The story behind Vossabia 🐝🌼
How did Vossabia come about?
Many people have asked over the years how Vossabia came to be, and it is an important question, because it is about the entire foundation, concept, and foundation of Vossabia. The background is with me every day, and into the products and what I need to communicate.💚
It's not just a fun read, but it's about how we are shaped and shaped and how life events can influence the direction we choose to take. Through illness trauma, death, love, births and meticulous studies - to a strong holistic mindset and philosophy about health and the nature we surround ourselves with. And at the bottom: a burning desire to communicate about nature, health and cycles in a larger perspective, and challenge how most people think about health and skin products. ♻️🐝
Should it be a plant-based dish for your skin? 😉
💫 I discovered holistic health:
My dad died when I was 19, in 1993 – he only lived to be 43. My mom died at 50 in 2003, exactly 10 years after my dad. And in between these two deaths, Vossabia was born, driven by health traumas combined with strong curiosity and inner pressure and drive for holistic health thinking, preventive health and learning about and using nature’s amazing pharmacy.⚕️🌿
The awareness started with food, how incredibly important proper food is for us to function well. But, then I became more and more aware of what we put on our bodies, and learned a lot about it. Shocked by the content that we were putting directly on our largest organ, the skin, I could no longer ignore it. I was convinced that healthy food through the mouth AND through the skin can strengthen us, rather than putting in and on us something that weakens us. So here was a job to do with preventive health, and I wanted to focus on something that was little talked about, namely the skin.
I had been sick a lot with respiratory problems throughout my youth as a competitive swimmer, and the doctors prescribed increasingly strong courses of antibiotics. It's not exactly good for the body...and with the psychological stress of losing my dad early, my system really went into overdrive 😰. When I was 21, I got sick with a serious case of Candida throughout my body. I had to go on a super strict diet, as I could hardly tolerate any foods. I was so weak, and at worst, almost just bones, and completely without energy. With the help of Chinese medicine, light therapy, a super strict diet plan and kinesiology, I managed to build myself back up, and especially I think I ate healthy. All food from the bottom up, with only a few, clean ingredients, and slowly but surely I was able to tolerate more and more again. 😊💖
At this time, I was studying at the University of Bergen, and working part-time at the dental office of the holistic dentist Erik Barman (who later became the father of my first two angels). He taught me an enormous amount about the holistic approach to health, and it is this knowledge that saved me, and is also one of the most important building blocks in Vossabia! Erik knows an enormous amount, but also our network and those who helped me when I was sick, have contributed greatly to increasing my knowledge and my awareness and stubborn belief in holistic health thinking.
Of course, almost all food in our family is still made from scratch, and I am the special one at the store who reads the ingredients list on the products 🤓, often frowns, and prefers to buy organic ingredients over finished products. Some people probably think that's extreme, but I don't care. I know how important it is to me and my family. 😊
Rediscover nature 🌿🌱
It was only when we moved back to our farm that I was able to connect health with nature and the world of herbs and bees. Mom “tricked” me and us into moving back home in 2000, when she was sitting on the roof of the farm house and was going to restore everything by herself 😱. We realized that we just “had to” move back home and help her, so then she was happy with herself.😉
But, thank goodness we moved home! Because after just a year, my mother was diagnosed with cancer and only had 3 months to live. In parallel with her illness and all the efforts to strengthen her, protect her and try to help extend her life, I became even more aware and attentive to what we do in our daily lives that weaken us, and how we can find strengthening remedies right outside our door.
With a sick mother, bees coming to the farm, and me suddenly SEEING through the bees the incredible biodiversity of our old hay meadows 🐝🌿 - it became a huge driving force in the direction my holistic health thinking took.
My fascination with plants suddenly awakened, and I delved into books and articles and floras and bee books, and what I found about the recorded health properties of plants through hundreds of years, in all cultures, it touched me immensely. 📚🤓The curiosity and hunger for more knowledge was so ignited. Well, take red clover for example! Beautifully pink, so sweet and deliciously crunchy taste, AND been used for hundreds of years for both improving digestion and skin problems!
I wandered around the hills, and had more than enough to investigate! With over 160 registered species on my old hay meadows, there is a lot to learn about, and a lot of fun in other words! 🌿🌱🌼🍃
With a sick mother, bees coming to the farm, and me suddenly SEEING through the bees the incredible biodiversity of our old hay meadows 🐝🌿 - it became a huge driving force in the direction my holistic health thinking took.
My fascination with plants suddenly awakened, and I delved into books and articles and floras and bee books, and what I found about the recorded health properties of plants through hundreds of years, in all cultures, it touched me immensely. 📚🤓The curiosity and hunger for more knowledge was so ignited. Well, take red clover for example! Beautifully pink, so sweet and deliciously crunchy taste, AND been used for hundreds of years for both improving digestion and skin problems!
I wandered around the hills, and had more than enough to investigate! With over 160 registered species on my old hay meadows, there is a lot to learn about, and a lot of fun in other words! 🌿🌱🌼🍃
It probably looked strange, but who cares, when I sat next to the entrance to the hives and listened and watched the bees that came back fully loaded after pollen forays in the flower meadows. 🐝💫🍯 What color was the pollen? Yellow for some, green, more lime. Purple, bright orange. All the colors of the world represented in the pollen the bees had collected and then flown home and unloaded the valuable treasure and food. I also lay around in the grass and listened to the bees around me, watched the flowers and the interaction with the insects from close range, and stood under crowded flower-covered trees and listened to the bees working, and smelled the flowers. I picked various plants with me, then went straight in and checked the old flora books, Rolv Hjelmstad's plant encyclopedia, Roar Ree Kirkevold's book on bee plants, and lots of exciting foreign literature. 🤓Endless knowledge to immerse yourself in!
So I immersed myself in herbalism and plant science on my own, alongside full-time studies as a historian at the University of Bergen. As a Middle Eastern historian and academic career on the rise, and the pull on the farm to communicate and use the nature around us in food, drink, skin and health - I almost felt a little divided. But then I saw that in my studies, health and people were also what really interested me. 📚🐝 So maybe it wasn't so different after all, and when I found exciting information about the use of honey as medicine in ancient writings from Egypt, I realized that I was working towards the same thing, but in two different ways. Both super interesting and important, I think. 😊
Honey was the product of the farm in the beginning. We sold honey at markets, and I loved the opportunity to communicate about honey's cultural and historical value, honey as a gourmet food and drink, and not least honey's more than 180 health properties that have been found in studies to date. 🐝💫🍯 But it wasn't enough for me to just sell honey when the bees made many other wonderful health-promoting and protective raw materials, in an ecological interaction with the plants on our hills. I felt more and more that I just had to try to make something more in order to be able to tell and show this.
At the same time, my mother got worse, even though she had managed to live far longer than the doctors had predicted. In January 2003, she fell asleep, our dear good mother. 💔 It was so painful, but it was so good that we had moved home and lived here with her until the end.
I was thrown into taking over the farm, making it mine, at the same time that I felt everything was completely pitch black after my mother passed away. Then, a few months after my mother died, I noticed that new life was sprouting inside me. I was pregnant! It was both terribly sad, because my mother did not want to see her eldest daughter have children, and at the same time, the seed and sprout inside me were what would bring light into my life again. Emil came to us 11.5 months after my mother died, and he was and is my angel who gave me light and joy again. 💕
While I was carrying Emil in my belly, I took Næringsretta beekeeping school, studied herbs, and started doodling with drawing the 🐝 logo between lectures. Ideas and recipes started to take shape, and lots of experimentation and development of healthy products for the skin. I had to do something more with my thoughts about herbs, bees, and overall health.
🐝💫🍯 Shortly after Emil was born, Vossabia was also born. There had been honey production and some sales as a hobby, but now the need was there to showcase more of nature's amazing health properties, and after my mother's illness and death, it was even more important than ever to work for a healthy lifestyle that could prevent and ensure good long-term health. I had long been extremely shocked by the content of lip balms, creams and shampoos, etc., and with the knowledge of how what we apply to ourselves goes straight into the body and blood, I had to do something in that direction!
So in 2004 - 18 years ago - the very first skin products came from Vossabia: Small lip balms with lavender and mint. Cautious start, which had a lot to say!
I got so much great feedback about what kind of effect people had. ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Everything from the end of chronically dry lips, to cured mouth ulcers and help with herpes and eczema. 😊👍
Kundar pusha meg til å lage meir og større, og då var motivasjonen og vegen kort til å utvikla oppskrifter på det som vart våre populære universalprodukt, og Emils favorittar ⭐ (ikkje så rart sidan han er oppvaksen med dei):
🌼 Ringblomstsalve,
🐯 Panterbalsam og
🌸 Kamillebalsam.
Alle skapt ut frå målet om å dekke fleire av familiens daglege behov på ein supersunn, naturleg og pleiande måte, og samstundes vere proppa med plantenes helsekraft så produkta vart effektive og næringsrike! Dei skulle vere, som alt Vossabia, mat utanfrå og inn i kroppen!
Kundar pusha meg til å lage meir og større, og då var motivasjonen og vegen kort til å utvikla oppskrifter på det som vart våre populære universalprodukt, og Emils favorittar ⭐ (ikkje så rart sidan han er oppvaksen med dei):
🌼 Ringblomstsalve,
🐯 Panterbalsam og
🌸 Kamillebalsam.
Alle skapt ut frå målet om å dekke fleire av familiens daglege behov på ein supersunn, naturleg og pleiande måte, og samstundes vere proppa med plantenes helsekraft så produkta vart effektive og næringsrike! Dei skulle vere, som alt Vossabia, mat utanfrå og inn i kroppen!
By the way, that has been behind the development of all products. Covering as many of the needs that arise in everyday life as possible, providing nutrition and at the same time showing that plants have so many health properties that each product has many uses. 🌿🧡 And no age or gender restrictions!
Because the more ways I can use a plant - the more my message comes across, I think. Take for example 🌼 Marigold ointment. I believe that every single ingredient should have a well-thought-out health benefit to be allowed to be included in the jar. There are many ways to extract properties from the plant, by making oil, extract, tea, tincture and essential oil, among other things. Many people are mostly concerned with the properties of the essential oil, but I think that is too narrow. Besides, I don't think it is that environmentally friendly. Making essential oils requires an extremely large amount of plant material, and you get very small amounts left. Huge fields of lavender have to be grown, which therefore takes up a lot of land, to get a little essential oil. I also want essential oil, but I also want to use the plant in many other ways ♻️, and I think it is more ethical and right AND we get to benefit so much more from the health power of the plant. That's how I think and operate anyway 😊 So there are no coincidences here and everything is carefully thought out!
🐝 The Vossabia family grows
In 2007, the beautiful Ylva came into the world, she was also like an angel when I was again feeling dark and heavy after a lot of intense work in the slums as a poverty historian in Cairo. 👼💕 Ylva sorted out my psyche, and she quickly needed an ointment for her stump – and of course, Vossabiamamma didn't want to put on just any ointment. So then I had to develop a baby ointment for her, which now many children around the country have also benefited from.
During maternity leave with Ylva, several needs emerged for me, and thus a new product for the series became available. And it has been like this all the way. All Vossabia products 🐝 are created to meet needs – for our family – and at the same time hopefully for others as well. Vossabia is not just me – but the whole family. It is a completely integrated part of us. The kids have grown up with Vossabiamamma, which has meant 🍯🌿 lots of honey, herbs and wild plants, and eating plants on the hills, and traveling to markets half the country, and lots of fun, knowledge and joy all the way. 😊
🐝 The Vossabia family grows
In 2007, the beautiful Ylva came into the world, she was also like an angel when I was again feeling dark and heavy after a lot of intense work in the slums as a poverty historian in Cairo. 👼💕 Ylva sorted out my psyche, and she quickly needed an ointment for her stump – and of course, Vossabiamamma didn't want to put on just any ointment. So then I had to develop a baby ointment for her, which now many children around the country have also benefited from.
During maternity leave with Ylva, several needs emerged for me, and thus a new product for the series became available. And it has been like this all the way. All Vossabia products 🐝 are created to meet needs – for our family – and at the same time hopefully for others as well. Vossabia is not just me – but the whole family. It is a completely integrated part of us. The kids have grown up with Vossabiamamma, which has meant 🍯🌿 lots of honey, herbs and wild plants, and eating plants on the hills, and traveling to markets half the country, and lots of fun, knowledge and joy all the way. 😊
Vossabia is not just me – but the whole family. It is a completely integrated part of us. The kids have grown up with Vossabiamamma, which has meant 🍯🌿 lots of honey, herbs and wild plants, and eating plants on the hills, and traveling to markets halfway around the country, and lots of fun, knowledge and joy all the way 😊
My new husband, Olav, is an organic farmer and shares my values, and teaches me even more – and a little bonus, youngest son Jonatan 💙, who came 6 days before I turned 45 (!) grew up to be just as fond of nature and just as environmentally conscious as his older siblings. 🌱🌼 And he was at his first market and food festival at 10 weeks old, and then I launched two new products at the same time. So it's during maternity leave that it happens 🤣
So I am so proud and extremely happy with all three of my angel children.
I am also proud of the Vossabia products. They are important in themselves – but they are also “bigger than themselves”, because the products are a platform for me. A forum to convey my burning commitment to holistic health, and to use the nature we have right outside our door for that purpose. Yes, I see myself as a kind of activist 🙋 in relation to raising awareness about holistic health and nature. Not carrying banners in demonstration marches – but by producing by hand, with wild plants from the farm and organic plant oils, and selling the products straight from nature – which I hope gives people an AHA experience of good effect and health.
Vossabia is not just a skincare line, it's a kind of natural philosophy and activism 💚 everything I do is very strongly value-based.
And my dream is that more people can be infected and become happy and engaged in our nature. Take care of it and enjoy it: 🌿🌱🌲🍯 Eat, drink, wear it in your hair, on your skin. Yes, and bring nature into the living room – put out vases and decorate with flowers for aesthetics. Study the flowers in the meadow, crush a little in your hand and smell it. I just love it!
💖
Greetings from Renate
🐝 Vossabia
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