Switching to Natural Takes Time… PLEASE DON’T GIVE UP!!

It doesn’t happen in a month. Or even a year. Honestly, it might not happen in five.

I’ve been doing this for over a decade and I’m still figuring things out. Still changing things. Still reading labels and googling ingredients and catching myself reaching for stuff I already know doesn’t work for me….

Sometimes I fall back into old habits just because I’m tired or stressed or can’t be bothered. Sometimes I still get itchy patches and I think, wait, ha! I thought I should know this by now. But that’s the thing, it’s not really linear. It’s not like a clean slate. It doesn’t “work” in the way we’ve been taught to expect things to work. It’s a long, slow shift that is most probably very different for everyone.

So when someone tells me they tried switching to natural and it didn’t work, I know exactly what they mean. They probably swapped a few products, maybe even threw out half their stuff, bought some expensive oils or powders (I hate how overpriced “natural” things are!!), started eating differently, whatever. And then their skin went a little weird, or they started hating the “new” smells, or even worse, no “real” changes and they thought, nope, this isn’t for me.

But that’s not a sign that it’s failing. That’s literally part of the process. It is, believe me.

You’ve got to understand, if your whole system has been used to synthetic things and quick fixes and suppressing symptoms for years, it’s going to take time to come back to balance.

Your body needs time to remember how to regulate itself. To clean itself. To find its own rhythm again. It might take years. It might take ten or twenty. I mean it. That’s not meant to scare you by the way. It’s just honest.

I make my own skincare now and have been since 2018. I know what ingredients to look for and what to avoid. I’ve helped people make this transition in all kinds of ways and sell my products at the market (for a fantastic price, but sometimes people expect these things to be expensive or all they’re not really “that” good…)

And I didn’t just wake up one day and go natural. I used to use supermarket shampoo and strong perfumes and weird scrubs that promised glowing skin and I kept “buying into it” for years and years and yesrs. Then, you don’t think about it anymore. You just keep buying into it (literally) in an automated way.

I used to think if something tingled or stung it meant it was working (haha, hello scrubs!). I had no clue what my body was trying to say or that these were harsh. The products I thought were “normal” were incredibly harmful for me (and anyone).

And it didn’t all change overnight. I started by switching one thing. Then another. Then reading some more. Then a course here, another course there…

I tried things that didn’t work. I made DIY stuff that went mouldy in the jar. I spent money on natural products that still had hidden nasties in them. Oh, that one takes a long time to learn!! I still make mistakes in fact.

I never felt like giving up but never thought I could be called an “expert”. I felt embarrassed when I didn’t know something and I can still feel that even though I’ve learnt SO MUCH over the last 10 years!!

So if you’re in that space right now, if you’ve made a few changes and you’re starting to wonder if this is all a waste of time, please don’t stop!!

You don’t have to be perfect. You don’t need to get everything right. You don’t have to go off-grid or throw out everything you own (eventually I left the big city to live in a farm, et c etc, but all that came with time).

Just keep going. Keep trying. Keep learning. Keep noticing what works and what doesn’t. That’s the only way this becomes sustainable.

And don’t underestimate the small things. Maybe you stopped using a certain moisturiser because deep down you knew it never really helped. Maybe you figured out what one of the ingredients on a label actually is. Maybe you made a face mask in your kitchen and it worked surprisingly well. Maybe your period was a bit less painful this month because of a new herb you finally tried or your skin feels less reactive or you slept a little deeper.

It doesn’t need to be dramatic. It doesn’t need to be perfect. You are changing things and this changes you over time as well.

So the more you trust that, the more your body trusts you back.

It’s okay if it takes years. It really is.

You don’t have to give up just because something is going to take time. Or because it feels far away. Let it be a work in progress. Let yourself be a work in progress. Maybe it’ll take five lifetimes. I honestly believe we come back again and again and keep learning and getting better and remembering more each time. So why not let this life be the one where you slow down and actually enjoy what you’ve already done. Celebrate what you shifted this year. Even if it’s tiny. It counts.

Patience isn’t waiting around for everything to be perfect. It’s staying with it when it’s messy and inconvenient and hard. It’s letting things take the time they need.

And most of all, it’s trusting that even when it doesn’t feel like it, it’s working.

With love,
Patri ❤️❤️