Gay Browne, founder of Greenopia

When the pediatrician told me there was something wrong with my son, I got this terrible feeling in my stomach. It’s hard to describe the wave of helplessness that washes over you when you hear those words for the first time as a mother. It’s a combination of losing your best friend and drowning at the same time. There is no life ring that saves you.

At three, my eldest son wasn’t speaking in full sentences, wasn’t making eye contact, and seemed to be in his own world. I thought as a working mom that it was my time away from him that was causing this -- it was something I was doing wrong. So, I started to look for specialists that could help me understand what was wrong with my son.

After neurologists, psychologists, behavior specialists, an occupational therapist, bio-feedback, and homeopathic doctors, it was the consensus that my son had several developmental issues that were linked to autism. He was a “high functioning autistic child," they said.

In 1992, the world of autism was just opening its doors. There wasn’t much information available it seemed, and there weren’t any sure-fire cures. So, I set out on a one-woman crusade to heal my child. This crusade led me to convention and homeopathic doctors, each lending their specialty to healing my son.

A leading factor that was identified in these developmental delays seemed to be traced to the high levels of mercury that were discovered after sending in his hair sample to the Smoky Mountains Lab. The solution for this was to chelate (excrete toxins from the system) the mercury through oral treatment. I worked with Murray Clarke, a specialist in Santa Monica in the chelation process.

Gay Browne, founder of Greenopia
When my husband and I remodeled our house in Pacific Palisades in 1994, I was determined to make changes to alleviate my lifelong struggle with asthma, and to ensure that my children didn’t also suffer. Inspired by my baubiologist, Mary Codaro, my contractor and I did all I could to eliminate toxins and contaminants in building our first environmentally-friendly house in Pacific Palisades.

We did things like sealing all the plywood in the house because there wasn’t any formaldehyde plywood available (like there is now). We took out all the fiberglass insulation, and used cotton batting that we trucked in from North Carolina -- I arranged the trucking! We sealed the heating and air ducts with heavy tape so that no dust would permeate the ducts. We put in all-new copper tubing, and added water purifiers where the water entered the house to make our water as pure as possible, even adding a triple osmosis feature for all the sinks we used for drinking water.

We used environmentally friendly paints on the walls and no sealant on the floors -- only beeswax on the wood floors. We had electrical "kill switches" in the bedroom areas, so you could cut off the electric currents in the bedroom, alleviating electromagnetic waves and making the bedrooms more inductive to sleep (note: this feeling is like having the electricity going off in a storm. The house is completely quiet).

We put in many other energy saving features that were cutting edge in 1994 -- but many of the things that we did are now standard practice in "green building" today. Visit GreenBuilders.com to learn more about how you can create a more environmentally friendly environment if you are building a home. Another website to check out is GreenHome.com. The folks at Green Home have been very helpful, as well as Eric Corey Freed, who is a green architect in San Francisco. Check out his introduction in the San Francisco edition of Greenopia.

Even though we wanted to build green in every area of the house, the primary area of interest to me in remodeling was the bedroom... You don’t have to remodel your home to improve your bedroom. It’s all about the bed.

Gay Browne, founder of Greenopia

Like everyone these days, my life is filled with too many ways to get information. Cell phone, email, television… just to name a few! So many! But these things become necessary in this era of a fast-paced, technologically driven society, especially if you are trying to make a living and raise three children. With this constant influx of information, it often becomes overwhelming to add the incessant media surrounding global warming on top of that.

Being a green mom means that you learn to manage the flow of information. Prioritize what’s important and let go of that which isn’t. It’s important to set an example for your children to teach them to censor through the media hype they are exposed to and drill down to what the important message is for them.

Sure every now and then, I feel the urge to ditch everything and go live in the woods, but in reality, we can’t just stop everything to radically change our lifestyles and reduce our carbon footprint to nothing. That would be ideal, but it’s just not realistic. However, what is realistic is the myriad of opportunities that we all have in our daily lives to make small decisions everyday that will ultimately effect a much greater change.

It’s important to not let the constant influx of information from all angles overwhelm us. Instead, pick something in your daily routines that will reduce your personal impact on the environment -- and make it happen for that day. Eventually you will realize how easy these small changes are and how accessible they can be even in our crazy lives.

There are many great websites and books for you to use as reference tools in your path to being a green mom. One of my favorites is GreenGuide.com. It is filled with great practical education and information that will help you on your path to greening your family. Also, I love subscribing to IdealBite.com. They have a lot of daily inspirational tips that are fun to follow.

So, the net of all of this is that essential to the fight against global warming is looking at our own everyday lives for ways to reduce our personal energy use. This is one facet that often gets overlooked -- our own, personal energy. Being a green mom means not only conserving the energy of the world, but also conserving your own personal energy so that you can set an example for your children of how to live a green lifestyle. I try to set boundaries in my daily life so I can focus on my children and teach them things -- one of which is how to be sustainable.

I take simple steps in my life to ensure that my energy goes towards teaching my kids. One central way I do this is by setting boundaries with all the information that flows into my life: I try not to answer emails on the weekends, I try to never take business calls after 6 PM. I don’t answer my phone when I’m in the car with my kids. It’s so easy to get caught up in the rush of life, that we forget to remember to conserve our own energy. Being a Green Mom starts with making sure a good amount of your energy is conserved for your children; it’s about slowing down and enjoying nature. One of the best things I can do as a mother is teach my kids about sustainability and helping the earth. Our kids are the first generation that will grow up with this inundation of information about the environment and they are also the leaders that will take enormous strides to see that our planet is healthy for years to come.

How do you make sure that you save your energy for your children, so that you are able to raise your kids with an environmental awareness? I’d love to hear your success stories or your complaints about how hard it is to keep these healthy boundaries.