Product Drop October 2026
Hello friends and Happy Fall!
At long last, the fall product drop is almost here! l tend to be overly ambitious and I got allllll excited about my new workspace (which wasn't ready to move into until July) and then I bit off a little more than I could chew: ~1500 lbs of soap! So the release date has been a moving target. I've been chipping away at packaging everything and it's finally ready to go. For many of you who haven't shopped with me recently, you may notice that we have a new website! This was a long time in the works and I think it's such an improvement from my old site.
I have a few things I want to tell you prior to opening the store and I wanted to give you a heads up on when the store is opening. Spoiler alert: it will be Monday.
In addition to a whole lot of soap, there will be herbal salves (in new aluminum packaging that I love and that is also more sustainable) and hydrosols, plus a handful of some old favorites, like a couple different da balms and a round of blemish sticks. I was making some for myself, so I decided to make some for you too :)
Everything is up on the site that I'll be selling this go (with the exception of bug spray; since we are past bug season, I'll have that in the spring) so feel free to browse the shop before it opens.
After this drop, I will definitely continue to make soap here and there, but I doubt I'll be doing a big drop like this again anytime soon. In the 4 years my Mama studio was in storage, my priorities and obligations have changed a lot. Keeping my website open was always meant to be a fun side project and not a redux of my old business, so the weeks of making everything for this was definitely informative of how I would like to move forward. (Hint: it's not running my soap tanks 24/7). While stirring all the soap, I was entertaining ways that Mama can evolve into something where I can keep in touch more often and share what's happening behind the scenes.
One idea I've been playing around with is a monthly newsletter. I have no desire to be a "content creator" and to be honest, I balk a little bit at the weight of a regular monthly deadline. But I have been thinking about ways to stay in touch that aren't limited to 1 or 2 drops per year and there's always lots to talk about!
For example, I have given my health a lot of attention in the past four years since I closed the business. Once you pay attention to what you're putting on your body, it's hard to not start focusing on all of the other ways consumer choices impact our own health and our communities and our planet. Growing food and medicine, shopping local, eating organic, and taking care of the earth always felt like cooperative aspects of the Mama brand, but the reality is that when running a growing company, it was hard to consistently prioritize any lifestyle other than the hustle. I always did what I could, but never with any consistency. Once I made more space in my life, I was able to incorporate a lot of these other things into my daily existence as a habit, and have some thoughts on how you can too, even if you're overly busy (and honestly, who isn’t??)
Herbal medicine is a huge part of this for me, so one idea I had is for a monthly deep dive into a single herb. I've been taking herb classes for years, and this is always recommended as a fun and low stakes way to get acquainted with plant medicine and how it can support your health (important detail: a lot of plant medicine is food!) This would also help me get some momentum on a project I've been (very slowly) working on for the East Lake Garden. I want this to be fun, but there's kind of a serious reason why I want to do it. I have made a lot of great strides in my health in the 5 years since my Lyme diagnosis and I have tried a lot of different things. And I feel like I've found a moderate position that lives in both Herbal medicine and Western medicine. Moderate is a weird place to exist in our very frightened, frustrated and fractured society, but I'm convinced we need more of these viewpoints that can help bridge what many see as dissonant modalities. I'm more of a both/and kind of thinker. Plant remedies can and should go hand-in-hand with modern medicine and I'd love to share more perspectives on that.
I'm also really into gardening, music and the visual arts, all of which are as essential to me as oxygen, and would love to share more about all of this. I can't think of anything more powerful to promote personal healing and wellness than experiencing pleasure in the beauty that is all around us. I personally crave content like this!
And of course there will always be products. I'm trying to make space to bring some new products into existence next year and since Process is so interesting to me, I thought it might be to others too.
Ok now back to the business at hand: the next drop will land on Monday at 9am! As I mentioned, this is a big drop. I am in class 2 days a week this semester (more on that if my newsletter goes!) so it's going to take me a couple weeks to get everything shipped. So I kindly ask for your patience 😊
I thought about trying to do a small Christmas drop, but this year has been a constant rush from one thing to the next, and I think I would like to just enjoy the holidays. I still have a lot to do to finish setting up my workshop and it would be nice to have some time to spend on the creative projects that have been stacking up all year.
I’ll send out an email on Monday at 9 to announce that we are open and that’s probably the last time you’ll hear from me this year. I hope the rest of your year is a great one! And if I do get enough interest in the newsletter, I will probably start that in January.
As always, thank you so much for your support.)
Take good care,
Emilie