It’s Also More Than Just a Bath
Hi, it’s Marilyn Schendel from Ritual Waters and I am excited that you landed here. I am a Yankee that moved down to North Carolina a little over 20 years ago. I had been a single Mom raising two kids who are now adults with their own lives. I moved to escape the traffic, the rush of New York life on Long Island and a stressful job with tight project deadlines.
My refuge had been my nightly bath rituals. This was where I was able to shut the door on all the “out there” and create space for me. I lit candles, ran the water and added bath salts and sweet-smelling soap. Wine and music also if the spirit moved me. I was creating a ritual that I repeated many times and still do that helped me get through the week. This was my time to renew and recharge my spirit to meet the next day.
I had started making handcrafted soap for a few years but now found I had more time to experiment. Creating soaps with colors from clays and herbs and the lovely aromas of essential oils became an obsession. I took some aromatherapy classes to learn more about how the blending of essential oils can create comfort and relax us. I shared these soapy creations with friends and family.
I was hooked with the creativity and passion of combining colors and scents and the science of formulation. In turn, I delved deeper into bathing as a ritual and how it can help be a respite from the overwhelm that seemed to infect all our lives. This was my way of connecting with others and offering not only bath products but a way to create their refuge from the outside world with its high expectations.
Sylvia Path wrote ~ There must be quite a few things that a hot bath won’t cure, but I don’t know many of them.
We seem to all be on over-drive between jobs, family, to do lists and just life happening in a whirlwind and losing ourselves along the way. We all want to live our lives with creative passion. We need to refuse to lose ourselves in the daily struggles and stresses of life.
We all need to shut the door on the world for a while. We crave time to pause and just breathe in and be still and present with ourselves. We create space to celebrate ourselves in ritual. Water is a tool to lead us back to ourselves.
I invite you to light a candle. Draw a bath. Let Ritual Waters hold space for you to take a breath and recover your sense of self.