I bought it as a memento after having an interesting dinner at Moishes’ in Montreal, an experience I can’t help but laugh about every time I see the card.

I went to this five-star steakhouse with a group of co-workers. The place was fancy, as in linen napkins, sultry mood lighting, appetizers priced like entrees, and entrees priced like a black market kidney.

It was packed with international tourists spouting all dialects, trendy locals adorning the hippest fashions, and loads of stuffy doctors (there was a big conference in town, which I was apart of). We could expense everything, so obviously we lived like it. Chatting, ordering whatever, getting to know each other on someone else’s dime. We’re a 100% remote team, so I was meeting many of them for the first time.

At a five-star restaurant, you’d pretty much expect just a basket of French bread or something similar, but instead, they brought out a bowl of enormous dill pickles with a side of coleslaw.

When I say enormous, I mean the kind you see on convenience store counters for a buck. I thought, “What the hell? This is a five-star restaurant!” Everyone knows pickles are meant to be eaten with your hands, maybe wrapped in a napkin, unless they’re on a sandwich. But these were whole, uncut pickles!

It was hilarious to look around and see how people handled this massive pickle in their wake. Some tried using a fork and knife; others just picked them up and went for it, not even bothering with the cloth napkins.

People were dressed to the nines, chomping on big pickles with their hands. It was such a weird contrast. But freaking hilarious!

I thought, if you run a five-star restaurant, you should adapt to your clients’ behavior, not expect them to change how they eat pickles. I’ve spent 40 years of my life eating dill pickles with my hands.

I’m not about to cut a pickle with a damn knife and fork! It really peeved me that I was placed in this predicament.

At my table, some people used utensils. Not because they wanted to. Because heyyyyyy, fancy restaurant. They felt forced. But I stuck to my principles, dill pickles are meant to be eaten with your hands. No one is forcing me into nothing.

Watching everyone, especially the tourists, glance around to see how others approached the monstrosity on their plates was hilarious.

Should they cut it with a knife? Just jab it with a fork and bite into it? Should they wrap it in the cloth napkin like a bandaged forefinger? Take a bite, then share it communally like an appetizer?

Mind you, I saw it all.

I was going full Sigmund Freud analyzing human behavior in real time. I still laugh about it.

I’m genuinely curious, what would you have done and why?

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I was on a pool deck watching Violet practice her freestyle, half paying attention, half scrolling, when I found out our food system is somehow getting worse. Like, opening act of a movie I would’ve rolled my eyes at five years ago.

Summer is supposed to be the easy season. Swim lessons, popsicles, nowhere to be. Instead I’m reading pesticide approval documents between laps as if that’s a normal thing a person does poolside in July.

What really happened

At the end of June this year (2026), the EPA approved two brand new pesticides, diflufenican and epyrifenacil, for use on corn and soybeans, the two crops that show up in more American food than almost anything else. Epyrifenacil also got cleared for wheat. Neither chemical had ever been sprayed on a single U.S. crop before this. Neither one came with a press release either. The approvals just appeared on a government website, unannounced, the type of thing you’d only find if you were already looking, which most of us are not, because we’re busy watching our kids do flip turns and trusting that someone else is watching this stuff for us.

The forever chemical argument

Here’s the part that made me sit up. Both chemicals are considered “forever chemicals,” the same family as PFAS, the stuff that doesn’t break down in soil, water, or your own body. The EPA disputes that label, and says so directly. Their argument is technical: these chemicals only have one fluorinated carbon, and the agency’s own 2023 definition of PFAS requires two.

Not a 100% cover-up exactly. Just a very convenient technicality, applied at a very convenient time. Hmm…

What we don’t know yet

One of these chemicals breaks down into a compound with a similar toxicity profile to aniline, which the EPA itself calls a probable human carcinogen. Nobody required testing in the real world on what that breakdown product does once it’s in a field, in water, in us.

The other one causes liver tumors in animal studies. The agency rated it “not likely carcinogenic” at low doses, based on the pesticide company’s own read of its own research. A company grading its own science fair project. Nothing to see here.

I want to be fair here. Farmers deal with real weed resistance, and these chemicals exist because the old ones are failing. That part isn’t fake news or fear-mongering. But…I keep landing on the same question.

Is the answer to a broken tool really just a newer, less-tested version of the same idea?

The timing

This all happened five days after the Supreme Court made it significantly harder for people to sue pesticide companies over cancer claims tied to their products. So the same week the legal door got harder to open, three new “not technically PFAS” pesticides got waved through onto the crops most of us eat every single day, often without knowing it, because corn and soy are hiding in things that don’t even look like corn or soy anymore.

The Environmental Working Group put it about as bluntly as a nonprofit press release ever does.

I’ve been saying, half-joking, that I feel like I’m living in a sci-fi movie. Milk made by yeast instead of cows. New chemicals with names like they were generated by a spreadsheet, cleared for our wheat and our cereal with less public notice than a Walgreens store closing.

Every time I think we’ve hit the ceiling on weird, summer break included, something new shows up to prove me wrong. I don’t think the answer is panic. I don’t even think the answer is certainty, because half of this story is still an argument between an agency and its critics about what a chemical is technically allowed to be called.

The garden bed

I’ve caught myself, more than once this summer, looking at the sad half-finished garden bed in our backyard and thinking about it differently. Not as a cute pandemic-era hobby I never fully committed to. As a hedge. A small, stubborn insurance policy against a food system that keeps changing the rules while I’m poolside not looking.

I don’t think anyone’s coming for backyard tomato seeds tomorrow. But I also didn’t think I’d be fact-checking pesticide names instead of just enjoying my daughter’s swim lessons in peace, yet here we are.

Grow something if you can. Not because it’ll save you. Because it’s one small part of your plate you’ll actually know the whole story of.

References

1. Center for Biological Diversity, “Trump EPA Approves Two More ‘Forever Chemical’ Pesticides for Use on Most Widely Grown U.S. Crops”

2. The Hill, “EPA approves pesticides that may be considered ‘forever chemicals,’ though it disputes that label”

3. Common Dreams, “’A National Outrage’: Days After Monsanto Ruling, Trump EPA Approves More Forever Chemical Pesticides”

4. The New American, “EPA Approves More ‘Forever Chemical’ Pesticides for Food Crops”

5. IBTimes UK, “Trump Approves Toxic Cancer-Linked Forever Chemical Pesticides On Major Food Crops Never Before Used In America”

6. Environmental Working Group, “EPA Approves Toxic ‘Forever Chemical’ Pesticides in Food”

If you’re not a subscriber yet and you made it this far anyway, hi, I see you, come join us. This neck of the woods is less “wellness influencer” and more “group chat with someone who read the government website so you didn’t have to.”

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I Googled it at 3ish in the morning when I couldn’t sleep, because that’s when I do my best medical research, and learned two things. It’s probably tinnitus. Also, some people believe tinnitus means spirits are trying to talk to you.

Cool. Great. Love that for me!

A few months into the ringing, the smoke stench started. Out of nowhere, the unmistakable smell of cigarettes, in a house where nobody has ever smoked a day in their life. It went away for a while. Long enough that I actually forgot about it.

Then it came back stronger, like round one hadn’t made its point clearly enough. I stood in my kitchen sniffing the air like a golden retriever at a barbecue, truly prepared to accept I was being haunted by somebody’s Marlboro Reds.

Except our house was flipped and gutted, and the previous owners smoked inside it for something like ten years, so realistically I’m just smelling walls. Possibly.

My husband has had it with me at this point.

Babe, can you smell that? What about now? Do you smell it now? He looks at me the way you look at someone you’re secretly Googling “signs of early dementia” about. My daughter Violet doesn’t smell it. My stepson doesn’t smell it. Even the neighbor’s dog, who eats things off the sidewalk on a regular basis, doesn’t smell it.

Then my peripheral vision joined the party. Flickers at the edge of everything, gone the second I turn to look straight at them. I’m already practically blind without contacts and colorblind thanks to my dad’s genes (the lucky one out of 5 kids to receive this gift), so my eyes have never been the most trustworthy narrators in the room. But this felt different…

I caught myself, only half joking, wondering if I was starting to see things.

I want to tell you I found a ghost. Ha! I didn’t, though. Not exactly.

I found perimenopause.

But I’m not fully ready to throw the paranormal theory out either, because maybe it isn’t either/or. Who REALLY knows? Maybe my hormones are rewiring something chaotic and biological, or possibly I’m also just more tuned in than I used to be.

It seems the ringing, the phantom smoke, the flickering, the exhaustion sitting in my bones like wet sand, all of it has a name, and the name is not exclusively supernatural. Phantosmia is a real, documented perimenopause symptom. So is tinnitus. Your hormones start rewiring your nervous system while you’re just trying to live your life, and your body starts generating its own static. Smells that aren’t there. Sounds that aren’t there.

A radio stuck between AM stations.

Turns out I’m also not special, which is somehow both a relief and mildly insulting. Up to 30% of women get new or worsening tinnitus during this exact stretch of life.

One doctor described it as faint, harmless sounds getting amplified by a migraine-like process, hormones and inflammation turning the volume knob on your whole nervous system. Estrogen, it turns out, is basically your inner ear’s sound technician, keeping everything calibrated for decades without you ever noticing.

And once your hormones settle, it’s not just the ringing that improves. Sleep gets deeper. The hypersensitivity fades. So this isn’t necessarily forever, it’s just current. Sweet. I’ll just white-knuckle it through the years I’m raising a tiny human with infinite energy on a brain running dial-up.

And I mean dial-up. My brain feels foggy most days and I struggle to put together a coherent sentence. It’s like my brain cells decided to cut out and take a sabbatical.

I don’t love how tidy the perimenopause answer is, though. Part of me was rooting for the ghost. A ghost is external, most of the time (not ready to talk about possessions, ha!). You can negotiate with a ghost, tell it to leave, light some sage, get on with your day. Perimenopause is just me. My own body rewriting its own source code, making me feel like I’m going crazy.

I now take more vitamins in a day than I ate vegetables in all of 2001. Magnesium Glycinate, B12, vitamin D, omega-3s, probiotics, something for my joints, something for my brain. In my late teens, I was running entirely on Sugar-free Rockstars and lemon zest Clif Bars and my body just threw a middle finger to the sky. The audacity of that girl.

I keep thinking about who I was before any of this crazy middle age static started.
An 18-year old cruising the Northern California coast with my friends in a black lifted GMC Jimmy, windows down, no plan past that afternoon. I skipped school often, always for days on Dillon Beach, sometimes for a hike at Crane Canyon Park, always because I hated Mr. Filipini’s math classes more than I feared getting caught. I owned three things and a truck that made a noise our mechanic (my dad) never fully explained. By every metric that matters to me now, I was financially reckless and completely free.

I was a small town country girl, adobe clay on my Frye boots, a pet cow named Lula-Belle, who I’m pretty sure thought she was a dog. Then I moved to the big city, and yes, I’m aware this is the exact plot of a Hallmark movie. Girl leaves small town, girl gets swept up by fancy skylines and noise, girl trades early morning convos with Lula-Belle for cocktail hours.

Nobody ever makes the sequel where she’s 43 with a hefty mortgage and ringing ears, wondering what happened to the sacred Jimmy.

Now I’m the one setting reminders for the mortgage payment (and everything else). I childproofed the exact kind of house I used to picture leaving behind for a life abroad, far far away from my childhood roots.

I’m still spirited underneath all of it, the tinnitus and the achy joints that showed up in my forties unannounced and refuse to pack up shop. I still want to roam. I still want a plan that’s just drive until it feels right, then stop. That girl didn’t have anyone counting on her to do it all, along with being everything to everyone.

There's a song that's been stuck in my head about all this.

Everclear says it best:

Ooh yeah, oh, you do what they tell you to
You say what they say
You try to be everything to everyone
Yeah, you jump through the big hoop
You play all the right games
You try to be everything to everyone

This is probably why everyone I know starts fantasizing about a cabin in the woods around this exact age. But was it ever really about the cabin? Nobody actually wants to chop their own firewood. Well, maybe for the ego points of looking like a strong, manly man, but other than that? No. What they actually want is fewer bills to track, no traffic, and a life with way less to manage.

I do too. I’ve researched land in faraway places I’ve never even visited. I picture a smaller kitchen, a shorter list, parenting and schooling that happens outside instead of over a screen. It’s not that I want less life. I want less standing between me and the life I already have.

So here’s where I land, ringing ears and all. I’m likely not haunted. Maybe my eyes are just bad and now my hormones are too, both at once, for maximum fuckery. Maybe the smoke is just the walls doing what old walls do. Or maybe, and I say this as someone who was negotiating with spirits at 10 years old, I’m simply getting more attuned as I get older, the way some women do, and my body chose this exact decade to turn the volume all the freaking way up. I’ve never been able to pick a side. I’m not going to start now.

Somewhere in there, that 18 year old me on the coast is still around too, still horrible at math, still wants the windows all the way down and nothing past this afternoon.

I don’t think she’s a ghost. She just doesn’t want to feel crazy.

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Since having my daughter, and as my own skin has gotten more sensitive with age, I pay a lot more attention to what goes on and in my body. She is fair as fair can be. Porcelain. She burns before we even reach the parking lot. So the question of sun protection stopped being abstract for me. It became: what is genuinely safe to put on her skin, and mine, every single day?

Turns out it’s a more complicated question than I expected.

What’s really in most sunscreens

The sunscreens lining drugstore shelves have barely changed since you were a kid. Same brands, same smell, same active ingredients doing the heavy lifting: oxybenzone, avobenzone, octinoxate, octocrylene, homosalate, octisalate. (Try saying that last one three times fast.) These are chemical filters. They don’t block UV rays—they absorb them and convert them to heat. In your skin.

FDA studies found that all six of those chemical active ingredients were absorbed into the bloodstream of participants, with plasma concentrations exceeding the FDA’s safety threshold even after a single application.¹ That’s the FDA’s own research.

Let’s start with oxybenzone, since it’s in almost everything. A 2025 review tied it to reproductive harm and raised flags about fetal development and puberty.² The National Toxicology Program linked it to higher thyroid tumor risk in female rats. The European Commission called it unsafe at current use levels.² And sunscreen ingredients broadly, not just this one, have been detected in breast milk, urine, and blood plasma weeks after the last application.³ Weeks!

Avobenzone generates free radicals in the body and breaks down in sunlight into compounds we don’t fully understand yet, especially when it’s combined with octinoxate.⁴ Which it often is. Octinoxate, for its part, showed up in blood at 16 times above the FDA’s own proposed safety threshold in a 2020 study…and the European Commission flagged it for endocrine disruption and genotoxicity.²

And then there’s benzene. Not an ingredient anyone put there on purpose, a manufacturing contaminant. Also a known carcinogen. In 2021, Coppertone and other major brands issued recalls after it turned up in their formulas.⁶ Ongoing studies are still looking at what that exposure means long-term.

But what about not wearing it at all?

This is where the internet has done some damage. The anti-sunscreen movement has grown loud, particularly on TikTok, with claims that sunscreens cause cancer and you’re better off going bare. It’s an intriguing narrative if you’re already skeptical of the beauty industry. I get it.

But the data does not back that up. There is no evidence that wearing sunscreen causes skin cancer. What we do know is that the sun causes most skin cancers.⁷ A randomized controlled trial in Australia found daily sunscreen use reduced melanoma incidence by 50%. A Norwegian study found that using at least SPF 15 lowered melanoma risk by 30%.⁸

Unprotected sun exposure contributes to over 99,000 new cases of melanoma annually in the United States.⁹ Just one sunburn every two years can triple your risk of developing melanoma.¹⁰

So we’re caught in a genuinely uncomfortable place. The chemicals in conventional sunscreen raise real concerns, especially for kids, pregnant women, and people with hormone-sensitive conditions. But skipping sun protection entirely is not a neutral act. The sun is a known carcinogen.

The answer is not no sunscreen. It is better sunscreen.

Breaking: the FDA just approved a new sunscreen ingredient

This is worth noting because it happened this week (June 9, 2026) after I had drafted this article and it changes the conversation a little.

Okay, some actual good news.

The FDA just approved bemotrizinol—also called BEMT—as a permitted sunscreen active ingredient. First new approval in over 20 years.²⁴ If you’ve ever ordered European sunscreen off the internet because you heard the formulas were better, this is exactly why. Bemotrizinol has been used in Europe, Australia, and parts of Asia for decades. Americans just couldn’t get it. Until now.

Here’s why it should matter to you. Most U.S. chemical sunscreens have leaned on avobenzone as their main UVA blocker. The problem is avobenzone breaks down in sunlight. Like, significantly. Research shows most U.S. sunscreens currently deliver only about a quarter of the UVA protection their SPF label promises.²⁴ A quarter.

Bemotrizinol doesn’t do that. It’s photostable, meaning it holds up in the sun. It also absorbs minimally through skin, which puts it in a different category than the six chemical filters we talked about earlier.²⁴ Bonus: it can be combined with zinc oxide for broad-spectrum coverage with less white cast, which is great news for my friends with deeper skin tones who’ve been stuck choosing between sun protection and looking like a glazed donut.

The FDA considers it safe and effective for adults and children six months and older.²⁵ Products with bemotrizinol are expected on U.S. shelves sometime in summer or fall 2026.

Does this replace the case for mineral sunscreens? No. Zinc oxide and titanium dioxide are still the most studied, lowest-absorption options out there. But if mineral formulas feel too heavy for daily wear, or you need something that truly blends, bemotrizinol gives the chemical filter category something it’s been missing: a real alternative to the ingredients raising red flags.

The safer choice: mineral sunscreens

Mineral sunscreens use zinc oxide or titanium dioxide as their active ingredients. Instead of absorbing UV rays, they block and reflect them acting more like a shield than a sponge.¹¹ The FDA has proposed classifying both as generally recognized safe and effective at concentrations up to 25%.¹ That designation does not exist for any of the chemical filters.

Non-nano zinc oxide (particles above 100 nanometers) cannot penetrate intact skin, making systemic absorption concerns functionally irrelevant.¹² That matters. A lot, actually!

The tradeoff is texture. Mineral sunscreens can go on thick and leave a white cast, especially older formulas. They’ve gotten better, but it’s a real consideration, and I won’t pretend otherwise.

What to put in your cart

None of these are paid partnerships or affiliate links. Just brands I wouldn’t regret putting on my kid and I.

For fair skin and kids:

Thinksport SPF 50+ uses 20% non-nano zinc oxide and was the first sunscreen to pass Whole Foods Premium Body Care requirements, a bar set higher than FDA compliance alone.¹³ Also look at Thinkbaby from the same brand family, formulated specifically for children. Both are EWG top-rated and free of all six flagged chemical filters.

Badger Active Mineral Sunscreen is thick, unscented, hypoallergenic, and reef-friendly. One of the consistently top-rated options in the EWG’s annual guide. Good for outdoor days, sports, and water. The formula uses uncoated zinc oxide, organic sunflower seed oil, beeswax, vitamin E, and sea buckthorn fruit extract.¹⁴

The crunchy girl pick:

If you are deep in the tallow-era of clean beauty, Primally Pure Sun Cream SPF 30 is your sunscreen. The formula uses 25% non-nano zinc oxide, organic grass-fed tallow, beeswax, organic coconut oil, and mango butter. Six ingredients total. No seed oils, no synthetic preservatives, no fragrance in the unscented version. It’s biocompatible with the skin’s natural lipids, supports the skin barrier, and is recommended for sensitive skin. They also make a Sun Stick SPF 25 for on-the-go and a Sun Lip Balm SPF 15, both mineral-only. At $38 for 3.4 oz it is on the pricier side, but the ingredient quality justifies it if you are already buying clean.²³

For acne-prone skin:

EltaMD UV Clear SPF 46 is the one dermatologists recommend constantly. Rated the number one dermatologist-recommended professional sunscreen brand, it uses transparent zinc oxide and 5% niacinamide, clinically proven to reduce blemishes and oil. It’s oil-free, non-comedogenic, fragrance-free, and paraben-free.¹⁵ Their newer UV Clear Blemish-Prone and Oil Balancing SPF 50, launched in 2026, was clinically tested on acne-prone skin with measurable improvement in blemishes and shine starting at week four.¹⁶

Colorescience Brush-On Shield SPF 50 is a mineral powder (zinc oxide and titanium dioxide) that goes over makeup. No parabens, no fragrance, no chemical filters. Easy to reapply throughout the day without disrupting your face or your foundation.

For deeper skin tones:

As I mentioned earlier, the white cast problem is real and it has historically made mineral sunscreen inaccessible for my friends with darker skin. It is a dangerous myth that deeper skin tones don’t need sun protection. Melanin offers some natural defense, but it does not prevent UV damage, hyperpigmentation, premature aging, or skin cancer. The American Academy of Dermatology notes that while skin cancer is less common in people with darker skin, it is often diagnosed much later, when it is harder to treat.¹⁷

Look for tinted mineral formulas with iron oxides, which neutralize ashiness and block visible light, a real factor in hyperpigmentation.

EltaMD UV Clear Deep Tinted SPF 46 was designed and clinically tested on deeper skin tones. It uses micronized zinc oxide, 5% niacinamide, and iron oxides, and earned InStyle’s 2025 Readers’ Choice Award for best sunscreen.¹⁸

Live Tinted Hueguard Skin Tint SPF 50 comes in 13 flexible shades and uses 9.5% non-nano zinc oxide with iron oxides for visible light protection. It’s 100% mineral, fragrance-free, water and sweat resistant for 80 minutes, and Leaping Bunny certified cruelty-free. Developed with deeper complexions as the starting point, not an afterthought.¹⁹

Unsun Cosmetics is another brand built specifically for melanin-rich skin, using a mineral formula with no white cast and a focus on hyperpigmentation protection.²⁰

If you’re in Europe:

Until recently (June 2026), you had more options than Americans. The EU approved 27 active sunscreen ingredients versus the U.S.’s 16, including newer mineral-hybrid filters that offer coverage without the white cast issue. With bemotrizinol’s FDA approval, that gap is starting to close. But European formulas are still ahead of what is currently on U.S. store shelves, and worth seeking out if you are traveling or can order online.

Altruist is a UK dermatologist-founded brand that earned five-star UVA protection ratings, with a lightweight texture, no white cast, and formulas suitable for children over two.²¹ Widely available across Europe and very affordable.

Green People (UK) offers certified organic sunscreens that are reef-safe and fragrance-free, well suited for sensitive skin. UVBIO SPF 50 holds Cosmébio and ECOCERT certification, contains no nanoparticles or synthetic preservatives, and is built on a base of organic farming ingredients.²²

The lowdown

You don’t have to choose between protecting your skin and avoiding harmful chemicals. That’s a false binary, and the sunscreen industry has known it for years. Mineral sunscreens with zinc oxide and titanium dioxide are the most studied, most trusted, and cleanest options available right now. Pair them with a good hat and shade during peak hours. Baby oil Brandi would not recognize us, but our skin will.

My daughter’s porcelain skin made me rethink all of it, and to be honest, I’m middle age now in my 40s and am counting my every wrinkle. Better late than never, I guess.

References

1. U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Sunscreen Drug Products for Over-the-Counter Human Use: Proposed Rule. 2019 and 2021. Summarized via Northeastern Global News, June 2025. https://news.northeastern.edu/2025/06/23/can-sunscreen-be-toxic/

2. Environmental Working Group. The Trouble with Sunscreen Chemicals. EWG’s Guide to Sunscreens, 2025. https://www.ewg.org/sunscreen/report/the-trouble-with-sunscreen-chemicals/

3. Faber, Scott. Witness Testimony on Sunscreen Safety. U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee, April 1, 2025. https://democrats-energycommerce.house.gov

4. Patch.com. Is Your Sunscreen Doing More Harm Than Good? https://patch.com/california/moorpark/is-your-sunscreen-doing-more-harm-than-good

5. Columbia University Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center. Shining a Light on Sun Safety: Debunking TikTok’s Anti-Sunscreen Claims. April 2025. https://www.cancer.columbia.edu/news/shining-light-sun-safety-debunking-tiktoks-anti-sunscreen-claims

6. Time. How Sunscreen Became Controversial and What It Means for You. Updated February 2026. https://time.com/6290923/is-sunscreen-safe/

7. Skin Cancer Foundation. Sunscreen Safety: The Facts. Updated November 2025. https://www.skincancer.org/blog/sunscreen-safety/

8. Stanford Medicine. Sunscreen Fact and Fiction: What the Science Says. June 2025. https://med.stanford.edu/news/insights/2025/06/sunscreen-science.html

9. American Cancer Society. Cancer Facts and Figures 2024. https://www.cancer.org

10. BreastCancer.org. Sunscreen and Breast Cancer Risk: What You Need to Know. Updated April 2026. https://www.breastcancer.org/risk/risk-factors/exposure-to-chemicals-in-sunscreen

11. Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Is Sunscreen Safe? Updated May 2025. https://www.chop.edu/news/health-tip/sunscreen-safe

12. One Green Planet. Best Natural Non-Toxic Mineral Sunscreens for the Whole Family in 2026. April 2026. https://www.onegreenplanet.org/lifestyle/best-natural-non-toxic-mineral-sunscreens-for-the-whole-family-in-2026/

13. One Green Planet. 5 Best Natural Non-Toxic Sunscreens for Safe UV Protection in 2026. May 2026. https://www.onegreenplanet.org/lifestyle/5-best-natural-non-toxic-sunscreens-for-safe-uv-protection-in-2026/

14. CNET/AOL. Best Mineral Sunscreen of 2025. https://www.aol.com/best-mineral-sunscreen-2025-181700014.html

15. EltaMD. UV Clear Broad Spectrum SPF 46. https://eltamd.com/products/uv-clear-broad-spectrum-spf-46

16. PR Newswire. EltaMD Unveils UV Clear Blemish-Prone and Oil Balancing SPF 50. March 13, 2026. https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/eltamd-unveils-uv-clear-blemish-prone--oil-balancing-spf-50-a-breakthrough-sunscreen-for-acne-prone-skin-on-national-dermatologist-day-302713541.html

17. NING Dermologie. Best Facial Sunscreen for Dark Skin (No White Cast): Mineral and Hybrid. February 2026. https://ningcos.com/blogs/knowledge/best-facial-sunscreen-for-dark-skin-no-white-cast-mineral-hybrid-options-that-blend-in

18. EltaMD. UV Clear Deep Tinted Broad Spectrum SPF 46. https://eltamd.com/products/eltamd-uv-clear-deep-tinted-broad-spectrum-spf-46

19. Live Tinted. 10 Best Mineral Sunscreen No White Cast Picks (2026). January 2026. https://www.livetinted.com/blogs/learn/mineral-sunscreen-no-white-cast-guide

20. Ao Skin Care. Best Zinc Oxide Sunscreens 2026: Dermatologist-Approved Picks with No White Cast. May 2026. https://www.aoskincare.com/suncare-explained/the-best-zinc-oxide-sunscreens-that-wont-turn-you-into-a-ghost-dermatologist-approved-favorites

21. Altruist. The Sun UK Names Altruist Best Overall Sun Cream. April 2025. https://altruistsun.com/blogs/news/the-sun-uk-announced-altruist-spf30-sunscreen-as-best-overall-sun-cream

22. Primally Pure. Sun Cream SPF 30. https://primallypure.com/products/sun-cream-spf30. Additional review: Organically Becca, September 2025. https://organicallybecca.com/primally-pure-tallow-sunscreen-review/

23. Green Beauty Talk. Natural and Organic Sunscreens: What to Buy and What Not to Buy. https://www.greenbeautytalk.com/natural-and-organic-sunscreens-what-to-buy-and-what-not-to-buy/

24. CNN. FDA Approves New Sunscreen Ingredient Used for Years in Europe and Asia. June 9, 2026. https://www.cnn.com/2026/06/09/health/new-sunscreen-bemotrizinol-wellness. Additional reporting: Time, June 9, 2026. https://time.com/article/2026/06/09/fda-approves-first-new-sunscreen-ingredient-Bemotrizinol/

25. U.S. Food and Drug Administration. FDA Expands Sunscreen Options for the First Time in 20 Years. Press announcement, June 9, 2026. https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/fda-expands-sunscreen-options-first-time-20-years

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A month ago I published a piece called Get Out Now about a paranormal experience I had at a bed and breakfast in Hyannis, Massachusetts, and I want to say thank you. 6k+ pageviews in 3 weeks. Hundreds of you showed up with your own stories, your own encounters, your own confessions you’d apparently been sitting on for years. My DMs were on fire! Turns out a lot of us have felt something we couldn’t explain and just never had a safe place to say it out loud.

So here we are again.

I know my Substack is a little all over the place. I mean that as a compliment to myself. ;) Some of you found me through my travel essays. Some of you are here because you’ve started reading ingredient labels and can’t stop. And some of you showed up for this specific thing. The metaphysical. The unexplained. The stuff I spent most of my life keeping very, very quiet.

Whatever brought you here, I’m glad you stayed.

Today I’m asking the travel …

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I have eaten a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup in every emotional state a human can experience. Celebrating. Grieving. Bored on a Friday afternoon at work. Sitting in a Target parking lot, one already open before I made it to the car.

So when I found out that Reese’s cannot legally be sold in most of Europe, I had feelings about it. Then I looked up why, and I had different feelings.

Buckle up, because we’re going somewhere sticky today.

The Hershey’s problem nobody talks about

Here’s what they don’t put on the wrapper.

Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups contain a preservative called TBHQ, short for tertiary butylhydroquinone. It is derived from petroleum. The same origin story as gasoline. Yup, the one in your car. The FDA permits it in small amounts. The European Union does not permit it at all. Neither does Japan. Neither do several other countries that apparently looked at the phrase “petroleum-derived food additive” and reasonably decided that this was not a food. ¹

TBHQ extend…

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My dad was never home when I was growing up. He was in the Navy, which meant six months here, six months somewhere in Asia or the Middle East, somewhere with a name I couldn’t always find on my classroom globe.

So I waited.

And while I waited, I read my Dad’s old National Geographic magazines cooped up in a quiet corner of my mom’s humble abode. I looked at those pictures for hours. The temples. The markets. The faces. The light hitting ancient stone in a way that made everything look like it was still alive.

I didn’t know I was building a list. But I was.

Egypt went on that list when I was seven years old and it never came off.

I have always had a thing for ancient civilizations. Obsessively. I’ve done the Mayan temples, multiple, and yes, I was in the Yucatan for the 2012 “end of the world” because of course I was. I know how that sounds. I was there anyway, standing in front of something enormous and old and in…

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I spent years pouring Sugar Free Italian Sweet Creme Coffee Mate into my coffee every single morning. No sugar. Right there on the label. I was doing the right thing. I was being responsible. I was a person who had made a healthy swap, and I wanted a small amount of credit for it.

Then I read the ingredient list.

Water. Second ingredient, corn syrup. Third, soybean oil. Then dipotassium phosphate. Then carrageenan, a thickening agent derived from seaweed that sounds harmless until you look up what it does to your gut lining. A 2024 human trial linked even short-term intake to gut inflammation, especially in people with higher BMI. Great. Sucralose. Eleven ingredients, none of which is cream. All of this in a product I was using because it said sugar-free on the front.

The label did not lie to me. The marketers just knew exactly which word to put in the biggest font.

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But here’s what most people don’t clock: processed food wasn’t always this bad. The ingredient lists were shorter, the chemicals were fewer. We were eating junk, but it was simpler junk. Call it artisanal junk. I don’t know, but it sure as hell wasn’t this.

I now have IBS-C. I was diagnosed in my early 30s, and I have blamed, at various points, stress, dairy, gluten, red meat, anxiety, more stress, and at least twice, mercury retrograde. I have a whole graveyard of eliminated foods my doctor tells me to ignore and a probiotic situation that requires a recurring phone alarm, or we’re all going to have a bad day.

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I booked it as a gift for my mom, a bed and breakfast tucked into the quintessential New England city of Hyannis, Massachusetts. Big, Victorian, and historic, the kind of place with a gorgeous garden out front and reviews that made it look like the perfect little escape. She was living in Western Massachusetts at the time, so I surprised her with an overnight adventure on Cape Cod, just the two of us.

The drive in was exactly what Cape Cod promises in the summer. Windows down, the air thick and hot and muggy, salt creeping in before you even see the water. My curls expanding by the minute. Beach traffic crawling past clam shacks and ice cream stands and weathered shingle houses. That particular kind of slow that feels like the whole world has agreed to exhale for a few months.

We pulled up and the house was exactly what Cape Cod promises. Gray clapboard siding, navy blue shutters, a white picket fence, and a front garden so full and wild it…

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There is a woman who stays up until 2 am talking to an interesting stranger at a bar in Lisbon about the housing crisis and whether the fado music playing in the corner is authentic or tourist bait. She eats alone without looking at her phone every 5 minutes. She gets lost on purpose. She stands in front of a building for an embarrassing amount of time just because the tilework is unreal and nobody is waiting on her. She says yes to things without Googling them first.

That woman is me.

She is completely, fully, one hundred percent me.

She just apparently requires a passport to show up.

I am 43. I’m a marketing director at a marketing agency, which sounds glamorous until you factor in the laundry pile outside my office door. I am a wife and a mom who spends a significant portion of her life on video calls trying to look like she has it together from the shoulders up. I am in bed by 10 pm. Not because I’m old (well, sorta). Somewhere between after scho…

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Sixteen years ago, I wrote a blog post about the day I got engaged in Seville.

I described it as “sailing out of the park.” I used a baseball metaphor. Multiple exclamation points. I wrote that my life had just scored a BIG hit.

I was performing happiness in real time, in a blog post, for an audience of maybe eleven people.

We divorced two years later.

Ryan was a good person. That was never the problem. The problem was simpler and harder to admit: he was the right person for someone. Just not for me.

Here’s what that post didn’t say.

Five months before I left for Spain, I ended things with Ryan. It had been eight years. On and off, mostly complicated, mostly us not quite fitting the way you hope two people will fit. When I finally walked away, I meant it. I packed up, registered for a teaching program in Madrid, and left. A clean break. A new chapter. The kind of decision that feels terrifying and right at the same time, like…

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Author’s note: This piece includes a near-death experience and reflections on mortality that may be difficult for some readers.

It was a crisp, sunlit day in December when I swam across The Split in Caye Caulker in Belize.

I had joined some new friends I’d met at the Lazy Lizard, the open-air bar perched right along the water. Music drifted. Plastic red solo cups sweated in hands. Tourists and locals blended together in that effortless island way.

The Split is a channel that divides the island in two. Some say Hurricane Hattie tore it open in 1961. Others say settlers carved it out long before. Either way, it’s where everyone gathers now. Swim here. Jump here. Float here. Dance here.

It looked harmless.

I’ve never been the strongest swimmer. I took lessons at the local community rec center as a kid, but didn’t pass beyond the 3rd or 4th level. I nearly drowned twice before I was even a teenager. You would think that ki…

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I found an old blog post I wrote after living in Spain in my late twenties.

It was only my second day back in the U.S., and I already felt the ache. I missed my host family, the late dinners that stretched for hours, the slow evening paseos through the plazas, and the freedom of deciding on a Friday night to spend the weekend in a hilltop castle town or booking a last-minute Ryanair flight to dance until sunrise somewhere in Europe.

I missed the rhythm of a place that had rearranged me in ways I wouldn’t understand until many years later.

And like any dramatic 20-something processing re-entry, I made a list.

Twenty things I “noticed” while living in Spain.

Reading it now, I can see exactly who I was. Curious. Observant. Overconfident. A little brash. Culturally clumsy. Trying to make sense of a new world through comparison.

I’m sharing it here mostly unedited. Hey, growth is easier to see when you let your former self speak, right?

Don’t throw tomatoes at me, please!

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I once sprinted through Madrid in high heels chasing a pickpocket.

Yeah, I know. Who did I think I was?

Carrie Bradshaw?

At the time, it felt completely reasonable.

Only years later did I realize this might have been evidence that I was either fearless, impulsive, or wildly unqualified to assess danger. In hindsight, almost certainly all of the above.

At 26, I believed bravery meant moving before fear had time to catch up.

Now, I’m not so sure.

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I keep circling writing.

I sit down, stop. Inspiration flickers, disappears. Then it comes back tangled up with headlines, fragments of conversations, and whatever new horror is floating across my screen that day.

News from the Epstein files about what’s been done to hundreds of women and children. Outrage over Bad Bunny headlining the Super Bowl and the racist backlash that led some to stage a rival show.

Somewhere in between, a sentence forms. Then another thought intrudes. Something about elites eating babies. And suddenly I want to crawl into my bedroom closet, shut the door, and disappear for a long while.

Everywhere I turn, it feels like things just keep deteriorating.

This week, in a moment of desperation, I actually Googled:
Can just anyone join a monastery? (turns out, it’s complicated)
Do monasteries accept children? (not in the way I meant)

That question alone probably explains where my head has been. It’s not really about religion. It was about w…

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There’s this wild thing that happens the second you enter the world.

You arrive all pink and screaming, and before you’ve even taken a good look around, people are already lining up milestones for you like freaking dominoes. Sit up. Crawl. Read. Excel. Be exceptional, please, and try not to make a filthy mess while you’re at it.

For a long time, I played along like a “good girl.”

When I was younger, I collected goals the way other kids collected Claire’s earrings. I chased certificates, trophies, ribbons, gold stars. I loved achievement. I loved the way my family and teachers lit up when I hit another target. I loved the noise of it. The applause. The validation. The spelling bee glory. The Investigative Reporter of the Year plaque from my tiny county in Northern California. I fed off that energy like it was Sour Patch Kids.

So of course I grew up to be a goal-setter. I thrived in the “lean in” era before we even had the fancy phrase for it. Be more. Do more. Prove more.

I checked all th…

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Summer is pretty much over.

The season of late-night swims at the local community pool, sticky popsicle hands, and half-day Fridays has given way to school bells, packed lunches, and the familiar grind of “mom as Uber driver” to the never-ending extracurricular activities.

I have to say, summer was blissful. Summer is freedom.

Every September, I tell myself the same lie. I’ll be productive again once things settle down. Except things don’t actually settle. They stack. Work deadlines. Gymnastics and Girl Scouts drop-offs. Spelling words. PTA texts. Kid’s birthday parties.

You’d think moms would get PTO after a summer of kids at home (daycare at $2,500 a month while I WFH? Hard pass).

But nope, we just graduate straight into homework folders.

But I’m going to real with you, I’m not the mom who pretends she doesn’t need a break. I ask for what I…

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ChatGPT was down half the day, and weirdly… it made me happy.

No urge to use it to draft email copy for work or analyze data for a marketing campaign. I relied on good old brain power, and it felt good. Like getting in a solid workout after a long dry spell. You forget how good it feels to flex that creative muscle naturally, instead of relying on “artificial enhancers.”

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I get major feels when social media platforms crash too. Especially Instagram, where I waste far too much time scrolling and curating memes for eight wildly different threads with friends, family, and that one rando I met on a trip (vacation, not acid). 😆

Technology and I have a love-hate relationship. I love convenience. But I also love the grit that comes from digging into the dirt and the mundane, using my own expertise and brainwaves to make things work.

Our reliance on tech is efficient… but scary. I know I sound like a geriatric person (well, technically I am, geriatric millenn…

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Back in my early twenties, I bailed on our family Alaska cruise, my Grandma Bea’s final big adventure with us before she departed to the big place in the sky, because I couldn’t justify spending thousands just to visit somewhere cold.

I know, I know, I was foolish. Skipping that trip remains one of my biggest regrets. I adored my Grandma Bea so much, and I wish I’d shared those moments with her.

Now I’m older and wiser, and I refuse to let weather or frugality keep me from Southeast Alaska’s raw beauty and grandeur.

Here’s how I flipped that regret into my greatest discovery. And hands down, the best family vacation I’ve ever taken.

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Juneau

Whale-Watching Thrills, Saloon Revelry & Savory Salmon

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