After her daughter was born, Kelley Crawford started to worry about how the environment would affect her baby and the next generations. “I was thinking how my actions would impact her future,” the Middletown resident says. “How are things going to be 50 years from now, 100 years from now? What can I do to change things? I became more holistic.”
As she focused on green living, she could only find resources online. “I wanted to have real life support, a community place where people want to learn,” she says. Her friend, Brenda Fairchild, a chiropractor who lives in Wilmington, also shared her concerns. Together, the women co-founded a Delaware chapter of the Holistic Moms Network in April.
The nonprofit, national group has 120 chapters around the country with a mission “to develop a thriving local community of holistic parents with a wide range of interests.” Today, the New Castle County chapter has 12 members and is growing. “We thought there was a need,” says Crawford, who also has a 2-year-old son Chase in addition to daughter Kinley, now 4. “A lot of people think holistically and want to incorporate healthy living into their lives.”
The group usually meets monthly, either indoors at Newark Free Library or outdoors at Glasgow Park. The gatherings can be as casual as playgroups and moms nights out or have a specific focus. An upcoming speaker will be a homeopathic doctor. Previous sessions have covered topics like natural cleaning products, where members went home with homemade samples; the “wonders of coconut oil” with a take-home salt scrub; and alternatives for education with speakers from private, co-op and Montessori programs. “We like to focus on educating our parents,” Crawford says. “We connect parents interested in holistic health and green living.”
For more information about Holistic Moms in Delaware, visit chapters.holisticmoms.org/chapters/de-newcastlecty.