Hello, my friend!
This week I’m letting you in on something I’ve been quietly working on — and to tell you about it, I have to take you all the way back to a cornfield in Vermont.
↓ In today’s email:
- This week’s inspiration: From corn silk to Chinese herbs
- Latest blog post: The conversation your OB-GYN isn’t having with you
- What I’m reading this week: The Great Gatsby (again)
This Week’s Inspiration: From Corn Silk to Chinese Herbs
If I told you that I started making beauty products from nature at age 11, I’m not kidding. It was from the corn silk that grew in front of my parents’ house in Vermont. I think I had the idea that something in the corn silk would be good for my hair. How could I not have made that connection? As corn silk is, as the name implies — silky, glossy, glistening, and of course looks a little bit like hair. So I went out into the field and gathered a ton of this corn silk and boiled it in water. Let the water cool and rinsed it through my hair. What that did to my 11-year-old hair is totally unclear and not memorable, but it connected me with nature in the spirit of beauty.
All this continued over the years: potions, lotions, anything I could make I put on myself, and my brothers joked that anything that I ate for breakfast was fair game to put on my face as a face mask. Yogurt, fruit, honey, oatmeal, you name it. The only thing that probably didn’t apply would be pancakes and waffles. I have not found a use for those things yet, but TBD.
In my college years, I made serums — although no one called it that. I took carrier base oils and added drops of essential oils, making my skin luminous and my hair greasy. My college friends still remember this, and one of them mentioned it recently. Into my mid-twenties, I made Ayurvedic facial masks from pulverized mung beans, adzuki beans, citrus peel, and even a little bit of powdered milk. Many of these recipes came from Pratima Raichur’s book called Absolute Beauty, which I’ve had many copies of and only had to get other ones because they were stain-laden from all the concoctions I made in my kitchen. As a side note, I was a patient of hers in the 90s, and what a lovely person she is.
Oh, I digress! When I lived in Africa, I also considered going on this path long before shea butter was a well-known thing. I used copious amounts of it — it’s also used in cooking in Ghanaian food — and I considered actually in 2000 creating a skin care line from shea butter. Here we are 26 years later, I focused on skincare again.
Fast forward to today: I’m in the process of formulating two different salves — a day salve and a night salve for aging skin. Truly, I have to tell you, I’m so excited. This line is for women right about my age, women whose skin could use a little bit of reinforcement and a whole lot of nourishment. The formulation comes from steeping carrier oils that are fabulous for aging skin — like sea buckthorn, apricot kernel, and jojoba, among others — in Chinese herbs that also rejuvenate the skin and have been known for millennia to do so, including pearl powder and other minerals. Adding to all of that, I am using essential oils from the master John Steele. The oils also have an aim to give the skin a more robust look and feel. Floral, but also with some resins and some woods. Helichrysum, neroli, rose, lavender, frankincense, of course. Among others.
So basically it will be a combination of petal power and pearl powder. I’m so excited to be in the formulation process and have you along for the ride. More info to come.
Latest Blog Post
The Conversation Your OB-GYN Isn’t Having With You
One thing people are not talking about is the sexual satisfaction of middle-aged women. Research shows that only about 40% of OB-GYNs routinely ask patients about sexual problems — and even fewer ask about specifics like desire, pain, or satisfaction. That silence speaks volumes.
In this week’s post, I get into the real changes that happen to your body — what Genitourinary Syndrome of Menopause actually means, why vaginal estradiol is a game-changer worth knowing about, the two kinds of lubrication your midlife body needs, and what Chinese medicine brings to the table. Plus, the practitioners who are actually doing this work.
What I’m Reading This Week
The Great Gatsby — F. Scott Fitzgerald
I stumbled across a copy of The Great Gatsby only because it was in a pile of books that belonged to my son. Read and partially discarded, I grabbed it and dove back into the world of Tom and Daisy Buchanan and of course Gatsby and the narrator Nick. What’s so interesting about reading this copy is that my son’s notes are in the margin. It is so interesting to see how a seventeen-year-old understands this book and to see insights from his perspective.
I recently met an author who said she loves to write books based in Boston because there’s so much of a class element to Boston society. I told her you have to come to Newport, because Boston pales in comparison. Of course the world of Gatsby is that of access, excess, and inherently of class. Perhaps this is my fifth reading of the book, and I’m enjoying it still.
Here’s to the potions, the lotions, and the never-ending experiment.
Dr. Catherine