she fought the hardest fight I’ve ever seen anyone fight, for her ENTIRE life, and she was in unimaginable pain. She was exhausted and didn’t want to do it anymore.

As much as it hurts, I understand her decision, but what tortures me is knowing that she had to face this last battle alone.That dying by suicide is such a taboo in our culture that we can’t even talk about it, let alone allow someone to make a choice that would offer them the possibility of dying by their own choice, surrounded by people they trust and love. Toward the end of her life, Shay was in daily torturous pain from a multitude of major injuries and chronic illness issues. She suffered from PTSD, anxiety, and depression. She was a fucking survivor like no one I’ve ever known. And when she decided that it was too much — that the pain was too unbearable – unendurable — she had to make that decision completely alone. She was thoughtful even in death – she packed up her belongings and labeled them for different friends. She didn’t end her life where loved ones would be traumatized by finding her. She tried to make it as painless for us as she could, seeing through her own unmanageable pain to the impact she would make on those around her. And she did it all alone.

Shay went out as she did everything in life, on her own fucking terms. I take consolation that she is no longer trapped in a broken body. She is literally the strongest person I’ve ever known, and I am honored to call her friend.

A Cry from the Chronic Pain Community

I got called a junkie this week for defending patients’ rights to pain medication. What people don’t understand is that while I’m frustrated for myself, I’m FURIOUS for the people in the chronic pain community.

Yes, I am in pain all day every day, but it’s manageable and I can function at a high level despite it. There are plenty of people, however, who have the most painful conditions possible and CANNOT function without opiate help. It literally does not matter if they develop a physical dependence, because without it, they cannot survive. So they cope with the complications of taking intense medication because they have no choice.

With the new reforms, every time they need to refill their medication they are made to feel like addicts and criminals for needing help. These are people who are barely surviving: They are suffering physically, they have astronomical medical bills, and many of them are unable to work at all. Merely living is a painful fight every fucking day, and the only thing that makes it manageable is medication that they are now being denied.

Most people hate asking for help – Imagine knowing that you will have to endure the stigma that comes along with needing psychiatric assistance or pain management. Imagine knowing that simply asking for that help automatically puts you under suspicion and that you will be cross-examined to determine how bad your situation actually is. Imagine having to constantly prove and re-prove how much help you actually need. You’re barely functioning, yet you have to jump through hoop after hoop to prove how desperate you really are for some sort of relief, knowing that the desperation itself casts the shadow of suspicion over you. And yet we wonder why people self-medicate, or even choose suicide, rather than having to navigate our brutal, labyrinthine medical system.

I have a friend who suffers from RSD – considered one of the most painful conditions humans can develop. Today she was refused ALL of her medications by her pharmacy because a new pharmacist decided he knew better than her doctor and her years of medical records. They didn’t just refuse her pain meds, they refused EVERYTHING – her psychiatric meds, her ASTHMA medication – in the name of keeping drugs off the streets. Half of those medications have specific indications that they should NOT be stopped cold turkey – they require a weaning period or the patient can suffer severe pain, anxiety, depression, suicidal impulses, vomiting, tremors, seizures, and heart palpitations. (When I messaged her tonight, she was already vomiting.)When a patient points out that indications specifically say you should not stop taking these medications or you risk severe withdrawal, they are told that if they experience withdrawal they should go to the E.R. Let me repeat that, TO THE E.R. The one place that hates “pill seekers” more than anywhere. That’s where you’re supposed to go – where you will certainly be judged and most likely sent home with no help and a hefty medical bill. So basically, feel free to fuck off and die. Or go buy drugs on the street, which are still available, just much more expensive than they used to be. And that’s how a short-sighted drug war solution adds to the problem.

Yes, we have opiate epidemic, created by greedy pharmaceutical companies, a lack of foresight, and the growing existential despair of our fucked up world. But fighting that should not entail torturing sincerely ill patients and risking their lives in the name of the war on drugs. If you’ve read all of this and you still don’t get it, try talking to an actual patient – it may impart the empathy that you need.

What Mentoring Can Mean

(Text of a speech I gave at the Big Brothers Big Sisters “Big Nite”)

I know that visually I am not what would pop into most parents’ heads at the prompt, Role-model. But that’s part of the genius of Big Brothers Big Sisters: because they really look at each child for who they ARE, not just who adults might want them to be, they knew that they had a young lady who would be a perfect fit for me, and they took a chance. I’ve told them, it actually frightens me how perfectly matched we are – that girl is not pulling ANYthing over on me. We are so similar half the time I know what she’s thinking before she does.

The title Big Sister is no longer a metaphor for me. It’s reality. I’ve never had a sister before so sometimes the emotions involved are surprising. (I’d heard it said, but didn’t really believe, that you could both completely love someone and completely want to strangle them at the same time. The struggle is real.) But my little knows that I’m not her friend until she ages out of the program. I’m her friend for life. I’m her sister now.

It’s hard to say with certainty, because teens can give a whole new meaning to the word nonchalance, but I think that knowledge helps to steady my little when things get rough. They do sometimes. But she knows that no matter what happens – no matter mistakes or victories – I’ll be there for her. We just had our two year “anniversary” in September.

As much as I hope I have been able to give my little in terms of support, I think the relationship we have has had an even larger effect on me. Aside from the normal things all teenagers teach us – patience, the ability to read body language, the strength not to smother them in their sleep – my relationship with my little has taught me so much about empathy and compassion. I find myself thinking about kids I went to school with: kids I might have thought were weird, or smelly, or spaced out. How many of those kids were dealing with serious issues at home – the kind we like to think kids don’t or at least shouldn’t, have to deal with? How many of those kids had no stability at home at all?

A couple of years ago I ran into an old classmate of mine while shopping. I don’t even remember how it came up, but she mentioned being a foster child. I told her that I had no idea she’d been a foster, and she said, “Oh yeah, I bumped around foster care all through high school. I was really picked on for it.” It blew my mind that I had been so oblivious to all of that at the time, and it made me wonder what else I had missed in my classmates’ lives.

When I look at my little, I often see a mini-me: curious about the world, not hardly stupid, but brave enough that she can make stupid decisions. The difference between me and my little is that I had a stable family who surrounded me – a mom who gave me the freedom to become who I wished, as long as I got those A’s along the way. She held me accountable to everything she knew I was capable of. That’s a luxury that so many kids don’t have, and it’s what BBBS offers –a stable, consistent relationship, a support system, a cheering squad. Sometimes a family is so pressed down by its burdens that it’s not capable of stretching beyond basic survival, and children’s emotional needs can get pushed aside in the scramble.

Once you’ve been a part of a program like this, you know that many of these children have problems, but you don’t just write them off as problem children. Once you’ve connected to a child and seen how their circumstances have shaped them – once you have met a child who has survived more trauma than you have ever seen and still has the strength to smile, to trust – you begin to look at all children differently. There are no more problem children. There are children who are in need of assistance, in need of guidance, to become the best people they can be. No child can do that alone.

Glycerin-free makeup goodies!

So I have been meaning to get back to this blog for sometime. I went through my usual ADHD pattern of getting really hyped up and excited about something, and then getting distracted and wandering off half-finished. But I never deleted the blog, hoping I’d come back to it. And here I am, though I can’t promise where I’ll be tomorrow.

I’ve been meaning to post some of the glycerin-free products I use for some time, because it took me AGES to do all the research and replace all (most) of the products I used to use. I’ve been glycerin-free for about a year and a half now, and I’ve pretty much got my system down (though if anyone can find me a fish-oil supplement that is glycerin and soy-free and doesn’t cost the equivalent of a small child on the black market, I’d be THRILLED).

One of the saddest things for me about having to give up glycerin, is that I no longer get to go to a store and browse make-up (at least not without my iphone in hand frantically trying to find a site that lists all the ingredients). I don’t wear a ton of make-up during the week, but I sing in an 80s band on the weekends, so bright, obnoxious make-up is a must. I spent a ton of time online, looking at small companies (some started on Etsy), and here is a pretty complete list of the products I use:

If I’m wearing eyeshadow (typically only on-stage), I start with MAC eyeshadow primer.

I am absolutely obsessed with Sugarpill mineral eyeshadows. (Seriously, how cute is their model?!) They have really fun colors, and they last, even through the barrels of sweat I unleash onstage. (For dramatic eyeliner, mix a little of the shadows with water.) I’m also a big fan of Medusa mineral eyeshadows, though I think their real banger is their lip glosses!

For undereye concealer (a MUST for those awesome allergy bags) I use Almay Smart Shade concealer.

I found an eyeliner and a mascara at Foods For Living. The brand of the mascara is Zuzu – unfortunately, the label rubbed off on the eyeliner! 😦

My stylist friend Meggles turned me on to Jane Iredale’s awesome Bitty Brow kit so I don’t look eyebrowless on stage.

I have a serious lip balm addiction, so I had to find good substitutes: Kiss My Face has a vanilla honey lip balm I am addicted to; plus Eos lipbalm is glycerin free and easily available. 

Lipstick was one of the hardest things to hunt down, but I found a winner at MyBeautyAddiction.com. I ordered the sample sizes – you can try out 3 colors for $4!

I am also a HUGE fan of 100% Pure for lotions and face cream.

I think that covers most of what I use, and I hope it helps!  Let me know what your favorite products are!

Bitch, I’m Trying To Breathe Here

Or How You’re Really Nice But I Still Wanted to Bash Your Face In All Night…

I’ve always been sensitive to very strong perfumes – since I can remember, deep, musky scents have sent me into headache spirals that kept me far from most commercial perfumes. Up until the allergicapocalypse, when I discovered that I was allergic to nearly everything nice, tempting and tasty — both in terms of food and in terms of beauty products; essentially anything that comes into contact with my body from without or within — I had been remarkably dedicated to the Freesia scent at Bath and Body Works, enjoying it in Shower Gel, lotion and body spray format. It was MY scent, but at the same time, it was a very subtle scent. People would occasionally notice and it and comment on its pleasantness, but that was about it. End of interaction beyond my own sheer enjoyment of the scent.

Now I can not only no longer handle any of the Freesia products I adored for over a decade (seriously, that was MY scent), I can’t handle scented anything: perfumes, candles, spray air fresheners, plug-in fresheners, the car window tree fresheners (I suppose I had an unhealthy attachment to those anyways.). Shit, I can barely handle walking through the candle aisle at our bookstore, let alone make it through any department store filled with perfume counters, scented candles and phenol-covered clothes for sale.
It’s truly a nightmare when you put so much effort into rebooting your life to avoid allergens in your diet, the products you purchase, the choices you make; only to have those choices negated by the effects of inconsideration in social settings. Am I getting too whiny? Well here’s where it leads.

Bitches be wearing too much perfume.

(trust me, Men are VERY culpable for this as well, and I have more than experienced the pimp cloud – once you enter it you continue to catch whiffs of upon your person still after multiple showers. Oh, and if you have scent absorbing dread locks — which I do — good luck getting that stink out without multiple washings (of my fancy Tea Tree Allergen free shampoo… have yet to find a conditioner I can use…).

There was an occasion a couple of weeks ago that really got me thinking about writing a post.  I was singing at a local bar (we play 3 to 4-set shows, approximately 3 1/2 hours of music, and I am the primary singer.) Everything was running smoothly until a couple of women came to the front of the stage to dance. There is nothing inherently wrong with this part – we love that ladies are always the first to hit the dance floor, and we generally appreciate the fact that our female friends have softer skin and smell nicer than their male counterparts.

The problem here is the that one of the women had apparently marinated herself in her perfume overnight to make sure she had just the right 30 foot radius of stank space surrounding her. I was immediately able to identify her perfume as the source of my tightening throat, creeping asthma, eye watering and mad itching, but I couldn’t get physically near her to talk to her because the scent kicked so hard at my asthma. Usually I just try to move away, but in this case, I couldn’t, as I was stuck on the smallish stage with no where to go.

So I sent a brave friend over to explain the situation (“Your perfume is triggering her allergies and she’s having trouble singing. If you could move toward the back of the dance floor, she’d be better able to entertain you.”) The woman said “No.”

Let’s just pause for a moment – A person is told that their perfume is making another person very ill, and that person happens to be the one you paid to come in and be entertained by…. so you would rather watch the singer struggle to produce notes (not an exaggeration – my throat just seizes up when exposed to the right things), than just move back 10 feet and stop flirting with the (married!) keyboard player for 10 minutes?

Needless to say, I was heading toward fuming when her infinitely cooler friend convinced stinky marie to move back. Once they did, my symptoms calmed down. (Now was that so hard?)

I realize I’m probably coming off as if I’m saying my shit is more important than yours. Well, here’s where I draw my line. I don’t care what you’re doing, as long as it isn’t hurting me or those I love directly. I don’t care if you sit next to me at a bar, shoot up some heroin and fuck a hooker in the bathroom. I DO, however, care when either your own stunted sense of smell or overriding insecurity cause you to douse yourself in wooly mammoth musk that I can smell, and react to, from fifty feet away. It’s unnecessary and it’s unacceptable.

What are your thoughts on scents in public? Do you ever approach people about their scent?

Amazing allergy-friendly recipe website!

Hey all – it’s been so long you probably thought I’d given up posting! I’ve still been fighting the good fight against my plethora of allergies (we’ve added a few since the last time I’ve posted), but I just couldn’t bring myself to post, because quite honestly, I was sick of fucking thinking about it. I feel so much better after cutting everything out, but my sensitivities are so high right now, that allergies are always on my mind – I’m constantly either dealing with a reaction or planning my life to avoid one. Once I got over the high of “Wow, I can’t believe I feel this much better,” the lashback of sensitivity to everything around me (I had to have flowers removed from a stage this weekend because they gave me instant asthma) started getting overwhelming. My inhalant and exposure allergies have been off the charts lately, but I’m hopeful that once I get on a steady stream of allergy shots, that will all balance out.

But enough bitching! I’m here today because a friend of mine shared a fantastic site with me! With as many food allergies as I have it can be really difficult to find recipes that are safe (though I am getting better at figuring out recipe modifications and substitutions), and Yummly.com totally eliminates the problem.

Yummly is essentially a huge recipe search engine. The main site page offers options to “Browse,” “Search,” or “Discover.” If you go through to the Search page, and look at the left side of the page, you will find the awesome parts of the site that allow you to narrow down your search by a slew of options:

1. For allergy sufferers, you can check boxes for 10 different options, including Dairy-free, Gluten-free, Soy-free, and Sulfite-free; For allergens not listed there, you can use the “Without-ingredient” tab to add in your extra allergens (I list things like corn and mushrooms — corn sufferers do need to list both corn and cornstarch). When you add an allergen, the a small box pops up that says “increasing yummliness” as the item is screened out of potential recipes.

2. You can opt for specific diets like lacto-vegetarian or vegan

3. You can list ingredients that you have and want included in the recipe as well as those you want left out, and you can select a specific type of taste, be it salty, savory, sweet, etc.

4. You can select dietary restrictions like amount of calories, cholesterol or carbs.

5. You can set the amount of prep time, select a specific type of cuisine, or a specific course of the meal.

6. You can even set a limit for the amount of money you would like to spend per recipe serving (which I think is such a cool option)!

So to sum up, this website is the best recipe site ever. And since it searches multiple sites (and allows you to limit your searches to specific sites), it’s really the only recipe site you need. Yay!

 

The Vagaries of the Food Chain

‘Allo!  Has been a minute since I last posted – I just relaunched our work blog, and to be honest I was sheer blogged out. But here we are again to discuss the strangeness of the allergic lifestyle.

The most dominant development has been my adventures with beef. My allergist tests for the major seven food allergies (wheat, corn, dairy, soy, eggs, potatoes and yeast), but said there was a strong possibility I was allergic to beef. So I steered clear of it the first few weeks and then decided to give it a shot and see what would happen. Let me tell ya, nothing good.

I didn’t seem to have much of an immediate reaction, but once the beef hit my guts, it was like Chernobyl bubbling up in my intestines, which stayed riled up for days. (Now that’s some sexy pillow talk!) Because I studied the scientific method (and because I’m all aflutter for punishment) I tried eating steak again some days later to see if it was indeed the culprit, and I can say pretty decisively, yup.

Now where this gets interesting is when a friend mentioned, “Oh yeah, my sister-in-law has that same problem. She can only eat grass-fed meat. Any corn-fed meat really screws her up.”

Wait-wait-what?!

So it’s not enough that I am uber-vigilant about what I eat, now I have to keep tabs on whatever it is that I’m eating has eaten? What kind of meta-hell have I descended into?

But it’s true. This Scientific American article claims that when looking at fast food beef, “93 percent of the tissue that comprised the hamburger meat was derived from corn.”  That’s a ridiculously high percentage (and rather cruel when you think about the fact that, as the article points out, cows stomachs are designed to digest GRASS, not corn).

And, according to this LiveStrong article, “The most common corn-fed animals are chickens and pigs, so dishes containing chicken, pork, ham, bacon and sausage may be affected.” I personally haven’t had any problems with chicken or pork yet, but damn.

The solution seems to be finding a local farmer/butcher who can guarantee that your meat is is not corn-fed. For now, I’ve just cut out beef til I can find the time to hunt some down.

I’ll leave you with one more link, this to a Serious Eats posting about a blogger who gave up corn for a week. It’ll give you some perspective on how ubiquitous corn is in the American diet (as will checking out The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan).

The Best Allergy Survival Trick Ever

Since cutting out my main allergens, my body has slipped into crazy defensive mode, reacting to random things left and right. Today I had an asthma attack from using a Sharpie. It’s a huge pain in the ass, but there’s a great trick that has been an absolute life-saver for me.

Don’t ask me to explain the science behind this, because I don’t know it, but basically my allergist said that when the body is having an allergic reaction, it’s in an acidic state. If you can push your body back to a basic state, you can help cut the reaction symptoms you’re having.

So, next time you’re having a reaction you can drink either:

• Alka Seltzer Gold
• Emergen’C (buffered Vitamin C)
• or 2 Tsp. of Baking Soda in a glass of water (1 tsp. for kids)

The great thing about this, is it works not only with food allergies, but with inhalant or chemical allergies. I now keep a box of Baking Soda in my office and a small tupperware container of it in my purse. When I start having allergy asthma, I dump some baking soda in water, and voila, I can breathe and the itching subsides.

Don’t believe me? Check out this article from more official sources and pipe down. 😉

Get thee gone glycerin!

I can’t believe I forgot to talk about the toothpaste issue in yesterday’s post about Glycerin sensitivity!

If I were a balding middle-aged man with a freakishly massive tongue, it might look like this.

The fact that toothpaste has always set my mouth on fire should have been one of my first clues that something was wrong, but I’ve always had a sensitive tongue (don’t get dirty on me now). When I was a kid my mom had to put ice cubes in my food to cool it off before I’d eat it, I can handle NO amount of spicy and the bubbles in soda pop burn my tongue. Seriously. So the fact that toothpaste burns the crap out of my mouth just seemed to fit in with all that.

But it turns out — you guessed it — there’s glycerin in almost every commercial toothpaste, including “healthy” lines like Tom’s. (I should mention that my allergist said the burning reaction is not typical, though both my physical therapist — the only other person I’ve met who has a known glycerin allergy — and I have the same reaction.)

So, my first order of business (even before finding lotion), was finding a toothpaste I could stand. I did some online research and found blogs about people brushing with olive oil soap (too weird) and baking soda (too harsh), so I went to Better Health, and after checking every single tube, found ONE toothpaste I could use: Tea Tree Therapy Toothpaste.

My mouth no longer tastes like burning.

I’ll be upfront – it doesn’t taste like any toothpaste I’ve ever had, but for me that is GREAT, because it’s not torture to use. It’s a subtle freshening, rather than a full-on chemical assault, and my teeth feel lovely smooth all day after using.

One last quicky tip – if, like me, you can no longer use mints or gum, get thee to the health food store and buy a small bottle of peppermint oil. I keep one in my purse, and just a couple of drops on the tongue sends garlic funk packing. You can also put a little bit on the underside of your nose and it gives a fantastic menthol-type clearing of the sinuses. As an extra bonus, peppermint is really good for your immune system!

Glycerin Shmycerin.

So to start, apologies for the gap between posts. All busy-life issues aside, the truth is that I’ve gotten hooked into a days-long Lie To Me marathon and I had to tell myself I couldn’t watch any more until I posted again.

Don't worry love, I'm coming back soon!

I decided my second post would be about Glycerin. Up until 2 weeks ago I had given it nary a thought, but my genius allergist started my round of food testing by checking my reaction to glycerin, and it was a doozy.

Sometimes spelled as glycerin or glycerine, it’s a vegetable-derived substance that is in almost every beauty product you use, or at least it was in mine – I ended up tossing or giving away 3/4 of my makeup and almost all of my lotion, shower gel, shampoo, make-up removers (including nail polish remover), liquid soaps, hand sanitizers and most of my vitamin supplements. Any product that needs to retain a viscous nature, like liquid soaps or lotion, is likely to have glycerin in it.

(And this is, I think, a crucial point — thus far, all of my main allergens are items that are ubiquitous: Gluten, dairy and soy are huge components of the American diet, and corn is in EVERYTHING in one form or another – corn syrup, corn starch, corn oil. Once I started eliminating things, I began to wonder why MORE people aren’t exhibiting allergic symptoms, considering how many times a day we are exposed to the most common allergens.)

In my particular case, reactions to glycerin include itchiness, lethargy, a “foggy” brain, insomnia and really wicked bouts of Restless Legs. As I was

Last time I accidentally took a supplement with glycerin in it, my restless legs got so bad I dreamt someone slipped me acid. "Why are there bugs under my skin?!"

tossing all my makeup, it dawned on me why I was always so exhausted on my drive to work — I had just washed in glycerin, put glycerin lotion on my skin and put it all over my face in my makeup. My allergist said she has patients who would literally have to lie down after taking a shower and washing their hair with glycerin-containing shampoo. In my case the kicker is that I get really tired, but am completely unable to sleep.

At first the diagnosis was overwhelming – I’m not gonna lie, I cried a little over having to give up my glitter eyeshadow, liquid eyeliner and fuchsia lipstick (in my defense, yes I am a total attention whore, but I sing in an 80s band on the weekend, so over-the-top make-up is a necessity). But after multiple hours online and in health stores, I’ve managed to replace almost everything I used before, sometimes with products I like even better than the originals. And let’s face it, I’d rather have a mascara that’s a little smudgy but doesn’t make me sick over one that stays for days and makes me feel like crap.

Eventually I’ll share all my tips with you, but since it’s the middle of winter, let’s talk lotion, since that was my first panic. Thus far I’ve found two companies I’m really pleased with that are great resources for allergy-prone people (or just people who want to get the crap out of the products they put on their bodies): Dr. Bronner’s and 100% Pure/Purity Cosmetics.

Sooth the Savage Hippy Inside

Dr. Bronner’s is common in health food stores and hippy shops – the products are fair trade and organic and largely made from hemp oil, so go figure. I can use both the Castile soaps and the lotions from this line — I’m a big fan of the Patchouli Lime lotion and the Peppermint Liquid Soap (fair warning – it’s a tingler!)

I found some 100% Pure Pink Grapefruit body cream at Foods for Living, and think it’s a really nice lotion with an invigorating scent. I also ordered a couple of face products off their website — I’ve only had them about a week (the first shipment froze in transit and arrived exploded), but so far I am loving the Mint White Tea Moisturizer (it tingles like the peppermint soap). I like the feel and smell of the Super Fruits Eye Balm, but I’ve found it can make

Love Love Love!

the skin a little greasy where makeup is concerned.

As for their makeup, when I was first shopping they were out of stock of most of the products I wanted to try. I’ll keep you posted as I try new stuff.

I should note that I have one reservation about Purity Cosmetics: Even though the products are all natural, they each still have a long list of ingredients. At this point, anything with more than 10 ingredients makes me nervous because it becomes exponentially harder to pinpoint the source of an allergic reaction.

Power to my allergy people!