Lunapads Blog

It’s April and we’ll be kicking off an exciting month focused on Pads4Girls and community outreach.

To help support some of our current partners going to Africa, we’ll be holding a Pads4Girls Benefit Tea with Peggy O’Mara at Lunapads on Friday, April 17th.  More details forthcoming in a future post as we finalize our plans.  Needless to say, I am buzzing with excitement about having Peggy here at Lunapads.  I have been a reader of Mothering Magazine for 6 years and a huge fan of Peggy’s books.  The magazine and website has been a constant source of information and inspiration for me as a mother.

Also this month, Lunapads is a sponsor and exhibitor at the Healthy Families conference in Vancouver.  In addition to key note speaker Peggy O’Mara, this two day event will feature speakers and workshops with topics to help build community for our children at home and in school.  I am looking forward to establishing new connections and gathering ideas on how to strengthen the relationship between family, children and community.  The event is April 18 – 19th and you can get tickets here.

Meanwhile, behind the scenes in our global community, momentum is building for projects like AfriPads.  Over the next few months, we will be closely following the journey of a young couple (Paul Grinvalds and Sonia Klumps) who are working in Uganda with plans to make cloth pads.  We were introduced to Paul and Sonia by Carrie-Jane Williams, who is also busy networking with other folks to help make her dream of pads being made in Africa happen.  Next week, Madeleine and I are attending a benefit dinner for Partners in the Horn of Africa, a not for profit organization that works in Ethiopia to provide infrastructure improvements, health and welfare and women’s anti-poverty projects.  We hope to learn more about how individuals and organizations are helping to make the lives of girls and women in Africa better and how Lunapads can help.

In the meantime, please continue supporting our partner organizations in our Donate section.  Thank you!

Suzanne and I were in Anaheim CA a couple of weeks ago, where we attended the Natural Products Expo West trade show. It’s a busy place that can be a bit overwhelming, but there was no shortage of inspiration to be had.   One of the major highlights for us was running into Peggy O’Mara, founder of Mothering magazine. 

I hadn’t seen Peggy since I attended a workshop she was leading 3 years ago at Hollyhock.  It was a very special time for me, and I was joined there not only by my then-5 month old daughter Gigi, but also by my Mom Pat.  Peggy held the space for our stories, joys and fears, and it was a once in a lifetime opportunity to connect with one of the most influential figures in the natural parenting movement.

Peggy and Mothering have been huge sources of inspiration and information for Suzanne and I as Moms, and we are very excited that she will be here in Vancouver delivering the keynote address at the Healthy Families Conference, April 18 and 19 (co-sponsored by our friend Bridgitte from Natural Pod natural toys.)  We are trying to line up a visit with Peggy here at Lunapads as well, so stay tuned!

 Calling all Vancouver entrepreneurs!  CRAVE Shop Symposium is coming to Vancouver next week and it looks like it will have much to offer.  It’s a day-long event dedicated to inspiration and education, featuring local luminaries including our pal and Lunapads.com web diva Lauren Bacon of Raised Eyebrow Web Studio (and co-author with her business partner Emira Mears of the Boss of You), Laurel Douglas, CEO of the Women’s Enterprise Society of BC (I lead a peer mentoring group under their auspices), local social media maven Alexandra Samuel of Social Signal Marketing and DIY social media and SEO educator Steve Jagger of Reachd.com (Steve was here at Lunapads for some in-house training a few weeks ago and he and biz partner Rodney Bartlett were extremely helpful.)Here are the deets:

When: Monday March 30, 2009

Time: 8am-5:30pm

Where: Vancity Theatre, 1181 Seymour Street, Vancouver BC

Tickets: $85 USD per guest $70 USD each for two or more

To register, click here.  See you there!

Our good friend (and official Lunapads portrait photographer) Jaime Kowal is launching a photography workshop for women.  Jaime has photographed the Lunagals several times and her fine work is sprinkled throughout the Lunapads website and in our catalogue and leaflets.  Jaime has an amazing personality and her aura shines through as soon as you meet her.   Jaime is committed to social, environmental, health and women’s issues and her upcoming workshop sounds like a perfect union of photographic art and the divine feminine.

A Photography, Storytelling and Self-Publishing Workshop for Women

What is sacred to you? How does the energy of the divine feminine play out in your life? What are you grateful for? Explore these and other important questions in a safe circle of women, and then transform your observations and feelings into form through photography and self-publishing.  Over the course of four sessions you will learn basic photography, editing and creative storytelling skills. You will learn how to use self-publishing technology to print a visual diary of the things that are most important to you. Come together with other women to celebrate your journey through creative exploration and honouring!

When and where: March 17 – April 14, 2009 in Vancouver (Mount Pleasant) BC

Week 1: Tuesday March 17, 6-9pm
Week 2: Tuesday March 24, 6-9pm
Week 3: Tuesday March 31, 6-9pm
Week 4: Tuesday April 14, 6-9pm*

Cost: $325 plus GST. Does not include cost of your book, which will cost approximately $50.  To register, please call Jaime at 604-879-0728 or email info@jaimekowal.com

I don’t know about you, but I’m not exactly the world’s most confident public speaker.  I can’t put my finger precisely on what freaks me out about it, but in a fit of personal growth intentionality I decided that one of my 2009 business resolutions was to take the Lunapads message further out into the world.

It will come as no surprise, then, in a recent “be careful what you wish for” moment, that I was invited by the Vancouver Women Business Owners Association to be the guest speaker at their upcoming meeting on January 21.  Want to join me in feeling the fear and doing it anyway?  Click here for more information or to register – it should be a fun evening!

Growing up in Victoria and now living in Vancouver, I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve experienced a white Christmas (with the last time being in 1998!) While many of you may think of Canada as the land of snow and ice, most Canadians live along the 49th parallel and share the same weather as cities like Seattle, Detroit and New York. And for those of us living along the fair-weathered ‘wet coast’, 90% of the time we are simply “dreaming of a white Christmas“. Well, this year we’ll be singing along with good old Bing Crosby.

Mother Nature and Jack Frost have teamed up to deliver a few good blasts of snow that will last to Christmas day and beyond.  Because it snows so infrequently over here, much of the city shuts down during snowfalls like this, making it a good time to just stay home with the family. Over the weekend we put up the Christmas tree, baked cookies for Santa and decorated a gingerbread house.

Much fun was had at the local park tobogganing, visiting Vancouver’s largest gingerbread house exhibit and riding the sky train across town. Aiden and I also went on a lantern walk in the deep snow on the evening of winter solstice.  Our loose plans for the remainder of the holiday break include attending a Pantomime and venturing to our local mountain to enjoy the Peak of Christmas (pictured at top). What holiday traditions do you enjoy each year? Any readers experiencing summer right now?

As we’ll see later in this post I have basically let myself off the hook entirely with respect to holiday shopping, but in the meantime I have a few ideas to share about what I’d be doing if I was a little more organized this year…

I absolutely love the monthly Portobello West market in Vancouver (the next one is this weekend, December 13th and 14th), that features super-funky, crafty, cutting-edge art, jewelry, clothing and more, all designed and made by local artisans and producers.  Kids love it, and there are also yummy crepes on Sunday.  You will definitely have a great time, and even if you don’t find exactly what Uncle Bob would like, will probably treat yourself to something groovy.

I know that I keep talking about Ricki Lake, but what can I say?  She is so yummy, and so is her new line of slings (pictured at left).  Designed in conjunction with MobyWrap, you can order yours here.

Vancouverites who want the same look can opt for locally-made Baby Buddha slings (pictured at right), now available in organic bamboo and organic hemp!

For you lovers of menstrual lore out there, Spanish artist Danae has just released her newest “Viva la menstruacion!” collection of 2009 menstrual calendars, stickers, posters and more.

Our pal Chloe Jo over at Girlie Girl Army now has her newsletter discount deals on her site (including a promo code for Lunapads), featuring fabulous eco-chic everything.

So what am I giving my friends and family this year?  Beeswax candles and homemade biscotti (I use Mark Bittman‘s recipe, and throw in dried cranberries and white chocolate chips, taking his suggestion of using more butter for a less brittle result!)

December 6th is a painful day for any Canadian old enough to remember the horrific events that took place 19 years ago on this date. The murder of 14 women at Montreal’s Ecole Polytechnique (an additional 14 men and women were also shot, but survived) by a lone gunman shocked and devastated the nation, and engendered a disturbing debate about the state of violence against women overall.

Whether one looks back on the incident as the work of a random lunatic or as an extreme point on a continuum of violence against women that continues to permeate our culture, to me the point is to honor the memory of these innocent young women whose lives were so tragically cut short. Please take a moment to read their names, and consider that we have not only lost them as sisters, daughters, friends, and partners, but in the case of the 12 who were engineering students, as women who bravely sought to create their careers in a traditionally male-dominated profession.

There will be a vigil tomorrow in Vancouver, as well as numerous sister events across the country. December 6th is now Canada’s National Day for Remembrance and Action Against Violence Against Women.

While Madeleine was working hard on the eastern side of Canada drumming up sales, I was in a completely different zone on the west coast, enjoying the place I call paradise ~ Hollyhock on Cortes Island. Each year, over a hundred socially minded business leaders running for profit and not-for-profit ventures gather here for an event called the Social Venture Institute. This interactive five day forum provides a stimulating venue for entrepreneurs like me to learn, be inspired, mentor, and enjoy the spoils the west coast has to offer… beautiful beaches, a peaceful setting, amazing fresh food from the garden and ocean and more!

There was no shortage of opportunities to be inspired by fellow entrepreneurs and guest speakers who have created or are leading mission driven businesses and enterprises… too many to name here! A sampling of awesome women entreprenuers who I was honoured to share the long road trip to Cortes Island included: Bridgitte Alomes from Naturalpod, Sylvie de Sousa from Naturebag, Emira Mears and Lauren Bacon, authors of The Boss of You (and our webmistresses at Raised Eyebrow Web Studio), and Nikiah Seeds from Mama Goddess Birth Shop. My thanks to you lovely ladies for sharing your amazing energy and wisdom with me during our trip.

One of the profiled speakers who I want to tell you more about is Adrienne Marie Brown, a young dynamic woman who, in a very short time, has become a much sought after speaker for her views on media, communications and her chosen field: activism. Adrienne is the Executive Director of The Ruckus Society, a not for profit organization that provides environmental, human rights, and social justice organizers with the tools, training, and support needed to achieve their goals. Adrienne opened her speech with a beautiful song she wrote and had the entire audience enraptured with her captivating life story and her compelling message: take action for what you believe in. (View the Ruckus home page for video clips or “shout outs” of her speaking.) When I later chatted with Adrienne to share my own personal story of “lactivism“, I learned she was a huge DivaCup fan and recommends the cup to all her friends. Here she is holding a DivaCup, an organic cotton Lunapads Pantyliner, and a copy of our new Teen Booklet. (To her left is another beautiful woman named Kat Vellos, a youth worker from the Power of Hope.)

I was moved by the powerful energy that Adrienne held and quite surprised at how small a budget she has to work with at Ruckus, given their mandate. I encourage those who are moved by the work of The Ruckus Society to join Lunapads in supporting them with a donation here. “Your donation will go directly to the front lines in the nonviolent struggle against the hostile corporate takeover of our planet. We’re training people in the creative use of nonviolent tactics and strategies, and we need your help! We invest in leaders who know how to think on their feet and create actions that cannot be ignored. After all this time, actions still speak louder than words, and Ruckus is amplifying a movement for change. We are inviting you to join us on the front lines of environmental protection and social justice. We need your voice and we need your support.”

Every time I leave Hollyhock, I come home refreshed, inspired and ready to take on the world. Thank you to all my colleagues who inspired me and shared their stories and wisdom.

While it hasn’t been the best summer (or spring, for that matter!) in this part of the world weather-wise, I must say that I’ve been over the moon with my garden. Being a gardening newbie, I’m still mostly about enthusiasm, with less on the knowledge and experience front, but thanks to good soil and exposure in our yard, I’m having decent success. So far, we’ve had a bumper crop of lettuce, swiss chard, beans, peas, carrots, spinach and a few tasty little strawberries. Leeks and beets are still on their way, and the only thing that has really gone sideways was a few broccoli plants that developed a nasty gray fungus.

But my pride and joy are the tomatoes (above left!). Oh, how I love fresh summer heirloom tomatoes. In prior summers you could find me lurking at one of Vancouver’s farmer’s markets, coveting the weirdest-looking, most obscurely-colored ones. I treat mine like little babies, fussing over and coddling them, picking off any nasty little flies foolish enough to even attempt to sully my lovelies. The funniest thing, though, is that they completely took me by surprise – I just had no idea that they would 1) survive in the first place 2) suddenly become taller than me and therefore need cages or 3) that I would have to think about things like pruning them (which I now do obsessively – look out, suckers!)

It’s currently raining cats, dogs and several other small mammals here and I am fearing for my precious ones – fingers crossed that we see the sun again soon, so the feasting can begin!