It started, like a lot of these stories do, with a Whole30.
My first Whole30 was supposed to be thirty days of eating clean. What it actually did was force me to read every label in my kitchen, and once you see what's in your food, you can't unsee it. Food led to skincare, skincare led to makeup, and before long I was down one hell of a rabbit hole, three hours deep in Google and more confused than when I started.
Because here's what the internet doesn't tell you: half the "toxic" ingredients everyone panics about turn out to be fine, and a few things nobody talks about actually deserve the attention. The information was never the problem. The problem was that everything I read was either trying to scare me or sell me something, and usually both.
So I kept pulling the thread. I learned to read studies instead of headlines and ingredient lists instead of marketing claims, and I started writing down what I found because people in my life kept asking me about it. That turned into this site, and now it's turning into tools that do the digging for you.
For the record, I have not arrived anywhere. I work a demanding job, I still love a good night out, and crawfish season undoes a respectable percentage of my intentions every single spring. That's not a confession, that's the point. You can care about this stuff and be imperfect at it at the same time. That's the whole messy middle.