How Did I Become Green

How did I become green? How did I get into the green thing? This was asked of me yesterday. I kinda drew a blank then everything flashed through my head trying to narrow it down to one specific thing.

At first I just decided that's just me. I've always been green at heart if not always in action. But later I thought about it some more. It's much more than that though it is part of who I am.

Having Native American ancestry (really, don't look at the pale skin and freckles that's my Irish side, look at the bone structure and hair) really gave me a deeper connection to nature and that combined with a creatively crafty mom who hated to throw anything away, loved to garden and taught me how to treasure hunt at thrift stores really made me a greenie right from the start.

Something else buzzed in the back of my mind for awhile though. Being it was the 28th anniversary of my father's death I started thinking about him and drew a connection between his death and some of my green ways.

See he died of leukemia and his doctors blamed his job for it. They thought his exposure to toxic chemicals caused his leukemia. He worked at Mead Containers at the time, a precursor to Mead- the company that now makes notebooks and school supplies. My dad was the clean up guy, the only one. He dealt with cleaning up and disposing of all the manufacturing waste including the chemicals.

It was never proven that's what made him sick, you know big corporations with their lawyers and highly paid doctors made sure my father received nothing, not even medical compensation. He died in debt and my mother was still paying his medical bills a decade after his death.

Anyway...you are probably thinking how does this contribute to me being green? Well from an early age I realized that chemicals kill. They killed my dad. So I opted for more natural and kinder solutions than toxic filled products.

It is just one more thing that makes me the eco-friendly person that I am.