I wrote a book a couple years ago. (I still am in disbelief that I managed to do that!) It’s called Soap & Soul: A Practical Guide to Minding Your Body, Your Home, and Your Spirit with Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soaps. It published in October of 2023 by the folks at Countryman Press, a division of Norton.
The book is partly a collection of recipes and tips (over 85!) for healthy home and body care, partly stories about my own up-and-down journey of adopting green practices and getting to where I am today as a mom and writer, and partly a behind-the-scenes glimpse into my Bronner family and how it created an unconventional yet successful soap company.
Whether or not you’ve finished my book—and if you haven’t gotten your copy yet, pick yours up today!—you can benefit from this Reader’s Guide I’ve just written. Here’s why: From wherever you are in your green journey, this will help you take the next step forwards. And here’s a funny little fact: you don’t have to have read the book to use it. I wrote it for book readers and non-readers alike.
Download your Reader’s Guide here!
What’s the use of a Reader’s Guide?
A key lesson I learned as a teacher (high school English) is that the more students engage with a topic, the more they learn. This is true even when we’re no longer official students: although each of us learns differently, we all learn more if we engage with any topic in a variety of ways. In order to keep moving forward in your green journey, don’t just read ideas. Ponder them. Discuss them. Try them out. See what works for you.
Take the next step forward from seeing what’s worked in my life to finding out what works in yours.
9 Reasons You Need the Soap & Soul Reader’s Guide
Here are nine ways the Reader’s Guide will inspire, guide, encourage, motivate, energize, spur, or kick you in the backside (depending on which you need!) to move forward in your green journey:
- It’s like an activity book for adults. How fun is that? (No Word Searches though.)
- It will foster contemplation and conversation with friends and family.
- It will give you specific next steps to begin (or deepen) your journey into green living.
- It pulls out some of my favorite quotes in the book. (Is it ok that I have favorite quotes in my own book??)
- I really want you to write your own Tah-Dah lists. You’ll love it. They’re fun! And satisfying.
- You may start using the term “GIY” in your everyday conversation, and maybe someday, I’ll get the credit for having coined a term!
- You might end up processing stuff from the past and turn it into useful lessons or motivations for your future.
- You’ll evict burdens in your life you didn’t even realize were there.
- It’s an excuse to sit down and put your feet up while still doing something useful! Coffee? Wine? Sparkling water with a twist of lemon?
Do you need a book club to utilize this Reader’s Guide?
No. I wrote this guide so that you could do it by yourself or in discussion with a group, whichever works best for you.
(Here’s one of my quirks: I don’t join book clubs. I certainly like books and reading (a little too much judging by the pile on my nightstand). I think the world would be much better off if more people read more books—we’d be better acquainted with others and ourselves and have more empathy. But I struggle to read books on a timetable, so book clubs can be a challenge. I love that they exist though and encourage people to read more!)
So no, you don’t need to be part of a book club to enjoy this Reader’s Guide. I wrote this in a way that you can go through it solo, if you’re so inclined, or you could use it with a group. Whatever is most fun for you!
What should you do next?
Open the Reader’s Guide and find a question that sparks your interest. My earnest desire is for each of you to move forward towards a freer, less burdened life. The pace of your journey does not matter, so long as you are progressing. I think this Readers’ Guide can help you do just that.
“At once philosophical, practical and autobiographical, Soap & Soul is a beautiful melting pot – a road map for a closer-to-nature home, an encouraging blueprint to make that a reality, and a story of a family leading the way, in their own ways and together.”
-Alexx Stuart
Author of Low Tox Life & Low Tox Food
Download your Reader’s Guide here!
Why is the Dr Bronner’s Castile Soap not 100% organic ingredients like the sugar soap. Also, why does the Tea Tree Castile have tea tree extract instead of tea tree oil like the sugar soap?
Hi Emerick – I’m happy to see you’re taking a look at the labels so closely! For a product to qualify for the USDA Organic logo, it must be made with 95% organic materials. However, for our Castile soap making process to work correctly, with no leftover unreacted oils, we must add over 7% of the alkali (sodium or potassium hydroxide) to the mixture of organic oils. This drops our Castile Soaps’ ingredients below that 95% benchmark since hydroxides are inorganic minerals, which means they do not come from a plant source and can’t be included in the organic content calculation. Our Castile Soaps still qualify for the “Made with Organic Ingredients” category, which means that 70–95% of the ingredients are organic.
Regarding the ingredient “Tea Tree Extract” in the Castile Magic Soap, this is an essential oil, but it is not certified organic. Instead, this oil is part of Dr. Bronner’s effort to assist farmers as they undergo the three-year conversion process in order to attain organic certification. During these three years, farmers must practice organic principles, with their increased costs, without being able to market their crops as organic or take in the increased premium of selling organic products. To clarify that the label claim “Made with Organic Oils” does not apply to the tea tree, we use the term “extract.” However, in the Organic Sugar Soap, we use certified organic tea tree oil.