dragonfly - her story

Dragonfly Dreaming began its journey in the autumn of 1995. There was I, Dragonfly: newly wed, newly pregnant, newly returned to Canada after almost a decade of life in Japan working as a journalist and director of a not-for-profit organization I named 'Novoid Across Cultures', dedicated to international Earth/Indigenous rights.

Woosh! From my adventures in the concrete jungles of Tokyo, the tropical rainforest of Borneo and the Australian Bush, I was home — back in the cool temperate rainforests of the Cowichan Valley, sometimes called 'the Warm Land' and more recently, Canada's Provence.

The change was beyond dramatic... I immersed myself in growing herbs, wildcrafting, ethnobotany studies, essential oil exploration and working with First Nations Elders who knew the old ways of healing with plants... all of this came together in my small scale production of plant-based body care products for myself and my growing baby.

Cast your mind back to the days before the Internet and iphones, the tragedy of 9/11 and the global shift we are currently experiencing. At that time, there was virtually no organic food on the shelves, and nobody had even heard of a thing called 'natural body care'. The only products available for body care were composed mainly of petrochemical derived synthetics — selected for their long shelf life.

The world has taken huge strides since then and in our small way, Dragonfly Dreaming has been a pioneer and leader in creating this entirely new — yet so very ancient — approach to body care. Since we launched our baby product line in 1997 through a line of baby shops across Canada, we have worked hard to educate people about the risks of using petrochemical substances on the body — especially young bodies — and we are very pleased to see that the general public is beginning to understand our position.

"We" — that is the editorial 'we' — has mainly been ME — Beth Lischeron (aka Dragonfly, a name I was given while in Japan) — although these days, it is expanding as is the company, and my reluctant admission that I simply can't do it all myself! But this brings me to an important point which really diferentiates what Dragonfly Dreaming does compared to the many new companies offering 'natural' body care now — in the case of over 80% of my products, I literally grow much of the content — herbal oils and tinctures, essential oils I distill by hand in small batch runs right here at our Cobble Hill home studio. I still manufacture everything here, again in small batches to ensure quality control. And yes, I still wander the forests collecting plants for both the still and the infusion jars.

But these days, I am really happy to be doing that with friends, many of whom are First Nations people — Elders and Youth — as we finally are able to come back to a dream of old friends from a decade or more back — Cowichan Elders, my friend the late Chief Dennis Alphonse and my dear teacher, the late Theresa Thorne. It was our dream to bring together Elders and Youth to pass on the knowledge, to get the young people out into Nature... and so we are soon to launch a new product line of traditionally—based body care, called 'Cowichan Full Circle'.

We're also really excited to be working with new friends in Peru, integrating their fantastic Amazon omega oil in our body care products — I'll be writing about those adventures in my new 'blog'... coming soon!

It has been a huge journey, this past decade or so — but I am proud to say that we have helped literally thousands of people with various skin problems — and have clouds of Dragonfly babies around the world raised on Mum's Tum and Baby's Bum!

Welcome to our world...

Beth Lischeron, aka Dragonfly