After finding out this week that I was (and am) allergic to several common household ingredients (six to be exact), I determined today to get a handle on the situation. So after having breakfast with a friend of mine this morning, I went to Walmart this afternoon. Armed with my Safe Skin app, which compares the ingredients in everyday products to my allergens and tells me whether or not the products are safe for me to use, I spent two hours in the store. Y’all, I scanned over fifty products–shampoos, conditioners, toothpastes, deodorant, soaps, you name it–but walked out with only two things that met my app’s approval–baby lotion (for moisturizing) and unscented dental floss (for flossing my teeth, duh).

Back at the house, I spent some time looking through the app. There’s a section that lists approved products by category (hair, makeup, skin, personal, household). This turned out to be a miracle, since I was able to flag certain items that I could hunt for later in person or online, which is what I ended up doing after dinner tonight. Again armed with my app, I first went to Target. There I found an approved shampoo (but not the corresponding conditioner) and an approved antiperspirant/deodorant.

Yippee. A product perfect for my pits.

After Target I went to Walgreens, which turned out to be a goldmine. There I found not only the corresponding conditioner I needed for my shampoo, but also a bar of soap (a bar of soap!) and a mouthwash I can use. I seriously can’t tell you what a relief this was–not to pay five dollars for a super basic, hypoallergenic bar of soap–but to know that I can take a shower tomorrow without irritating my skin. Now I have everything I need–soap, shampoo, and conditioner.

What I don’t have still is an app-approved toothpaste or shaving cream. Thankfully, these products do exist, I’ll just need to order them online. And whereas I’m making this whole process out to be a national emergency–because starting over with everything that touches my skin feels overwhelming–it’s really not. I’ve already flagged the items I want on Amazon (including a cheaper option for bar soap), and it’s not like my skin can’t wait until I order them and they arrive. I mean, thankfully, most of my allergic reactions are quite mild.

I wish I could say for the same for my internal reactions, my need to classify everything that goes wrong in my life or body as a national emergency. It always feels like I have to come up with an answer, a solution, right here, right now, like if something doesn’t heal this very damn minute, it never will. Seriously, I have to remind myself multiple times a day that I didn’t get into my current position overnight and most likely won’t get out of it overnight either. I’ve been rehabbing my leg for nearly two months and going to the gym to work out the rest of my body for a month now, and just today I looked in the mirror and noticed a small difference in my muscles. So I’m telling myself it’ll probably be like this for my skin too–a little progress here, a little progress there.

As I’ve recently changed my diet (to help support my body in healing my injured knee), and now this skin thing has come up, it occurred to me today that I’m being asked (by the universe, by myself) to pay close attention to everything I put in my body and on my body. And although this is frustrating as hell because broccoli don’t taste like chocolate cake and hypoallergenic skincare products are difficult to research and find, I do think it’s important to do the hard work and take care of myself. Charlie Goldsmith, a healer, says it’s an act of self-love to give your body what it needs. Granted, it can be difficult to know what your body needs at times, so you may have to experiment. But surely one can only benefit from eating well and cutting out those things that are known to irritate their body, and surely we have time to figure out the rest.