“I had to try this.  My mother-in-law, Betty, is a breast cancer survivor and I knew I had to get her a LifeStinks kit. I told her the story and she confided in me that she’d always hated wearing store-bought deodorant but felt she had little choice because the natural stuff never worked for her.  She absolutely loved the Lifestinks product!  Not a big fragrance* fan, she still found the lavender very pleasant (I personally love it, but then I am a fan of essential oils).  She stayed with us for a month during Christmas and never looked back at her store bought deodorant again. In fact I found it in the bathroom waste basket after she had left. Now that is a testimonial!”

* Lots of people that are sensitive to fragrances really appreciate that lifestinks is made with essential oils. “Frangrance” is a term developed by the perfume industry to protect their top-secret concoctions. They don’t have to tell you what’s in it. Not so with lifestinks®. Duggan Sisters products are fragrance-free, and we only use the best Australian botanicals on the market.

I wish I could say that the WFM decision was a shock, but it wasn’t. An all out offensive against the Duggan Sisters brand (and the Duggan Sisters personally) had been going so full throttle for so many months that it had felt inevitable for quite awhile. Of course, we wish we had beaten them to the punch; but what small family business in its right mind would close 18 accounts that it had dedicated itself to building for the better part of 17 months. Actually, the “better part” cannot be said of those months. Some of the worst experiences of verbal abuse, coordinated deceit, butt covering and all around misogynistic bull crap comes closer to the truth.

A neighbor who happens to be a lawyer and social worker who had her own experience with the WFM ethos when trying to defend the rights of a developmentally disabled WFM employee captured it spot on, we think, when she looked us straight in the eye and said, “They’re just a bunch of misogynistic PR*#%S, don’t you think?” We couldn’t agree more.

We would deeply appreciate you reading our account of our grassroots endeavor’s doomed encounter with Whole Foods. Please know that the Duggan Sisters are more committed than ever to bringing you the finest, healthiest, most environmentally responsible and lymphatically sound deodorant we know how to make. Whole Foods Market “doesn’t like us.” We believe you still do and so we continue to make our products and sell through the finest ethical retailers worldwide and direct from our little cottage, as well.

Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. Stay tuned.

Mary Duggan  

Click here to read to the whole story of the Duggan Sisters doomed encounter with Whole Foods.

Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned
Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned.

by William Congreve, The Mourning Bride, 1697

As a young woman I entered into a really sick marriage. Well educated, meaningfully employed and facing a red-hot future, I walked head long and innocent into an abyss that derailed me – heart and soul – for over 14 years.  I know from abuse. Exposure now to interpersonal toxins registers with me physically: a bitter, metallic taste fills my mouth; my solar plexus swells and painfully tightens. My reaction is visceral, insistent and king-sized. I have successfully healed on many levels from that experience and I have painstakingly steered clear of abusive relationships ever since. I never imagined that business partnerships could so easily replicate the abusive model I had so struggled to overcome. Boy, was I wrong.

Our first kiosk and a supportive team leader. High hopes on DAY ONE.

In March of 2011 the Duggan Sisters loaded our lifestinks® deodorant products into our first Whole Foods Market, led an inspiring and informative training session for the staff, and filled a kiosk with our treasured products; an environmentally responsible and lymphatically sound deodorant system that represented the combined efforts of the three of us for the better part of a decade. When the kiosk finally looked as perfect as we could possibly make it, I turned to a stunned Clare and said “I have to get out of here NOW. Please, get me out of here!” On what should have been one of the happiest and most fulfilling days of my career, I was having THE REACTION and I was having it strong.

I am so powerfully attuned to abusive energy that I knew in one day what it would take our company collectively 10 months and a lot of anguish to comprehend. Many the bride knows the feelings of doom I was experiencing. They know they are making a terrible mistake; but, for a myriad of reasons, they walk down the aisle anyways. My journey this time was down the grocery aisle; but surviving and recovering from marital abuse gave me the insights and frame of reference I needed to identify the same beast in a new role.

EYES WIDE OPEN

Like a handsome and charismatic groom seducing a plain but accomplished bride, Whole Foods Market (WFM) had the cachet and wow factor that our humble little company so desperately needed. Or so we thought. Faithful fans and followers of our grass root initiative were thrilled for us and this added to our joy. But wise observers and victims from every direction came to us with scary stories about this organization. We listened and believed and sought legal counsel. Powerful, prestigious and practically pro bono, our attorneys reviewed the WFM contract to no avail. With this organization it was their way or the highway – a take it or leave it arrangement that was the first of so many red flags.

Our trusted trademark attorney had done her job well. Our registered trademark arrived so far ahead of schedule that it felt like a blessing, an omen, and a talisman. This grand new partnership inspired us to fulfill a dream and so with borrowed funds we increased and completed our flight of products with multiple strengths in each infusion and marked the achievement with new labels touting internationally recognized (INCI) terminology. Those were heady and busy days, months actually, totaling almost six, as we dutifully prepared for the coming union. Having experienced rigorous sales and passionate launch parties with previous partners, we braced ourselves for the growth that an established chain with a marketing machine could generate. Our production and raw materials schedules honed and re-honed, we had our ducks in a row and had completed the rigorous application process to prove it. The bride was fertile; but the groom proved to be impotent. We soon discovered what an unpleasant fellow an impotent groom can be.

REGIONAL ON THE LINE: STRIKE ONE

It’s not uncommon for abused wives to reflect that there was no honeymoon. Our union certainly afforded none at all. The heady load in of products was squelched almost immediately with a phone call from REGIONAL. The buyer, inspired we thought by our proven and successful track record had purchased too much of our product. WE were never to allow that again. One sample of each item would be sufficient. We pressed our case that years of marketing our product had taught us some valuable tools for presenting it. We were begrudgingly afforded a modified case size – 3 of each item. But the delivery of the message was so harsh that the entire team sat in stunned and pained silence while Clare navigated the ins and outs of the conversation.

A heady experience for hometown girls. We're on the shelves at Whole Foods!

Sometimes you can simply witness someone answering a phone call and know that they are being bullied. I had THE REACTION again, but I had to defer to the wise counsel of my incredibly skillful sister. We can work with this, she assured me. We can make this work. It will be okay. I had seen her work successfully with bigger and more powerful clients. I had seen her negotiate in foreign lands. I had seen her negotiate in multiple languages. I pushed down my gnawing suspicions and followed her lead. In that one phone call, we had met the Midwest Whole Body Regional Representative. I like to give folks code names so let’s just call him Eminem. No reason, I just like the gangster thug sound of it. But I didn’t like the smell of him. I smelled was the beast. That nasty conversation proved to be the most pleasant one received over a period of ten months. Ten months that were to leave us exhausted, stressed, confused, isolated, discouraged, and with little to show for relentless organizational efforts and commitment.

NOT A SPIDER, NOT A STARFISH, IT’S A SCORPION!

Each store within the WFM Chain is a separate and often confusing experience. Some were a rapid fire yes; others required determined salesmanship on our part.  Some embraced the training and took an inspired and spirited approach to selling our line.

Fresh out of training, turned-on staff sells their first can of lifestinks®.

Some refused training altogether. Others scheduled it months into the future or cancelled at the last minute with little or no explanation. The thought of our very different products being serviced by an untrained staff concerned us deeply. Training sessions ended with a thank you to each staffer for taking part in our training sessions, and a gift of $20 worth of free product. Oftentimes our thank you was met with an expression that we began to hear more and more, “No problem, I’m paid to be here.” It was delivered to us so often as we thanked staff for assistance that it seemed to be their corporate mantra and not at all reassuring to a new partner. And those were the happy times; the honeymoon, so to speak.

Our strategies and projections for ramping up were replaced with a slow down of production as we attuned ourselves to WFM’s idea of acceptable sales and their clear lack of commitment to personal care products. At their peak, 18 of their stores combined did not equal one of our other independent stores! And yet, we were receiving calls from other regions within their chain about our products. They wanted the Duggan Sisters in their stores because they were seeing such wonderful “flow” and hearing great things about our brand from the Midwest buyers. It was all very confusing and exhausting.

We tried to keep our focus on the many wonderful members of the WFM family who enthusiastically embraced our message and sold our products with all the fervor that WFM allows its frequently harried staff. We personally launched store after store, met our WFM customers face-to-face, participated in every WFM event we could manage, even dedicated specific Blog posts to Whole Foods staffers who were embracing our health suggestions. All the while though, almost every start up order and many of the refill orders were botched by their staff and required time-consuming assistance and patience from our team. We stretched ourselves thin and found the time to get into the stores to launch and support with demos, as the buyers and team leaders made it clear that they wanted it to be the sisters themselves. But behind the scenes support required on a daily basis to correct and manage the itsy bitsy and inefficient reorders we were receiving took lots and lots of time and energy.

This team rocked the lifestinks® message. What can they offer confused and disillusioned customers now?

It even got fun for a brief moment. Duplicate invitations arrived requesting us to appear in the stores as Walter Robb, co-CEO of WFM, was coming to town. Staff made a simple and sensible case for us to be there. It is important that we have a strong showing of local vendors. You really have to meet him, we heard. We just know they are going to take you global, they gushed. And so, of course, we made those appearances as well. And we did meet him and he was gracious and complimentary and so encouraging, saying all the things we had been told would indicate the nod, the subtle kimono opening to become a global brand. And so there was some excitement and the feeling that maybe by opening 300 stores we could actually make some headway with this partnership. But it was not to be. The beast had other plans.

HINDSIGHT IS 20/20 AND OTHER FRUSTRATIONS

With October and the demands of Breast Cancer Awareness month, came the descent into the belly of the beast. We were to learn all that we needed to know, and more than we wanted to know. We should have walked then but we didn’t. Grass roots initiatives like ours are tough. If we were to run from every adversity we would never get anywhere. It is also in the nature of entrepreneurs and we are that, as well, to simply view each problem as it reveals itself as just the next hurdle to jump. We tried to jump; but we should have run.

I was the one most responsible for what came to be known as the October debacle. Months in advance we had committed to participating in a ladies spa night at a West Suburban store. In the intervening months we had learned much about these spa nights and the complete ineptitude of our partners to effectively market their events. I was hoarse and weary from the demands of accepting speaking engagements as a breast health professional during Breast Cancer Awareness Month. I asked Clare to contact the store and ask a favor. Could we possibly come on the following Saturday and do our demo then? Clare made our sensible case as best she could. Everything she said was true. I was hoarse and exhausted. I would be rested by Saturday. Didn’t it better serve both of our organizations to be in the store on a Saturday when there would be crowds of people we could sell to than to appear at yet another sleepy spa event? We reminded her that we were not sending a demo person. We were sending the owners of the company. She would have none of it. A curt and demanding email made clear to us that our bid for flexibility had gone unheard.

The Sisters generously shared their comprehensive lymphatic wellness message at WFMs far and wide.

We keep our promises. We went. No one turned out. The event was the dismal failure that we had predicted. Fellow vendors reached out to one another in anger and frustration. Particularly vendors who were owners with crazy busy schedules and entrepreneurial smarts that caused them to recoil at ridiculous events that were doomed to fail. I knew we were in trouble though as the Whole Body Buyer stood across the room and glared at us, failing completely to take the opportunity to strengthen the bonds of partnership that could have and should have informed the event.

THE ONLY PIRATE WE LIKE IS JOHNNY DEPP

Then the night took a terrible turn. The employee responsible for marketing the event came to my display to chat. I did my best to remain convivial and engaged though the stink of the failure was oppressive. She began to tell me how truly blessed the Duggan Sisters were by the Buyer in this particular store and how brilliantly she had presented our product line at an all-store meeting for staff beyond just the personal care staff we had trained. As she described the session, beaming with pride in her friend and colleague, I almost fell off my stool with shock and discouragement.  She proceeded to tell me that she had taught them how to pirate our product, bypass our carefully selected decanter, buy our replacement bag and dispense it among salt and pepper shakers to share. I could hardly breathe as she went on and on and on. Finally I found my voice and tried to hold to my calm center as I explained to her how upsetting that was to me on so many levels. She was instantly angry and defensive as I explained how many levels I was horrified on:

• Our product is protected, for God’s sake, by trademark.
• Years had gone into finding the perfect decanter free from deadly aluminum or toxic tin and with just the right size of wire mesh – were they vetting their alternate containers carefully?
• Her defense that the shakers were glass left me dumbfounded. But botanicals can’t be exposed to light or they lose their efficacy, I wailed. They’re damaging our product and our brand!
• She defended her colleagues’ in-house pirating seminars, saying, “Mary, these kids only make $10/hour.” To which I replied hand over mouth, I haven’t drawn a salary in over 5 years to bring this product to market! It sells for $3/month and drops to $1.50/month with a refill. How can she sell it to the public if she can’t sell it to fellow staffers? If she is teaching her fellow employees to pirate our products, how can I trust her that she isn’t doing the same with customers?

I went home as tired as I have ever been.  The beast was wearing a bra! I was having THE REACTION big time. I knew we were in trouble just as surely as I’d known when I’d found another woman’s lipstick in my car those many years ago. We called our attorney immediately. He advised us to reach out to Eminem in Regional for a low-key discussion of issues, stressing our shared interest in nipping this in the bud. Before we could dial the phone, fires were burning in other stores.

GRASS ROOTS SCORCHED AND BURNED

Our nephew had gone into a WFM location on the North side. He needed a travel container. There wasn’t one in our display. He approached a team member to see when there would be more arriving. She was terribly rude to him and made some sort of unhelpful response. He completed his shopping and was in the check out line when she popped into view with a refill bag to which she had affixed a TRY ME tag! An $18 ONE-YEAR REFILL given out as a sample! What dispenser was she presuming he would use? He’d been seeking a lavender extra strength traveler. How about offering him a cedarwood extra strength traveler? Now a Try Me label on that would have made sense. Incredulous and confused he took the bag, left the store and called us immediately. Guys, you have real training challenges going on here. A small glitch, but I trust my nephew completely. He was really shaken by how rude she had been to a Duggan Sisters customer and then how stupid. I agreed that while a small problem, little more than an annoyance in the larger scheme of things, it would need to be addressed. I didn’t smell the beast on this one until the next morning.

That’s when Try Me Tallulah, let’s just call her that for convenience, called us. You people is generally not one of my favorite ways for a sentence to begin and there she was saying you people have a labeling problem. Of course Try Me Tallulah was having an employment problem and so Clare patiently explained to her how her own system worked and offered to take back the products she had ordered in error and replace them. While she had her on the line, Clare attempted to build on the good will of having just taught Try Me Tallulah a bit more about her job and having bailed her out of her problem with no expenses incurred. She wanted to softly correct her giving out refill bags as samples. But there was to be none of that. Try Me Tallulah went on the attack. Attacking our nephew, insulting our nephew, defending her right to do as she pleased in her own store and then wrapping up with the oh so popular, and while I have you on the phone. She wanted to make sure that Clare knew that she was quite the unpopular figure among Try Me Tallulah’s colleagues and that she might want to tone it down a bit as was becoming known as someone who was quite harsh to do business with. I don’t even remember how the conversation (which I witnessed) ended, as I was overwhelmed with nausea and dread. Another beast in a bra and the stench was unbearable.

While WHOLE FAMILIES were saying YES to lifestinks® and the Sisters' message, WHOLE FOODS was putting up road blocks.

REGIONAL CALLS AGAIN: STRIKE TWO

Try Me Tallulah took action immediately and triggered number 2 of the 3 calls that were to solidify and ultimately end our WFM experience. Eminem was on the line and he was spitting mad. How dare you abuse my staff! You people (there it is again) are impossible! That was the good part of the one-way conversation. It went down from there. In fact the threatening, bullying, and belittling went on for close to 45 minutes. At one point Clare even asked him to stop so she could catch her breath. It was that brutal. When it was over she cried in front of our staff. For weeks, I could see that she had sustained a real blow. She told me later that in 20 years of work in over 18 countries for some of the biggest brands on the planet, no one had ever reduced her to tears. Her attempts to tell our side of the “story” was met with I don’t care what you have to say. No, I don’t want to meet you. No, I don’t want to discuss this. You need to back off and stop bullying my staff.

And that’s when we learned about Empowerment. WFM places real importance on the empowerment of their employees. We were to be told about this core value frequently from Eminem; well, as frequently as 3 one-way conversations allows. His staff’s integrity was infallible and we were abusive, intense and there on borrowed time. Okay, I added in the last three words; I was educated by nuns and that was a threat I was used to. “Miss Duggan, you are here on borrowed time.” Eminem I was not used to. Eminem I couldn’t believe. I felt like somehow I had been assigned a parole officer, but I couldn’t for the life of me remember my crime.

GIRL POWER GONE SOUR

Now empowerment is one of those catch words that sounds great on the surface. When we donate to Organizations like KIVA we are trying desperately to empower women to make real strides to heal the lives of their families and their communities. But this empowerment was proving to be really different. This was the kind of empowerment more closely related to scape-goating. This was the kind of empowerment you use when you’ve screwed up really bad and taught folks how to pirate a product you’ve been paid to sell. Yeah, this is the cover your butt kind of interpretation of empowerment that healthy organizations see through in a hot second. This is the “who do these ladies think they are with their little product and their self-employment and how rich are they” kind of empowerment. This is the danger of all dangers. This is power without wisdom, dialogue, or discernment; hell, basic fairness was out the window. This was the kind of power that made me think of the movie “Shawshank Redemption” where frustrated, angry inmates with ruined lives brutalized and tortured an innocent man.

Yikes, what a horrible way to have the inner dynamics of your business described. But, that is the best description I can provide. That was THE REACTION that flooded through me the day of our first load in. It raced up my spine to the base of my skull. We are not safe here. I could feel the jealous stares from the lifers (I mean staffers.) The resentment from day one was palpable. And nothing we would ever do in the way of training, or service or demo would ever change that. It was endemic to the organization and enforced by Eminem. In the vernacular, we were screwed.

WE LIKE YOUR PRODUCTS, BUT WE DON’T LIKE YOU

To launch our brand, we spent thousands on staff samples, signage and display pieces. Big bucks for a small business.

Remember the spa girl with the ethics of a pirate? Well, she also reached out to Eminem with a characterization of us that confirmed my worst fears and that defied belief. We were not supporting our brand. We were refusing to participate in events with other vendors present. Our display had been dismantled as a punishment. Remember, with a legal mishap like pirating a brand protected by Federal Trademarking laws she had a pretty big ass to cover and cover it she did.

Now bullying children is evil. But the same dynamic applied to innocent adults is also pretty harrowing. The stakes, namely a brand you have mortgaged your home, your health and your life to build is being libeled. And it’s being libeled within an organization that allows you no recourse, no ombudsman, no voice whatsoever. You are being slandered by an organization that is publicly invoking local and artisan and all sorts of other popular buzz words when privately they are threatening you that you had better put a distributor, and a sales rep and demo teams in place PRONTO because while their team likes your product they “don’t like you.”

Like me? What does that mean? Like me? Rarely one to wave a flag of sexism, I have to wonder if they have ever summarily dismissed a male owned and operated company by telling the owners that “we don’t like you!” Tell me that my products have arrived improperly packaged. Tell me that I can’t maintain high enough volumes. Tell me that my product is failing to capture the imagination of shoppers and is sitting on the shelves. Tell me that my labels are crooked or my mother wears army boots. But, you don’t like me? What in the world is a responsible, tested, creative, respected and professional business owner supposed to do with that? People, someone needs to be called to the principal’s office and they need to be called there now.

Our bra-wearing pirate made her move and Eminem played right into her hands. Her butt was covered and nicely so. Now the threats were on steroids. We were being instructed on how to run our business by Eminem himself. We had broken the rules again. We were defying him. We were abusing his staff. We needed to put people in place immediately so that his victimized staff (who didn’t like us) would no longer suffer at our hands.

Whole Foods team members can be real troopers. A 7 a.m. start time for training didn't dampen their enthusiasm for our story.

That Whole Foods Market had recruited us didn’t matter. That we had never been presented with a set of rules was irrelevant. This was not going to be a dialogue. That small artisan shops can’t afford sales reps and demo teams to support sleepy little toxic accounts didn’t matter. That we had encountered lots of team members who expressed enthusiasm and support and genuine excitement about our products being carried was an illusion. We were told that we were so abusive towards the staff that they were afraid to speak the truth to us. The truth was saved for Monday morning meetings and elicited only by his Eminence Eminem who made multiple references to just pulling our product right then and right there. God, I wish he had done that and saved us the final futile efforts to save our doomed endeavor.

VALENTINE’S DAY AT WFM: NO HEARTS ALLOWED

Instead, we interviewed Sales Reps and demo staff. We sought Venture Capital to pay their salaries. We trained a current employee to be our first demo lady and spent untold hours scheduling six weeks of aggressive in-store demos. We got lots of great feed back on her skills and orders started getting bigger. We were invited to participate in events at other stores, including a panel discussion on International Women’s Day. It seemed that things were looking up when an innocent call to a far-flung store to schedule a demo shift was met with an angry staffer threatening to pull our products. We asked for a meeting to hear their grievances and see if we could remedy the situation. We were selling strong in a neighboring store, but we wanted to maintain as stellar a performance as possible so that we could win the coveted global prize. And we just didn’t like anyone to be unhappy with our product presence in any store.

The meeting went, we thought, quite well. The buyer had never met us and knew absolutely nothing about our brand. The Team Leader had met with Clare, been fully trained on our products and our story, but somehow had not felt inclined to share any of the selling techniques she had been taught with her staff of five. She had cancelled training with a day’s notice and was relentless in reaming us for not having “harassed” her about a reschedule the way all the other vendors do. I’m thinking, is that the key? Were we supposed to be harassing instead of abusing? I was super confused and really sick and tired of the entire joyless, barren and time-wasting endeavor; but I did my best to inspire and left with newly scheduled training and the begrudging respect of the buyer who recognized middle aged entrepreneurial exhaustion when she saw it on my face. I really respect you ladies was her parting comment.

She and the Team Leader relayed an entirely different description of the meeting to Eminem. So now I want to nickname them Squirrely and No-go, but I don’t have the heart anymore to play this schoolyard game. Suffice it to say that they quoted us as saying Regional had characterized their store as the Red Headed Step Child. Actually it was one of our customers who lived in the area but I can’t blame them for getting it all wrong. The store was ice cold and pretty much empty and they were having cookies for breakfast and they must have been feeling really bad about themselves because they felt the need to be relentlessly arrogant and suspicious in their interactions with us. In retrospect I can see all of the innocent remarks I made about wanting to become a global brand and the like being so easily twisted and used against me. The stink of the beast in a bra was so bad that I only got five minutes from the store when I asked my sister to get me to the nearest bathroom as I was going to be really sick really quick. And I was.

IT’S THREE STRIKES YOU’RE OUT AT WFM!

And that was Tuesday, Valentine’s Day, and not my lucky day in recent years as last Valentine’s Day my dog died. But I bought my sisters roses and chocolates, nonetheless, from the Red-Headed-Step-child’s store and headed home. By 10:38 AM the following day Eminem had sent an email that it was over. Seventeen months of exhaustive focus and work for a really small local company to engage in. The phenomenal expense of really costly insurance that WFM required for sure wasn’t going to protect us.  All 18 accounts were closed effective immediately, even brand new accounts in other states. To put that loss in perspective, you need to realize that our entire business that day was comprised of 26 accounts!

And the shock and hurt and grief (yes, we grieved) were compounded by relentless abuse by Eminem that continued even after we’d been dumped. It was all too much. And so we called our lawyer and cancelled the table full of orders going out that day to various Whole Foods and assured our employees that we would be okay. Only to have our employees, who fully understood that their salaries were now in jeopardy, tell us how thrilled they were that they would not have to deal with all the rudeness and ineptitude that personified their Whole Foods experiences. Let’s get on with the real work was their clarion call and I have never felt more loved or proud at any job EVER.

We followed the chain of command and of course were never afforded the courtesy of a response or explanation. All that was available to us was more abuse from the delusional Eminem who finally made me laugh when he explained that some of our materials might go mysteriously missing and not get returned to us but that we should just take that in stride because of all the support the Midwest Region had given us in getting “our line off and running.” It was good to laugh at the absurdity of it all because mostly we did not laugh.

R.I.P – W.F.M.

Mostly we anguished. Anguished that we had let our followers down. Anguished that somehow we had made some sort of terrible mistake. Our post-mortem was excruciating and thorough and then finally and gratefully we put an end to it. There was business to be done. We had lost time and momentum – both as precious as cash to a start-up. We absolutely had to survive and to do that we had to work around the clock for weeks and weeks and weeks. And so we all got sick and that was to be expected, as well.

We conscientiously directed our valued customers to purchase at their local Whole Foods.

The recovery period too reminded me of the journey to heal following a heartbreaking divorce.  Coming to painful terms with how other women always seem to be available to partner with creepy guys in taking down decent, hard-working, loving, committed women. Trying to figure out what kind of jealousy or ignorance or rewards system makes women hurt other women. And then realizing that the counselors are right; you aren’t grieving the end of the marriage. The marriage was sick and had to end. You are grieving the end of your dream for the marriage.

Here’s what we finally came to know. We can’t let a handful of women obtuse about the unbelievable sacrifice, effort and commitment we’ve made, and the cynical corporate phony baloneys they work for, get in the way of our life work. Our product and our message in 300 Whole Foods Markets nationwide would have been a wonderful starting point. Combined with three Ma and Pa stores for each WFM, as was our plan, would have really gotten our message somewhere. We’ll never know. What we believe is that we’re better off in the long run without the greedy groom.

IN CONCLUSION, A FEW QUESTIONS

What angers me in all of this is the senselessness. Why damage a young business at the very time our nation is calling for small businesses to hang on? If small business is the backbone of the nation and the backbone is broken, why in the world would a corporation create this bitter scenario? We are being called upon to manufacture (done), export (on the verge) and build jobs (done.) To continue in that vein, we need funding. Why damage the public face of a small business actively engaged in that process? We are being challenged by the likes of Whole Foods to take responsibility for our health by cleaning up our food and product purchases. Then why deprive consumers ready access to a local company doing that and doing it well? Only a cynical or delusional jerk could claim, as Eminem did, to have gotten us “off and running.” Unless Whole Foods has some other agenda entirely in the offing. Time will tell.

Until then, see you at the farm stand, if that’s what it takes.

Duggan Sisters were recruited by Whole Foods at local farmers markets.

P.S.  Your comments are welcome. However, we receive a high-volume of computer-generated spam replies. Only comments from valid and verifiable e-mail addresses will be approved. Please be patient. Your comment will only appear after it has been validated by a human being.  This may take a few days.

The talented team at Destination Kohler Waters Spa are very special friends to the Duggan Sisters: as well as tremendous champions of lifestinks® deodorant and our Don’t Be A Boob Campaign. When they invited us many months ago to speak at their Women’s Wellness Weekend it was an easy yes on our part. For months in advance, I pondered my talk and worked to deepen and expand on our message. I knew I wanted to introduce the concept that health is a space you claim for yourself. The larger the space you claim, the more vibrant the health you experience. This concept has become central to our ongoing message and, as is always the case, a personal struggle for the sisters as well. (Look for a blog entry soon outlining our “Claim a Space for Health©” formula.)

Chester, Mary's Service Dog

As the wellness weekend drew near, and I was finalizing my talk, I realized my sisters had their own agenda for the weekend and their own input into our wellness message. They were determined that I would claim a bit more space for myself, actually lots more space, and they wanted me to do this within the famed and fancy and Oriental carpeted walls of the American Club. They wanted me to bring Chester, the six-year-old Keeshond/Pomeranian mix that has claimed our hearts as a family pet and my gratitude as a neurological bodyguard. It was time for me to come out of the closet about using a service dog.

Needing a Service Dog in my life has been a very difficult reality for me to admit to and speak about. In the early days of my traumatic brain injury (TBI) I required a wheelchair in airports, and though it was limited in nature and duration, it was a really upsetting and revealing window into the world of the disabled. I was glad when my walking stabilized and I was able to safely navigate crowds and able to leave my wheelchair days behind me, at least for the present. The experience of having a brain injury is the feeling of having suddenly aged overnight. Adapting to no more bike riding, or volleyball playing, or any sports that could possibly jeopardize my brain’s stability contributes to that feeling of being old before my time. But a service dog, a years long relationship and commitment, an appendage of sorts, a visual sign that something is missing with me has been an upset and a challenge that I didn’t see coming. But, my sisters did.

Clare and Annie, as is always the case, have had to provide tremendous leadership while they continue to patiently guide me through this ongoing transition. It has been emotional and confusing, as I have come to terms with a service dog being something I both need and deserve. I have had to alter my stereotype of service dogs being exclusively Labradors or German Shepherds for the visually impaired to include the short, barrel-chested, pom-pom-tailed delight at the end of my leash who has made my world less painful and so much wider as he literally restores vistas for me.

Still the thought of Chester striding the exclusive pathways of the 5-Diamond American Club at Kohler was really scary. What if he has an accident, I said, envisioning those Oriental carpets again? Highly unlikely they said. But we’d clean it up. What if he barks, I asked? Not his usual style they said, but within the range of acceptable behavior for a service animal. You would figure out what he is asking for and provide it. For every anxiety, they had an answer.

Finally our wonderful veterinary specialist, Dr. Kim Curtis, weighed in making all the difference as she explained to me that Chester, in addition to being a family pet, is a working dog. Being deprived of his job assisting me takes a terrible toll on him. Once the relationship had formed I needed to respect his job and not turn him on and off at will or as Oriental carpets dictated. And so “they” won and off we went to The American Club and our Women’s Wellness Weekend with Chester at my side, transforming the seven hours in the car from a neurological hell for all involved into the simple logistical reality of a car trip that it had always been for us before I sustained my TBI.

Brain Injuries Happen to Families

I have to move from “I” language to the more accurate and collective “we” when writing about Chester as a service dog. He is truly a service dog to all three of us because brain injuries happen to families. When Mom or Dad returns brain injured from war, an accident, or in my case a fall down two flights of stairs, the whole family celebrates and suffers as they adjust to the new person in the family, or at least the new personality. A parent, who might have been a rock of emotional strength and stability in the past, now swings between moods ranging from euphoria to dysphoria. A gentle and mild-mannered spouse may now have real difficulties in controlling anger and frustration.

In my case, I am more easily frightened in general. Mysteriously my brain refuses to recognize Thursday, so I have a regularly foreshortened week.  I need more silence, rest, and long uninterrupted expanses of sleep than I used to. Bright lights and harsh sounds cause me to get disoriented; and I don’t mean strobe lights and a rock concert atmosphere. Everyday lights and sounds oftentimes overwhelm my new brain. I cannot rush or be rushed ever for any reason. I need routine and sameness and predictability in every arena of my life. Something as simple as more than one person speaking at once is hard on my brain and can bring on anger, disorientation, and rapid exhaustion. But nothing unravels me like being the passenger in a car. Or more accurately, nothing is worse for everyone in our family than having me as a passenger in the car.

Before I understood my TBI, I continued to drive my car. As I reconciled myself to my new brain and how it processes more slowly, I accepted life as a young woman who would need to be chauffeured almost everywhere. If I think or talk about this for more than a moment I become depressed and frustrated. I choose instead to leave this topic suspended in my consciousness. However, the challenges of being a passenger do not allow for that form of denial. My difficulties with this are so pronounced and affect my sisters so directly that I have been forced to address them.

In essence, there are no near misses in my brain. Where a healthy brain might process a wow that was a close one situation in one quick moment and move on my brain keeps going. It locks onto the near miss and the near catastrophe and fixates. It doesn’t bounce back quickly. In a neurological event that is very close in nature to a seizure, my brain hooks into a neurological loop of Oh my God, we could have been killed and it just won’t let go. During a 45-minute drive to the doctor, this circuit could engage 8 or 10 times, as we live in a big city and travel super busy and for me very “eventful” expressways. It can fill the entire trip.

And it is a very vocal event. My brain expresses an audible, and for the driver, very upsetting OMG, companioned with a strange gasping for air sort of hiccup style of breathing. I’m exhausted and rattled and so are my sisters. Every year this has gotten worse. Sitting in the back seat helps very little; so for the most part I have to close my eyes as a passenger and this is really creepy and strange when I am not tired and a wonderful world is within my view but just too much for my brain. Unless Chester is sitting beside me because then none of this happens. I am a passenger, conversation ensues, and gazing out the window becomes a source of distraction and/or pleasure. Just like the old days – pre TBI.

How Chester accomplishes this remains mysterious to me. I can only explain that he behaves differently than any dog I have ever had in my car. There is no pacing and panting, no head out the window to catch the wind, no interacting with any one in the car but me – he does not even look out the window. What he does is enter the back seat once I am settled, whereupon he rests forward facing and dignified beside me with one paw resting gently on my left thigh. If I feel nervous at all I pet him: nothing too unusual there; much the same as anyone enjoying the comfort of a furry companion. Here’s where Chester differs from the average pet. Chester is able to anticipate the kinds of events and near misses that trigger an episode for me. He will suddenly and very deliberately turn towards me, place both of his front legs on my left thigh then capture my gaze and hold it. It is as if he is saying, here we go Mary, there’s a big one coming, stay with me, stay with me, stay with me. I can only describe his gaze as scanning. He is scanning my brain and keeping me stable until the neurological event has passed. So accurate is his ability in this regard, so psychic and amazing, that I have learned to say simply to my sisters that Chester feels a big one coming, so pay close attention to the road. He is never wrong and he has probably saved our collective lives on more than one occasion. It is simply amazing to experience.

Having Chester at my side means that the entire family enjoys a ride without terrifying alarms going off every few minutes that leave the driver constantly rattled and wondering if something is truly wrong or is Mary just misfiring. I arrive at my medical appointments in great shape; but there is one large drawback. What do I do with the dog that has transformed the journey from trauma to transportation? Where does Chester go and what does Chester do while I see the doctor, or eat in a restaurant, or shop in a mall? He most certainly cannot be left in the car.

Ironically, when Chester is least required for me in the role of service dog, he becomes most visible in that role to a world at times ill-prepared or uneducated about the real service these exceptional animals afford to individuals with a wide range of challenges – be they neurological (TBI, seizure disorders), visual (blindness), or emotional (autism, PTSD) in nature. Here’s where a new anxiety disorder, for me, is added to my previous TBI-inspired problems. How is the world going to deal with me having Chester at my side anytime I venture more than 10 minutes or miles from my home?

If I am invited to a party at a friend’s home that is 40 minutes from my home, then Chester has to come along, even if that friend doesn’t like dogs. The same applies to the mall, or restaurant, or movie, or event, or location I need or want to go to. I live in a country that loves its pets but allows them in very few situations. It is a small but critical comfort to me that Chester’s right to accompany me is protected by Federal Law and guaranteed by the US Department of Justice Civil Rights Division. Chester has “performed” beautifully by my side at the movies, at the doctor, in restaurants, and even in church. But sometimes I just want to go to the movies or have the occasional meal in a restaurant without feeling like a civil rights warrior. And many times I have to go to work. Sometimes I have to work out of town. Sometimes I even have to stay in motels and hotels. Which brings us to the lushly carpeted hallowed halls of The American Club in Kohler, Wisconsin.

An Emotional Arrival of a Different Sort

When Clare and Annie and I hand-carried our lifestinks deodorant to the Kohler Waters Spa for the very first time some 17 months ago, I was teary-eyed, humbled and amazed as we crossed the threshold. Our little handmade homemade deodorant had won its place among the other unique products sold there. Training the spa staff was a joy. A healthy and rewarding relationship had begun.

Annie and Chester are greeted at the American Club

But much had changed for the Duggan Sisters over the course of 17 months. As we crossed the threshold in early March to The American Club, two elegant doormen in top hats and double-breasted long woolen coats held the ornate doors open for Chester and the Duggan Sisters. Exiting guests appeared surprised and delighted watching Chester hurtle his short-legged little self up the richly carpeted stairs to the lobby. He was as confident and self-assured as if he’d been to the Manor born. And then I heard the greetings.

“Chester has arrived!” was repeated again and again as the message spread among the desk clerks and other staff. As Chester hurried me through the lobby, arriving as he always does to each of our destinations with the air of a Secret Service Agent sweeping the area for any potential threats to my well being, I kept my eyes firmly on the ever-present Oriental carpets. Then I heard a young woman saying, “Welcome to The American Club, Chester” and then another and another. Clare had respected my wishes and notified our friends at Kohler that I would be arriving with my service dog. I had not known what to expect, but I had not expected this. I felt my anxieties beginning to dissolve in the face of the warm and professional greeting of the Kohler staff. It was to continue like that for our 3-day stay.

Each and every psychological hurdle for me was alleviated in the face of the Kohler brand values of hospitality, service, communication and compassion. In every area staff delighted in Chester’s presence: offers of walks and assistance abounded. When a member of the team knocked on our door minutes after our arrival, bearing an enormous and elegantly carved crystal bowl to be used as Chester’s water dish, we laughed. When he saw Chester he realized that Chester could have bathed in the bowl. Assuming the more typical stature of a service dog, this wonderful young man smiled and said, “Oh, I’m sorry. We just wanted him to have the finest there is! Let me get something smaller.”  In business speak this sort of attention to detail and service is known as enchantment. We were definitely enchanted.

The weekend went off without a hitch. January weather finally arrived in March, creating a winter wonderland and Chester’s favorite thing in the whole world – SNOW. Chester romped in the pristine landscape surrounding the Club until he passed out exhausted in our room where he slept undisturbed while we enjoyed a complimentary spa treatment and a late night dinner.

Jean Kolb, Kohler's Director of Wellness, with the Duggan Sisters and Chester

Jean Kolb, Kohler’s Director of Wellness, and a true dog lover, and the rest of the wonderful wellness team met Chester on our first morning and never stopped fawning over him for the duration of our visit. We trained staff, attended a cocktail reception for attendees, and met with chefs in The American Club kitchen to approve Green Smoothies to be served with breakfast. We gave our talk and sold our products and held our meetings and Chester accompanied me where and when it made sense and was necessary.

The women of the weekend accepted Chester’s presence with love and grace; in fact any number of them shared their personal stories of heartache, sickness and struggle with me, commenting that Chester’s presence at the Kohler weekend had been an added healing blessing. And that mattered to me more than anything else. It is in the nature of the work we do as sisters, that we often find ourselves in hospitals and schools and nursing homes; and so we have begun to research training Chester to the even higher calling of Therapy Dog. It looks like that training will begin as soon as next month. We look forward to seeing what additional professional training can do to enhance Chester’s naturally comforting and uplifting presence wherever he goes; for others, in addition to myself. I am confident that he has it within him to go from an individual Service Animal to group Therapy Animal.

In our final minutes at Kohler, as we were packing our bags, and preparing to leave the wellness weekend, there was a knock on our door. Clare answered to a smiling member of the cleaning staff, saying we needed just a few more minutes, if that was okay. No problem, she said. I was just checking in a little early hoping I could meet Chester!

My sisters have struggled with me to accept the gift of Chester. When I say I feel self-conscious about having a dog with me everywhere I go they have two consistent retorts. The first is, stop feeling self-conscious Mary, no one is looking at you, they’re all looking at Chester. The second is infinitely more somber as they remind me that our nation is now flooded with soldiers returning home with severe TBIs and lots of related Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Our fervent prayer is that each and every one of them will enjoy the healing presence of a Chester in their life and the lives of their families. And that Americans will graciously welcome them home in the same fashion that Kohler welcomed Chester. My sisters are always reminding about how lucky I am that for whatever challenges I face, I have been left with so many gifts, and foremost among them the gift of storytelling. To that end, I would like to share one brief and final story of our weekend.

A POST SCRIPT: Still Wisconsin, definitely not Kohler.

Exhilarated from Chester’s big adventure but exhausted from our working weekend, we stopped in the small town of Cedarburg, Wisconsin on our way home. A store there wants to carry our products and we were really hungry. Hoping to kill two birds with one stone, (an expression I really want to stop using) we stopped. We went into a highly recommended restaurant and I approached the young man at the hostess stand, asking for a quiet table for three women and one small service dog. Though the restaurant was very quiet at 3PM on a Saturday afternoon, the only quiet tables were up a long, steep flight of stairs that neither Chester nor I could manage. So, we reluctantly agreed to a tall table with stools in the front of the restaurant. Chester settled quietly, as he always does on the floor just beside my stool. A young woman came over and said, “I’m sorry, but is that a Medical Animal?” and I explained, as I had to the host, that yes, he was my Service Dog and assisted me with a Neurological Disability. She stepped away, without a response or smile and I sensed trouble. Before we had even a moment’s time to look at the menu, a woman, clearly the owner, came flying in the front door and from 3 feet away from our table said, “Ladies, you cannot be here with that dog!” The few customers present stared at us while I explained to her that in fact my right to be in her restaurant with my service dog was protected by the Federal Government.

I was tired and bummed to be coming off my Kohler high but quick thinking Annie retrieved a card we carry explaining my rights. “But he doesn’t even look like a Service dog,” the owner said. “And he doesn’t have tags or anything.” And this was true as Chester’s tags had fallen off amid his playful romping in the snow at Kohler and couldn’t be found. I explained that to her and reminded her that I am not required to have any identification on Chester. In fact, clearly marked Service Dogs make lots of disabled folks feel vulnerable and afraid. She glanced briefly at the card explaining my rights to a Service Dog under the Federal Americans with Disabilities Act and then threw it back on the table, saying I don’t need this.  But I thought she did and I said so to her. I found the voice I had so dreaded using, just as my sisters had said I needed to. I claimed a little more space for my own wellness, and hopefully someone else’s in the process.

“Madame, I paid for that card but I think you should keep it and read it and share it with your staff. I’m just a middle-aged gal with a brain injury who’s hungry and happens to have a service dog with me and wants to get a bite to eat in your restaurant. But one of these days you are going to get a soldier in here with a brain injury and a dog that doesn’t look right to you. And you might find yourself being rude and illegal to an actual war hero.” She turned on her heels, saying have a nice afternoon over her shoulder as she left the restaurant. When I told our perfectly lovely waitress how upsetting that encounter had been and how out of line her boss was, she defended her saying, “We have a blind guy here all the time with a dog, and she never makes a fuss.”

Annie looked at my now tired and discouraged face and said, “Don’t let the turkeys get you down, Mary.” Clare looked across the table, made a sad face and said, “Cole slaw or French fries?” When I glanced down, Chester was sweet and still beside me, intent on capturing and holding my gaze, using his scanning technique as he had so many times before in our few months together. Don’t get upset Mom. Don’t get swept up in their crazy thinking. Stay with me. We’ll get through this and we did. But not without me gazing deeply into Chester’s sweet eyes, and saying “We’re not at The American Club anymore, are we Toto?” Indeed we weren’t.

Watch Chester’s Goodbye To The American Club

Stay tuned to our blog for ongoing stories about Chester’s travels with the sisters.

About the author:
Mary Duggan is Co-Founder and President of the Duggan Sisters.
The Duggan Sisters cracked the code and created a natural deodorant that actually works: lifestinks.  We hope you will spend a few minutes exploring duggansisters.com to experience their spirited approach to wellness through their natural products and healing stories.

The Duggan Sisters brought green smoothies, a vital component of our wellness message, to Destination Kohler this March. Yes, as you may have noticed, your deodorant makers like to talk to you about your GI tract too. The Women’s Wellness Weekend participants are now among the thousands that the Sisters have urged to make the brain-gut connection by incorporating living foods into their diets, what we call the move from pharmacopia to cornucopia.

Green Smoothie Revolution by Victoria Boutenko

Equally important as our embrace of the living foods movement is our commitment to a judgment-free living foods lifestyle, which is why we find green smoothies to be the perfect addition to busy lifestyles. Several years ago as my aunts made the transition to be 100 percent raw, I was struck by the health transformations I saw in them. It seemed great – for them. Even though I knew how tasty living foods could be from my aunts’ wonderful raw creations, it didn’t seem practical as a young adult making plans with friends, ideally over tacos. Thus they encouraged me to give green smoothies a go, gifting me several Victoria Boutenko books for college graduation.

Green smoothies have become the perfect middle ground for me and many in the lifestinks family. They are scrumptious, healthy and can even help you transition to a natural deodorant. Not everyone can be 100 percent raw, but for me, green smoothies have become a vital component of a diet that’s completely gluten-free and moving towards less meat, fewer processed foods and more vegetables every day.

I stumbled upon Victoria Boutenko’s Mango Chard Pudding recipe while using her online green smoothie app one day in the produce section. I was trying to find a good match for all the beautiful organic mangos that were then in season and Swiss chard is just the green. My variation adds an orange and some more water to make it smoother.

So, if you’re loving lifestinks but are still cautious about jumping on board with the rest of our wellness message, give this green smoothie a try. It was my recommendation for the women at Kohler’s induction to a life rich with blended greens.

Here’s our version, the Sisters’ Shamrock Shake:

• Keep in mind that you can add more water to find the consistency that you like. Also consider the size of the green chard leaves; the goal is 60 percent fruit and 40 percent greens. Some also add three to five tablespoons of agave nectar if the mangos or oranges aren’t sweet enough.3 cups filtered water
• 2-3 Mangos peeled and pitted (2 if large, 3 if small)
• 2 Oranges peeled and quartered
• 5 leaves of green chard, chopped, including most of the stems (can use rainbow chard as well but it will make it darker due to the red and yellow stems)

Check out these awesome pictures. Annie joined Chef Angie Rondinelli at the American Club for a green smoothie taste test. From what I’ve heard the women in Kohler loved the smoothies, bought Victoria’s books and are ready to include green smoothies in their daily routine.

Are you ready to learn more about Green Smoothies and want the inspiration of hundreds of recipes?  Be sure to pickup a copy of the original classic GREEN FOR LIFE or the follow-up volume GREEN SMOOTHIE REVOLUTION with answers to your questions and hundreds more recipes.  Both books are available in the web store at duggansisters.com.

Annie & Chef Angie Rondinelli at the American Club

Mary, Angie, Clare and Mary

If you read one book this spring, I strongly encourage you to make it Wheat Belly.  A New York Times Bestseller, written by Wisconsin cardiologist Dr. William Davis, it will forever change the way you look at pastries, pizzas, and all the superficial delights of the gluten world.

Wheat Belly by Dr. William Davis

We had been a gluten-free family for many years, as it was part of getting Annie well. I went along for the ride but I was decidedly haphazard in my approach. It was Annie’s problem and she had the gastro intestinal turmoil to prove it. In solidarity I munched on gluten-free crackers and drizzled gluten-free pancakes with pure maple syrup and I had to agree – they were way more delicious than their gluten rich counterparts. But I was never averse to preceding a selection from the gluten-free menu in restaurants with a few buttered slices of the house baguette. Strictly gluten-free was Annie’s cursed state. I never fell victim to gluten’s deadly effects. Or so I thought!

For the two years that Annie and I maintained a pure raw diet it was a non-issue entirely as there are no glutens whatsoever in the raw diet. I loved my new 65 pounds lighter body but I struggled maintaining the 100% raw regimen: I felt deprived, socially isolated, and tied to meals in my car when I wanted the convenience and conviviality of a restaurant. But I had to steer clear as restaurants only offered salads that weren’t purely raw and I knew there were too many temptations there.  I knew absolutely no one who was anywhere near 100% in their discipline and they all appeared to be in phenomenal health. The rigors of our entrepreneurial endeavor took raw foods from challenging to epic in scope. Working regularly at street festivals, art fairs and farmers markets meant we were always at a party sipping green smoothies and munching on salads while the aromas of caramel corn, fried donuts, coffee cakes, and soft pretzels scented the air around us. Who wouldn’t succumb?

When we fell, we fell hard. I still remember my heart pounding and my hands shaking as we shared a still warm funnel cake (my first ever) in our booth at the Retro on Roscoe Fair here in Chicago. We’d worked our typical 70-hour week and the carbohydrate satisfaction was sweeter than the powdered sugar. But we weren’t complete idiots – we thought. Surely, by maintaining an 80 to 85% raw lifestyle we could reap the rewards of raw with a little less rigor and still land way ahead of the 100% SAD (Standard American Diet) folks at the fair.  One critical mistake flawed our have your cake and eat it too plan – THE CAKE. Within that 15% of cooked foods we completely forgot to eliminate all glutens. Our weight came back in a tidal wave and long before any other health concerns surfaced.

Annie and Mary unknowingly ride the gluten wave at Retro on Roscoe.

As a woman living with a traumatic brain injury (TBI), I take really good care of my brain. On the advice of my neurologist, I no longer ride a bicycle, or water ski, or place myself in any situations where someone might inadvertently bop me on my precious and precarious head. I am, what they call, neurologically unstable, and so I pay heed. My sisters do, as well, as they carefully guide me down stairs and across streets and through the dangers, in general, of Chicago’s winters. If you have ever met me, I know you’re thinking surely she wasn’t spending all that much time surfing and water skiing and I will give you that. What you might not guess is that driving as well has become a thing of the past, with very, very few exceptions. That piece hurts. But I am grateful for every skill I have that recovered or remained intact. I never imagined I could lose my precious skill set to an oven fresh bagel. But I began to.

As do most folks with a TBI, I live with pretty regular pain –headaches and the like; but with my 85% raw diet my pain levels were increasing alarmingly. I needed more and more frequent appointments for the cranial sacral adjustments that have kept me mobile and articulate since my injury. The low back is directly impacted by the health of the cranium and mine was declining rapidly. As my brain stem began to swell more and more, I was faced with low back pain, bulging discs, and damaged ligaments so regularly that I quickly became sedentary and yep, even more fat. I could not move without intense pain and so the interval walking plan put in place to deal with the increasing visceral fat (my belly, folks) rapidly became a moot point. I was caught in the proverbial vicious circle and I didn’t know wheat had put me there.

Dr. William Davis

Enter Wheat Belly and Davis’ witty and illuminating telling of the story of dwarf wheat, the creation of the Frankengrain that was destroying my brain’s ability to function. I put my life on hold for days as I slowly and deliberately read the book. Davis made his case so compellingly that while it took a week to read the book, I was gluten-free again from day one (Hallelujah!) and meticulously so. This time it was my journey, but Annie and Clare came willingly along for the ride.

So much that had confused me for years became clear. I had always wondered why so many folks now needed to be gluten-free when Celiac Disease patients were a rare event when I was a kid. As I am 58 years of age, with dwarf wheat being a 50-year-old monster, I’ve had what I like to call my 8 good years. My family photos confirm my memories of the onset of obesity. And why did so many folks need to be gluten-free that did not test positive for Celiac Disease? Why were so many kids struggling with autism and learning disabilities? Parents of these kids were always reaching out to me for assistance and I was thrilled when they’d send me powerful and moving testimonials about how the addition of Green Smoothies and a change to a largely raw diet had healed their children. I had not made the wheat connection, though many of the autism parents had.

I had never made the connection that Annie was taken to the very brink of death as an adult with severe irritable bowel syndrome but no one had linked this to the equally severe learning disabilities that had made her school years really difficult. Or linked damage from wheat to the debilitating depression that was the very last of her health maladies to clear with a living foods lifestyle.

Why is psoriasis such an epidemic in our wheat-rich culture that I am approached daily with requests for products specific to psoriasis and exczema? Why are our children so violent? Why do everyone’s parents seem to succumb to the trial and heartache that is Alzheimer’s, instead of aging and dying naturally as our elders had? And why are people getting diagnosed younger and younger with Alzheimer’s? And why in the world did the scientist who created this horrific Frankengrain receive the Nobel Prize trophy while all we got was a list of wheat-driven catas-trophys, including, but not limited to:

• Hallucinations
• Violent behavior
• Psychosis
• Liver Disease
• Seizures
• Strokes
• Acne
• Obsessive Compulsive Disorder
• And, ADHD

Dr. Davis makes a compelling case for the scientific disaster of genetically modified dwarf wheat. As I recreate my gluten-free life, and there are days it’s challenging, I have watched my still substantial tummy begin to flatten. I am making slow but steady progress in healing the new damage to my brain and spinal column and I am determined to regain my ability to walk with vibrancy and purpose. And everywhere I go, I am PLEADING with everyone to get his or her hands on this book and to read it carefully. You’ll end up mad as hell but much healthier for having read WHEAT BELLY.

About the author:
Mary Duggan is Co-Founder and President of the Duggan Sisters.
The Duggan Sisters cracked the code and created a natural deodorant that actually works: lifestinks.  We hope you will spend a few minutes exploring duggansisters.com to experience their spirited approach to wellness through their natural products and healing stories.

Brothers Mike and Eric on top of The Grand Tetons in Wyoming! See – no pit stains!

And Mike was so grateful for finding a healthy deodorant that actually works, he took the time to thank us as well:

“My Bro Eric had given me your lavender can and lav stink stick as a gift for Christmas. It took a few months for me to start using it and when I finally did – I was super excited. It works. I thought it might just cover up the BO smell a bit and was worried about the lavender maybe being a little too girlie. Wrong! My BO was gone gone gone. Out of 45 days, I maybe have had 2-3 days where at night I would get that ripe whiff but even then it was super faint.

I have tried Tom’s Lemongrass, Anthony’s, Alba Tea Tree and some others. All of them were natural deo but they also went on wet and were sticky for a while after applying AND simply didn’t do the job. By the end of the day, I was ripe. My poor wife – she put up with the stink because she wanted me to quit using Aluminum anti-perspirant. I had been a life long user of Dry-Idea, well at least since high school or early college I think. So that is about 20 years of putting aluminum on my skin. Thank you for letting my finally move away from that and doing it without any regrets!

THANK YOU!

Mike

SanFrancisco, California”

THANK GOD FOR PSORIASIS

I can’t go anywhere without encountering people suffering with psoriasis; oftentimes the people are small children. Folks with psoriasis are always wondering if I have anything to help them – a bath soak, a skin cream, or a special soap. I know that our soaps and soaks can provide temporary relief; and I have sourced some wonderful oils that I am working up into a healing soak for psoriasis sufferers, but none of that will cure psoriasis. What I do have to offer are a few suggestions:

• Admit that what you are doing for your psoriasis is not working.
• Admit that the suggestions of your well-meaning physicians have done little to relieve your suffering.
• Demand better than creams that thin the skin, drugs that cause bone spurs or damage the liver, or light treatments that increase the likelihood of skin cancer.
• Don’t play the genetics victim role. Make a decision to be smarter and more powerful than the stroke of bad luck genetics that predisposed you to psoriasis.
• Consider the possibility that psoriasis is the best thing that has ever happened to you.
• Don’t wait for the crippling pain of psoriatic arthritis before you listen to your skin.

LISTEN TO YOUR SKIN?

Yep, if you work it right, PSORIASIS COULD BE THE BEST THING TO EVER HAPPENED TO YOU. Because psoriasis is so unsightly and draws so much attention to it that it demands your attention. As the largest organ in the body, the skin is a powerful communicator about hidden troubles within. How many folks walk around with ticking time bombs in the form of heart disease, aneurysms, and cancerous tumors that they are totally unaware of. Isn’t it better to be given a warning so that you can do something about your health before catastrophe strikes? That’s what the over-heated, over-producing psoriatic condition is trying to tell you: there is trouble within. And a chorus of other bodily functions is joining the psoriatic choir in a desperate attempt to get you to listen and change; yep, the belching, burping, farting, bloated, constipated, gassy, putrefied GASTRO INTESTINAL CHORALE wants to be heard. You would be well served to listen.

WHAT HAVE YOU GOT TO LOSE?

Okay, now this part is so easy I hate to even say it. If you are willing to eat differently, the psoriasis alarm will stop sounding. As food no longer accumulates and putrefies in the gut, the skin will clear.  As fiber moves food more quickly out of your GI tract, your body will also shed old skin cells more rapidly and the layering of immature cells will clear. By choosing plant proteins instead of meat, you will no longer overwhelm your body’s ability to process protein and the skin will heal. If you can make the transition to accepting psoriasis as a symptom, not a syndrome, you can take control of your digestion, your skin and your future.

YOU DON’T HAVE TO BECOME A VEGAN

While you most certainly want to consider doing that, don’t let the inability or unwillingness to go vegan deter you from healing your gut. Start slowly: keeping your meat away from your starch is a great beginning. That’s right, have a salad with your steak, not a potato. Better still, have a really big salad that is “flavored” so to speak with strips of steak or poultry. It’s flipping the entrée-condiment paradigm that will make all the difference. Yep, a little piece of meat paired with a big salad, and not the other way around. Or better yet, choose cold-water fish and steer clear of the arachidonic acid (AA) produced by red meat and dairy. Yep, that means meat and cheese, though upon first reading I know it sounds like a spider thing might be involved. AA is the natural substance that promotes inflammatory response. You got it – the red swollen lesions. If you can’t give up meat and dairy, and you don’t enjoy fish, then for sure add in fish oil, flaxseed oil, or primrose oil

FOCUS ON THE ADD IN NOT THE LEAVE OUT

Every morning of your life, make a green smoothie, and drink all 32 ounces of it. Victoria Boutenko is the grand dame of this movement and her book Green for Life will give you all the inspiration, information and recipes you need to be a real success. The formula is so simple: pure water in a blender with a combination of 60% fruit and 40% dark green leafs. Every day vary what greens you eat. And do whatever you have to do to make it delicious – give it a squirt of agave nectar if you want. Use super sweet fruits like bananas and even a little bit of green in the beginning while your body makes the switch to a chlorophyll rich life. Start with simple greens like spinach and work your way up to kale and the rest of the gang.

Dining al fresco at the cottage. Gluten free pesto pizza. Mango soup. Salad with rosemary and macadamia cream dressing. PROGRESS AND PERFECTION.

AND THAT GOES FOR GLUTENS TOO

I know you want to strangle me at this point. But you really need to seriously consider going gluten-free too. Gluten sensitivity likes to make its presence known with skin and bowel eruptions. Folks, our bodies were never meant to have everything made with wheat. The Universe is designed in a diverse and abundant fashion. Say yes to the variety of grains on the planet and let your body rest from its wheat exhaustion. Once you have eaten gluten-free crackers, breads, pizza crusts and more, you will wonder how you ever survived with just the wheat variety. Be sure to check out my upcoming fiesta salad with quinoa and my gluten-free peach and macadamia nut pizza videos and you will shed any feelings about being persecuted once and for all. I promise.

Gluten free peach and goat cheese pizza ready for the oven: who’s resisting gluten free now?

LOOK TO THE SOURCE, NOT THE SYMPTOM

• Watch your craving of sweets go out the window.
• Watch your whole family get on the gluten-free bandwagon with you.
• Watch your energy improve so much that you will actually be able to exercise for your health.
• Watch your interest in cooked foods diminish on a daily basis.
• Watch as you begin to crave a second green smoothie in the evening so that you sleep better.
• Watch as members of your family, your friends and your colleagues begin to notice changes in you and even join you in drinking green smoothies.
• Watch your weight drop and your aches and pains diminish or disappear altogether.
• Watch your bloated, gassy, constipated GI track start to perform as it is intended.
• Oh yeah and watch your skin heal.

SOMETIMES THE BEST SOLUTION IS THE SIMPLEST

I love how smart our bodies are. I love being smart about our bodies. I think genius is the ability to take complexity and make it simple. Our gut is always asking us to keep it simple. Simpler, smaller, more elemental breaks in the day for refueling our bodies. I would encourage anyone with a skin condition like psoriasis (or acne, or exczema, or rosacea) to look first to his or her gut. Your brain will clear. Your skin will clear. It’s genius.

THE JOURNEY OF A THOUSAND MILES …

Begins with a single sip. Start slowly, but start. As your gut clears, your brain will clear and you will likely find yourself drawn (if you have not done so already) to sensible health initiatives like chiropractic adjustments, living foods, probiotics, colonics, digestive enzymes, far infrared saunas and more. The sky is the limit. And with a healthy gut you will have the intuitive well being to know exactly what’s best for you. So thank God for your psoriasis and have the guts to listen to what it’s telling you and your gut about your dietary choices and the consequences.

SHOW NOT TELL

I am a firm believer that you can’t just tell people what to do. You have to show them. You have to inspire them. And you have to join them on the journey. Yep, that means no isolating the members of your family who have psoriasis. Join them on a phenomenal new diet that will make all of you look and feel like a million bucks. Stay tuned as we add video to our blog with fast, affordable, and delicious recipes that help us to advance our raw, gluten-free lifestyle – our journey of progress not perfection. Look for future posts on how puny psoriasis becomes in the face of raw foods.

About the author:
Mary Duggan is Co-Founder and President of the Duggan Sisters.
The Duggan Sisters cracked the code and created a natural deodorant that actually works: lifestinks.  We hope you will spend a few minutes exploring duggansisters.com to experience their spirited approach to wellness through their natural products and healing stories.

Folks, this blouse had clearly been dry-cleaned any number of times. One of the many reasons, and there are many health-based reasons, we can’t stand dry cleaning is that you are never really rid of the chemical residue the dry cleaning process creates. Clothes need to be laundered in a timely fashion, to remove not only sweat and our deodorant, but all the other toxins released, such as: prescription drug reactions, perfumes and body lotions, and environmental pollutants present in the very air we breathe and move around in.

This particularly lovely blouse was made from iridescent silk and I bet it was a showstopper or this lovely lady would not have grieved the loss so deeply. The Duggan sisters, who publicly appear most commonly in duds of the cotton and dowdy variety, are, in fact, big fans of silk and opt whenever possible for the washable kind. We have successfully laundered our sweat and our deodorant from these silky pits for years. And we could not have said that during our years of using commercial deodorants and losing plenty of clothing to pit stains. However, today when Clare and I were commiserating about Michelle’s unfortunate but avoidable blouse death, Annie came clean to us and admitted to having made a similar mistake with a silk knit tee shirt that she abandoned to the bottom of the laundry basket for some four months last year. Needless to say, one of Annie’s favorite expressions is “Common sense is not common!” Clare and I did our best to NOT repeat Annie’s all-time favorite phrase – in her presence, that is.

Folks, fabric can’t stand up to the ravages of TIME, sweat, deodorant (even ours) and dry cleaning chemical residue in lethal combination. Our little deodorant does a great job keeping you dry and odor free without staining your clothing, but it’s not a miracle worker. Heed the warning now as we change seasons and wardrobe. Moths are not our only enemies. Deep laundry baskets must also remain on the hit list.