A Conversation With Martha Van Inwegen, Herbal Alchemist
On teachings from her grandparents, living a slower-paced life, and experimenting with herbs and flowers
Ever since Martha Van Inwegen was a little girl, she has experimented with flowers, fruits, and other natural ingredients grown in the backyard to make skincare and beauty products for herself. Inspiration came from her grandmother in Mexico, who always used local herbs and flowers to infuse homemade meals and body products. For the last 17 years, after leaving a career in technology, Van Inwegen has owned and operated the skincare company, Life Elements, based in the California Central Coast. She mixes CBD with all-natural additives like honey, sage, pine, lavender, orange, and other yummy elements to create concoctions that help with all sorts of ailments.
While she stirred the next batch of Healing Honey Sticks one day in September, Martha shared with me about her lifelong journey to Life Elements, her outlook on sustainability, the lessons she learned in Mexico about slower lifestyle and relying on the land, and how she measures success and personal fulfillment.
What is your craft?
My craft is creating amazing bath and body care, which manifests as helping people with pain, anxiety, and sleep.
What was your journey to Life Elements?
I was in technology for 25 years before I started Life Elements. When we moved from San Diego to the San Luis Obispo area, we were invited to a Fourth of July picnic at a very famous farm. I asked, what can I bring? They said, we have everything else covered, but why don’t you bring some plates and napkins? So I bought a bunch of paper plates and plastic forks and knives and cups. We get there and it was the most beautiful Sunset Magazine setting you could possibly imagine. It was in the woods, there was a creek flowing, and there were hammocks between the oak trees. The way that the light was shining through—we just fell in love instantly. One of the owners sees my paper plates and she goes, oh yeah, we don’t do paper plates. This is when we started learning about true sustainability and keeping things out of our landfills. Instead of single-use items, you use linens, and you collect china and cutlery from the secondhand store.
Everybody else who was invited to the picnic was an artisan. Original winemakers from this region. Gold-medal-winning cheesemakers. The farm’s owners had baskets and baskets of beautiful produce, everything that they grew. I just looked around and my heart was beating out of my chest. I wanted to be one of them. I thought, they’re living their passion, I need to start living mine. And so I left just feeling so inspired by all these makers. Fast forward a couple months, I was tired of traveling all over the country. I called my husband, Curt, and I was like, I don’t know what I’m going to do but I’m quitting. Deep inside, I knew. I had always wanted to create bath and body skincare. I did a bunch of research, signed up for formulation and aromatherapy classes, and learned everything I could about bringing products together. In January 2006, I launched Life Element’s first product line.
You said you had always wanted to get into body products. Why didn’t you right away?
One of my first jobs was actually at Longs Drug Store. It’s now CVS. I worked in the cosmetic department. Growing up through high school, I was always experimenting with brands and mixing those up with the herbs and flowers my mom would grow. I would try to take care of my acne or try to make my hair shinier. At Longs, I asked if I could work in the cosmetic department because they had this really great program where they sent you to training. It was called the Gee Gee School of Cosmetics. I learned all about skincare, how the different products work, and I just became enamored. All the brands like L'Oréal and Revlon would have their own training. That’s where I truly fell in love with it.
Unfortunately, I had gotten married shortly thereafter. Things changed and I somehow ended up in technology. I was in that for 25 years. I was doing well. I was a sales representative selling law enforcement technology. I’ve been to what seems like every jail, prison, and detention center in the U.S. As a single parent with two kids, I really needed that stability. Not to say I didn’t apply to cosmetics jobs. I wanted to go work in that industry so badly and I just couldn’t get my foot in the door. Once we moved here, that passion was reignited and there was no turning back after that. It was like, here I am. I was almost 50 and I said, I gotta do this before I get so old I can’t do anything and I’m going to regret it the rest of my life.
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What did you learn from your grandparents about herbs and flowers?
I was born in Mexico. My father was in the military at the time. Since he was always overseas or stationed outside of the U.S., my grandparents were my parents for my formative years. They lived in a very poor, rural village with no more than 100 families. We didn’t have running water or electricity. Everything we had came from the backyard. I remember always being out there with my grandmother tending to plants. And that’s where I’d take my baths. She’d get this big round tin and warm the water from the well. Then she would gather chamomile, dahlias, and other flowers to put in my bath. She’d talk about them and what they were good for.
My grandfather worked out in the fields. My brother and I were in charge of taking his lunch to him every day. We’d have to walk through cerros—or hills—which were blossoming with flowers. My grandpa would walk with us, and we’d pick flowers and other things that my grandma could use for dinner. Some people would think they were weeds, but they’re verdolagas. She would mix those with the beans, and that would be part of our dinner. Both of them gave me a base for what natural should be, and it stuck with me. They brought me to the U.S. when I was six to start first grade. Spanish was my first language. I thought it was cool having electricity, water, and a bathtub. All that was very different. But how my grandmother would grow and make her own things never left me.
You mentioned loving to live at a slower pace. What was the pace like in Mexico?
Every summer we’d go back to that lifestyle. I remember coming back to high school for my senior year after summer there. I had lost like 30 pounds from just eating all natural food and walking everywhere. Even washing clothes, we’d have to go to the river and do it by hand. There was so much working out physically, but you didn’t notice because that’s just the lifestyle. And you didn’t have restaurants you could go to. Instead, every Friday night and Saturday, everybody gathered in the center of town and one woman made tortillas with a little bit of chili and shredded chicken. That’s where we’d go to eat fresh food. Then everybody just sat around chatting with each other. There wasn’t anything to interrupt those person-to-person interactions and the sharing of knowledge. I learned how to embroider when I was four there. That lifestyle, so simple, so easy, just fascinated me. As much as I love San Diego, I almost felt a physical release of my body once we moved up here to Atascadero. There’s no mass department stores, very little traffic, and it’s a big agriculture town.
What does sustainability mean to you, both in terms of packaging your products and living a sustainable life?
The landfills freak me out. I’m a junk collector, by the way. My favorite store is Goodwill. I hate throwing things away that still have a use. I have an old toaster that I’ve had since before I got married and my dad would always ask, when are you going to get a new toaster? I was like, is your toast toasted? It used to be a bone of contention with us when he’d visit. For the business, we purchase everything secondhand. Not only because it’s a cost savings for a small company, but if it’s still working, why do I need something else? Even for the bath bombs, I go to friends’ houses and they have flowers, I’m like, what are you going to do with those? I take the flowers that they’re going to throw away, hang them up to dry here, and use them as toppings.
I also worry about pollution and plastics in the ocean. In our 6,000-square-foot facility, I work with a lot of waxes and oils, and it worries me that I have to wash everything down the drain at the end of the day. Yeah, our water goes through all these processes to clean it, but still, that means they have to add chemicals to the water to remove all this stuff. The plastic in our tubes tears at me every day so I finally found a solution. There’s a new technology out of Minnesota. The plastic they produce decomposes in 20 years instead of in 200 years. We’re switching over to that next month, and trying to put everything in glass as much as possible, even though that in itself has its own carbon footprint because it’s heavier. There’s no perfect solution, but we’re trying. So sustainability to me is keeping as much out of the landfill and ocean as possible. Our earth is only so large. We’re going to run out of space soon.
How do you personally measure success?
I keep asking myself this. Curt and I talk about it because we’ve been doing this for more than 15 years and not a whole lot of people know about us even in our own community. All our packaging says “Made in Atascadero, California.” We say, when are we gonna get really well known? When are people gonna know us like they know L'Oréal? But yet, we’re successful because we’re still here, we’re still supporting our employees, we’re still able to pay them and give them their benefits, and we’re still paying our debt and bills. And the people that do know us love us and our products. Sorry, I’m going to cry. We get these tear-inducing letters about how it’s helping people and making them feel good. To me, success is creating a product that actually makes a difference in someone’s life. I think if anything were to happen, let’s say god forbid we just couldn’t do this any longer, I’d still keep making things for people.
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You have such an array of products. How do ideas for products move through your mind?
All my ideas come to me in the shower. Water, for some reason, activates my creativity. For instance, the sugar scrub, which is a favorite of a lot of people. I’m taking a shower and using a washcloth, and I’m like, This is nice, but I’d like something that’s going to open up my sinuses, something that’s going to leave my skin moisturized. Everyone’s making salt scrubs. Oh no, that’s too grainy, that hurts. Then if I cut myself it’s going to burn. How about sugar? Sugar’s softer, but is it going to be effective? Well yeah, if I add this and this and that to it. Then I’ll come in on the weekends with my idea and just start working on the base formula. I’ll start with one cup of something and test that on myself first. Then I’ll make two cups and have the staff try it. Then I’ll make more and we’ll start sending it out to other friends to get their feedback. Then I start refining it. I’ve been working on a natural deodorant since 2017, believe it or not, and I’m still not happy with it. One day I might release it. A lot of people like it, but I don’t. All the ingredients have to work together. Sometimes I get stuck.
The most recent product I created was the shampoo bar. It was just for me. Seeing the big plastic bottles in the shower was just killing me. I had heard about shampoo bars, but we don’t do soaps. I thought, I don’t care, I can’t stand this plastic. I started learning to make soap and looking for plant-based substitutes. It snowballed from there. I have tons of ideas and Curt is like, you have to focus.
Do you have any other creative pursuits?
I love hiking, but like I mentioned, I especially love junking. If I could go to Goodwill, garage sales, and thrift stores every day, I would. I don’t buy new clothes anymore except for my underwear and bras. You can find things there with tags still on them. The shirt that I’m wearing is a little big, but hey, it works. Anything that’s old and rustic looking, I love it. I’ll find something to do with it.
Before you go…
Learn: It’s National Hispanic Heritage Month and here’s what that means
Read: Sandra Cisneros on Bad First Drafts, Staying Hopeful, and Her New Novella (Texas Monthly)
Give: Youer, a woman-owned activewear brand, is raising money for a community-supported factory in Montana
Apply: Green Box is accepting applicants to its 2022 Artist in Residence program