Garnier, one of the biggest and most recognizable beauty brands in the world, just announced that all of its products are now 100% cruelty-free and have been designated Leaping Bunny-certified.

This is an important milestone for the beauty industry at large, showing a concerted effort by a mass brand to look inward, investigate their supply chain, and rectify any instances of animal testing. In recent history, the only comparable effort we’ve seen is in the case of CoverGirl, which became officially Leaping Bunny-certified back in 2018.

In terms of Garnier’s certification, this news means that now, every single one of the brand’s skin-care and hair products you grab at the drugstore — be it the pink-capped Micellar Water or a bottle of Fructis Sleek and Shine Shampoo — will have the Leaping Bunny logo, proving it’s been formulated in accordance with the purity standards set in place by Cruelty Free International.

For Garnier, a global L’Oréal brand, earning a Leaping Bunny designation required careful inspection across its more than 500 international suppliers, who source more than 3,000 ingredients from around the world — which is to say, it was a process. “It has taken many months,” explained Michelle Thew, CEO of Cruelty Free International, in a recent press release. “But Garnier have diligently reviewed every supplier and source and we are completely confident with the results.”

More than an important step towards ending animal testing across the cosmetics industry, Garnier’s commitment also offers all shoppers a new sense of transparency. Now, whether you’re buying boxed hair color or an eye cream that’s actually affordable, you can also have peace of mind knowing that no animals were harmed at any point in the production line.

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Tiffany Young on The Power of Surrendering & Praying without Ceasing

 HERjourney

“If I am not in that Peace I have simply forgotten to surrender. As a silly, anxious human I often forget that life is teaching me the overwhelming importance of remembering! The chaos leads me back to surrender over and again.” – Tiffany Young

Tiffany Young is a registered nurse, a wife (8 years), and mom (a son) living in Georgia, but hailing from Louisiana.

This is HERjourney.

How long have you been on a self-healing or spiritual journey?

Low key, my whole life. LOL I came to an awareness around 2013 while having intense panic attacks seemingly for no reason. During that time I was working 12-14 hour shifts on a busy bone marrow transplant unit, transitioning after moving from Louisiana, leaning into my new role as a newlywed wife while trying to be present for my loved ones back home in Louisiana.

What event, situation, or life circumstance sparked your journey?

Other than anxiety and panic attacks, I had a miscarriage in 2017 during the holiday season. I look back on this time as one of my lowest lows, deeply depressed and just wondering about the WHY of it all. I actually reached out to Nikki for recommendations on texts to read and study (I love to read) and she lovingly and patiently answered some questions and pointed me in different directions from 2017 even until now!

What is your primary practice?

Continual prayer! My current work/life balance is so out of whack. Continual prayer is the easiest, most direct connection to God I can get in the moment. Currently my prayer is “God I surrender it all to you.” Otherwise, I feel closest to God in quiet moments and oddly enough, when I work out at 100% effort. Something about moving my body makes me more appreciative in the moment.

Top 3 favorite books?

Hard to choose just 3, I LOVE books!

The Contemplative Life – Joel Goldsmith
The Language of Letting Go – Melody Beattie
The Perfume of Silence Francis Lucille

How has it benefited you mentally, physically/materially, and/or spiritually?

As a practice, reading texts and continual prayer benefit me by reminding me that even when life is chaotic, I can seek God and have that peace that surpasses all understanding.

If I am not in that Peace I have simply forgotten to surrender. As a silly, anxious human I often forget that life is teaching me the overwhelming importance of remembering! The chaos leads me back to surrender over and again.

Have you faced any challenges since beginning? How did you overcome?

So. Many. Challenges!!! The challenges always come, this is life. I think my lesson is in remembering. So many wild things have been happening as of late from coronavirus, myself and my spouse working from home, “teaching” my 4 year old at home, a death in the family; I defaulted to the anxiety I became comfortable with in previous chaotic life moments. Personally, I feel I will always be “overcoming” whatever life brings my way. I remain surrendered, at the throne.

Share one of the biggest winks or nods from God/The Universe that let you know you’re on the right path.

Just today in writing this, looking through my favorite books I came across 2 references to “surrendering” right upon opening. I know these are nods from God because nothing, and I mean NO THING, has gone to plan over these last few months. I often wondered what the lesson was, why is life so hard for me? Then one day when I had done all I could do in my current circumstances, I heard that tiny voice say, are you ready to give it up now?

Surrendering is HARD sis, I am reminded daily that everything I need will be ready when the time comes. I have to continually release the idea of how my plans are supposed to go and let God make the way for me.

The biggest wink for me thus far however, is how I came into my current employment. I just remember being fresh off maternity leave, working in a busy clinic and telling God, hey I wanna sit down and just work more by myself in a little office just tapping away on the keyboard. I didn’t just ask, I asked and I moved. I found an obscure listing for some company wanting a nurse with bone marrow transplant experience that was 13 minutes from my house. The funniest thing is that this company is loosely affiliated with the clinic I was currently employed with which was an hour commute in ATL traffic. It really was a match made in heaven!

Long story short, God gave me what I asked for along with the realization that what I am looking for is also looking for me. My boss is super flexible and family first and it is his demeanor, along with my work ethic, that has allowed for an easy transition to working from home.

Advice or counsel for those looking to get started on the journey.

I shudder to give advice, I stumbled upon this path. My close relationship with my sister and Nikki’s openness and generosity helped me along the way. Of note, this thing called life is certainly a journey. I think if you start your search knowing this, you will be prepared, in some ways, for the ride.

Love to you Nikki!
You have been an angel in my life

Have you discovered the power of surrendering ? Tell us in the comments below!

Want to tell your story? Respond to the questions/prompts above, and submit to nikki@curlynikki.com using ‘herjourney’ in the subject line! 

Rediscover your passion and bring joy to your life!

Peaceful Life Hack #3 – The Best Way to Rediscover Your Passion

The Light’s actually always, already (t)here. Once you find It, beautiful and seemingly fulfilling activities and loving people show up to reinforce It.

This Light, your natural joy, is rejuvenating… life giving. And your primary purpose is to recognize and cultivate the conscious awareness of It, CONTINUOUSLY, no matter what the body is feeling, and no matter how noisy or quiet the mind is. The Light is here, and only the Light is here.

Eckhart Tolle said it best-

“When you say, I enjoy doing this or that, it is really a misperception. It makes it appear that the joy comes from what you do, but that is not the case. Joy does not come from what you do, it flows into what you do and thus into this world from deep within you.

The misperception that joy comes from what you do is normal, and it is also dangerous, because it creates the belief that joy is something that can be derived from something else, such as an activity or thing. You then look to the world to bring you joy, happiness. But it cannot do that. This is why many people live in constant frustration. The world is not giving them what they think they need.”

Can you see this? Feel this? Keep remembering to remember issa inside game. #BeHerNow

With you in and AS the Light,
Nik

Have a Peaceful Life Hack ? Send them to nikki@curlynikki.com for your writing to be featured!

How did you rediscover your passion?

Peaceful Life Hack #2 : Let Go.

As you read these words, quickly scan your body and ask yourself, ‘can I let go of this tension in my _________?’ The tension could be a contracted tummy, tight shoulders, or a clenched jaw.

In addition to the ‘yes’ response from your mind, you’ll notice some inner stillness and an immediate releasing of the previously unconscious resistance.

Ego = Resistance

The contraction or tightness is how the ego manifests! It’s the familiar and mildly uncomfortable way of being and feeling like ‘you’. But when you transcend ego, even for a second (like after asking the question above), you are being a truer version of your Self.

Continuously LETTING GO, is ‘allowing’, it is ‘surrendering’, it is ‘acceptance’, it is ‘detachment’, it is ‘letting go and letting God’, it is the door to the inner Kingdom, it is #AbrahamHicks ‘ ‘vortex’ and ‘the path of least resistance’, it is Kinslow’s ‘eufeeling’, it is Tolle’s ‘inner body’, it is ‘seeing present perfection’, it is the silence after Ramana Maharshi’s question ‘who am I?’, it is what Hindu’s call samadhi, it is mouna, it is the ‘bare present moment’ with no story. It is ego death. It is enlightenment.

Stay there. Stay there so that __________ (your name) can express purely and abundantly. Stay there so that you can be HER. #BeHerNow #KeepLettingGo

With you in and AS the surrendering,
Nik

Have a Peaceful Life Hack ? Send them to nikki@curlynikki.com (using ‘Peaceful Life Hack’ as the subject line) for your writing to be featured!

Peaceful Life Hack – Don’t Compete:

In the deepest sense, there is no ‘you’ or ‘me’. Just an invisible ocean of Love. When we know and deeply feel this, we manifest our Go(o)dness. We experience a peaceful life.

“Nothing can come to you; nothing can be added to you. You are already that place in consciousness through which Infinity is pouring. That which we term your humanhood must be still so as to be a clear transparency through which your infinite individual Self may appear, express or reveal itself.”
— The Infinite Way by Joel S. Goldsmith

With you in and AS the Transparency,
Nik

Have a Peaceful Life Hack ? Send them to nikki@curlynikki.com for your writing to be featured!

When Republican Senator Josh Hawley burst onto the scene as a more well-spoken mouthpiece for many of Donald Trump’s dangerous, far-right ideologies, he quickly became the new star of the GOP — little did they know how quickly his “poster boy” image would be tarnished. In a recent New York Times story, numerous people from Hawley’s life — from old school friends to academic advisers — spoke about their memories of the junior senator growing into the far-right conservative politician we know today. Some of it is expected, some of it is terrifying, but one piece of information is particularly bizarre.

“I do think there was something reflexively present in Josh from early on that aligned with that kind of thinking,” Dr. David Kennedy, Hawley’s former college advisor said of his former student’s rise to one of the Republican Party’s most prominent members.

But in one memory recounted by a former Stanford classmate, Hawley appeared to have been unhinged long before the rest of us knew it. According to his classmate, he had a sepia-toned poster of a shirtless male model cradling a newborn placed directly above his bed in his dorm. Sound strange? Well, it gets stranger. When asked by classmates about the peculiar poster, Hawley would allegedly explain that it represented his fervent stance against abortion. 

According to a 2007 Independent article, the monochrome image was one of the biggest-selling posters in British history in the ’80s, steadily selling millions of copies for years as the image came to represent the predicted arrival of a “New Man” who was both masculine and sensitive. But for Hawley, this image intended to portray the evolution of the male role in society seemed to stand in for his own pro-life ideals. Hawley even wrote about his stance in a series of columns for the conservative Stanford Review.

Josh Hawley at Stanford: “Above his bed he hung a sepia-toned poster of a shirtless male model cradling a newborn; when asked by classmates, he said it reflected his fervent stance against abortion.” Said poster:https://t.co/rTMANXTMnd pic.twitter.com/2lerwOKVkE

— Josh Barone (@joshbarone) March 8, 2021

This shouldn’t be a surprise coming from the man who, as part of the Senate Judiciary Committee, insisted that he would not support any Supreme Court nominee that didn’t publicly denounce Roe v. Wade. “I will vote only for those Supreme Court nominees who have explicitly acknowledged that Roe v. Wade is wrongly decided,” he told The Washington Post in July 2020. “By explicitly acknowledging, I mean on the record and before they were nominated.”

In 2019, Hawley defended the state of Missouri’s efforts to pass restrictive abortion laws saying they were a “direct response to the extremism” of abortion measures approved by Democratically-led states. And let’s not forget, he also refused to certify the 2020 election results and openly supported the Capitol insurrection on January 6 as a principled stand against the “radical left.”

When approached by the NYT, a spokesperson for Hawley said that he did not remember the poster but that “he’s proudly pro-life.”

So the poster, which strangely is the least concerning part of that story, is the only part he can’t quite recall clearly; however, his unwavering record of insisting that he knows better than women do about what they should and shouldn’t be allowed to do with their own bodies is crystal clear in his mind.

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