We were lucky to catch up with Wendy Kathryn recently and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Wendy, really happy you were able to join us today and we’re looking forward to sharing your story and insights with our readers. Let’s start with the heart of it all – purpose. How did you find your purpose?
I always knew that I wanted to go to law school from a very young age, but I always thought my career would look like sitting in an office building and taking on clients to represent. I never could have imagined the unlikely direction my career would take. My first job out of law school was interning with a federal Office of General Counsel and I focused on environmental litigation. As a self proclaimed environmentalist, I loved the work, but litigation work is extremely intense and I slowly pivoted to more policy work in the regulation of environmental toxins. I would review draft regulations and state bills on things from air quality contamination, water quality, hazardous waste and even consumer products. I was exposed to medical research and environmental health organizations, as well as the industry corporate lobbyist. It was a whole different world and I enjoyed it and it was interesting, but I definitely wouldn’t have called it my passion.
All that changed after my daughter was born and she suffered with severe eczema pretty much from the time she born. I couldn’t get the answers I was looking for from pediatricians and it wasn’t until I took a 5 year contract working in Italy that I found an Italian pediatrician who told me to stop using American made shampoos, laundry detergents, lotions or cleaning products that had synthetic fragrance in them. I followed his advice and purchased clean, fragrance free, European made products and within 6 weeks, her eczema had cleared up and to this day, has never returned. After that, I started really digging in and focusing on what ingredients are allowed in the products being sold on store shelves and how there is pretty much no regulation in America when it comes to personal care products. Now, I wake up every day knowing that my purpose in life is to educate as many families as I can on the health impacts of the every day products they have in their homes and how they can find safer, cleaner toxin free products.
Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?
I still spend my days working for the federal government doing policy and lobbying in the area of regulation of environmental toxins and that gives me a front row pass to the latest research and a behind the scenes look at what corporations are up to. But, my real work starts after hours where I am a podcast host and toxin free living educator and content creator. I realized pretty early on that changing the laws surrounding the toxins that were allowed in to be sold in products was an important, but very slow and very long term, endeavor. I wanted to help people faster than that. I didn’t want to wait 10 years before a law took effect to help people.
I decided the fastest way to get the word out was to speak directly to moms. After all, moms are the ones deciding what products are used in their home and by and large, they are doing most of the shopping for their household. I started on social media and began researching products and ingredients and showed up every day just sharing my knowledge. I would do videos on things like “Top 10 Toxins to Avoid in your Haircare” or “My Top 10 Picks for Non Toxic Perfumes.” My gift is taking really complicated issues and simplifying them in a way that anyone can understand.
My audience started growing pretty fast and my inbox was always full of questions about what the best toxin free brands were and what I was using in my home. I realized that people WANTED to buy safer products, they just didn’t know how. So, I started teaching informal classes on things like greenwashing, which is when companies market themselves as clean, but they are still using toxic ingredients. I wanted people to know how to read labels and what to look for, so that when they were out shopping, they were confident buying safe products for their families.
There was such a huge demand, that I created my Toxin Free Shopping Guide (www.toxinfreeshoppingguide.com). It’s a fully searchable database of toxin free products and brands that have been fully vetted by me. The best part is that it is organized by category and is constantly being updated. It’s truly a simple, one stop shop for anyone who doesn’t want to take the time to do the research themselves, but cares a lot about buying safe, clean products. You can search for haircare, skincare, fragrance, water filters, cookware and a variety of other things and you can feel confident that it’s all truly toxin free.
In early 2023, I launched a podcast called The Detox Dilemma (it’s being rebranded as “Toxin Free-ish” in April) and it’s given me such an amazing opportunity to explore these topics more in depth. Social media is an amazing place to reach people, but it limits the amount of education and nuance and in the world of toxins, there is often a lot of nuance. I publish weekly, bite sized podcast episodes on all kinds of clean living topics and I’m able to share the latest research on how these toxins are impacting out health. Once a month I bring on holistic health practitioners and we talk about topics like infertility and balancing hormones, naturally. Making the connection between things like hormonal issues, infertility and cancer risk and the products used in our home everyday is often the “aha” moment people need to start making cleaner choices.
I couldn’t be more excited for the future. I now have a course called Toxin Free in 3, where my students can work within me closely for 3 months and deep dive in to these topics. What’s great about it is that we can focus on my students individual personal health issues and their specific needs when it comes to transitioning to cleaner products. There are some things, like deodorant and haircare, where it takes some time to adjust.. and having me as their “toxin free bff” to support them along the way is so helpful. The course also dives in to other topics like why you should filter your drinking water, what cookware is the safest and even natural remedies. The next course offering for Toxin Free in 3 (www.toxinfreein3.com) is March 2024.
Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
I didn’t start my career thinking that I would end up being an advocate for cleaner living, but when I think about my life growing up and my experiences, it actually makes a lot of sense. I can now look back at these seemingly unrelated character traits and experiences in my life and realize that they all came together beautifully to prepare me for the path I am now on. My empathy for others, my work ethic and my research and speaking skills all play an important role in what I do.
I have always been a really sensitive and empathetic person. Even as a kid, I didn’t want to watch the news because all the suffering that was being reported was something that literally kept me up at night. My students and clients are women who have beaten breast cancer and want to detox their home, or they are young women suffering from infertility and want to know what products have hormone disruptors that contribute to infertility or they are moms who have young children and they want to raise them in a low tox home. That deep need to help people and the ability to put myself in their shoes and feel for them deeply allows me to build connection and trust with them. My students all know how much I truly care about them and their families.
This line of work also isn’t for someone who isn’t willing to work really hard for small wins. Large corporations spend millions of dollars in lobbying money and advertising and have made these toxic products a “normal” part of American life and culture. Some days it feels like I’m fighting a losing battle and the wins are really small. But I spent my entire childhood as a competitive gymnast. Sometimes it would take a year of training 4 hours a day, 6 days a week, just to learn and perfect a new skill. I was trained to work hard, celebrate small wins and keep the long term goal in focus. All those years as a gymnast trained my brain to keep at it, to never quit and to realize that small wins leads to huge gains. That is the kind of work ethic that comes from repetition and experience.
Another relevant piece of what I do and how I educate comes directly from the critical thinking and research skills that was drilled in to me during 3 years of law school. Toxins are complicated, regulations are extensive and medical research as well as draft legislation requires an understanding of how to read the “legalese.” I’m so grateful that I was given that skill set. My law school education prepared me well to be an advocate and researcher and my time on law review and moot court also has allowed me to be a confident podcast host.
To close, maybe we can chat about your parents and what they did that was particularly impactful for you?
I didn’t grow up in a household where we weren’t allowed to question the rules. I was the kid that was always asking “why” and I never grew out of it. I still haven’t! But my parents gave me the freedom to question and rather than saying “because I said so,” they gave me their reasons. The most impactful thing about that dynamic was that my parents gave me the space to voice when I disagreed with their reasons and sometimes they would agree with me and change the rules. Not always, but enough times that I learned that it was OK to advocate for myself and value being heard. Something like debating whether or not a curfew was fair or not seemed like a small thing, but now that I am a mom raising kids who also love a good debate, I realize how it much it influenced my confidence and my instinct to question headlines and dig for the reasons and the facts.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.toxinfreeshoppingguide.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wendy_toxinfreeish/
- Other: Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-detox-dilemma/id1668884742
Image Credits
Photos by Hilary Hyland
