Welcome readers, old and new!
Please hit the ❤️ button to ensure this child gets into law school one day.
🎄 🎄 🍁 🍁
Unsure what my granddaughter, M, wanted as a gift several holidays ago, I said, “Grammie wants to buy you a present, Baby. What would you like?” We were FaceTiming as she ate dinner.
“A present?” asked M. She stopped chewing. “I don’t know,” she said.
Visions of storybooks, puzzles, and a safari of stuffed animals danced in my head.
“You can’t think of anything?” I asked.
After a moment, M brightened. “I know! I know what!”
“What, Baby?”
“A red leaf!” she said, her eyes glowing with the very idea of it.
My girl, I thought, I’ll gather you bushels and bushels of red leaves and you’ll have a red leaf for every holiday of your long and happy life. ❤️
This post is a bit of a grab bag; maybe it’s a Secret Santa. I hope you’ll find a gift in here for you, too.
Lest we forget why gift-giving is an important part of our social fabric (as torn and ragged as it may now seem), an anthropologist explains how it nourishes and sustains our connections. He reminds us that a gift is not necessarily a material thing, nor a bought thing. I know when we were kids, my mother cherished the ruined nylon stockings my younger sister swiped from her negligee drawer, folded gently (she now points out) into an old nylons box, and placed with care among the other holiday gifts in the house. Proof that it’s the thought that counts. But if you want to put your money where your heart is…
Thoughtful Spending
Last week, I mentioned this company that gives back and asked readers to recommend businesses that support underserved people in some way. Here are three places you recommended:
Not unrelatedly, from the Department of Responsible Commerce: In a post a few weeks ago, a reader commented that the products mentioned by Sarah Villafranco, founder of the skincare company Osmia, were on the pricey side. When Villafranco sent me this response, I thought it might be educational if I shared it:
The main reason our products are expensive is that we use a huge number of certified organic ingredients. Organic food and products cost more, because they’re harder to grow and more expensive to make. There’s a significant cost for a grower or farmer to become certified organic, but that’s not the biggest hurdle. Organic farmers have lower crop yields and smaller crops, and have to manage pests with time-consuming, natural methods like crop rotation, interplanting, and the use of ladybugs, rather than simply spraying toxic pesticides. Animals raised by organic standards are fed higher quality food, handled more humanely, and grow more slowly without growth hormones—a vastly more expensive way to raise animals.
As for the products you use on your skin, I can tell you my jaw sometimes drops when I see the cost of our raw materials. Don’t believe me? Google “organic rose otto essential oil” and check the price for one ounce. (Recovered from fainting? Please keep reading.) In order to run our company without compromising quality, we have to pass some of that cost onto our customers, or we’ll end up a failed business with a huge heart that didn’t make meaningful change for people and the planet. We don’t want that.
I hope more brands and consumers will decide sustainable and organic farming methods can help reduce our exposure to pesticides and save our planet, and that decision will drive demand and lower the cost of these ingredients over time. Until then, we’ll keep making products using ingredients that are better for human and environmental health, and we’ll do our best to share the cost in a reasonable way with customers.
Reader Appreciation
Speaking of connections—weren’t we?—one of my most precious holiday gifts is you. In a little more than two years, HNTFUYF has grown from a couple hundred readers to tens of thousands simply by word of mouth, and it continues to grow at an astonishing pace. Your support is invaluable. How to thank you? I believe my gratitude is best expressed in my sustained intention to be as helpful, enlightening, and supportive as I can be. Wishing us all peace for the holidays and beyond.
HNTFUYF, a Payola-Free Zone
Readers, a few of you have asked if I get a cut from sales when I mention a product. I do not; I have turned away affiliate offers. I only mention products I’d like to buy myself, and therefore think you might like, too. I share this so you know my recommendations are offered without obligation.
Val Asks You
Don’t be shy! What’s your most vexing or intractable appearance issue? Send your beauty-related questions to valeriemonroe@substack.com. If I don’t have a good answer, I’ll find someone who does.
cheering your success and grateful for your advice and darling M stories.
A red leaf. Ohhhhh. My heart. xo