After six months of writing this Green Girl blog, I have been thinking a lot about my expanded sense of the word “green.” When I first sat down to write this, I basically classified the word as chemical-free living, because I thought that was what it had always meant to me. But as I finished my freshman year of college, I discovered that it meant, and had maybe always meant, more than that.

First of all, I think I should mention that I had kind of a rough first year. Other than my three best friends, I didn’t really get close with other people. I didn’t find my niche with music or theater, as I always had in the past. I was eating completely differently than I always had. I wasn’t happy, really, with what I was doing, with where I was, or with who I was—and that was never something that I had questioned before.

I was not alone in these feelings; my friend and future roommate, Hannah, was also pretty miserable. Our problem was that we finally knew what we wanted to do and what kind of people we wanted to be around, and we were finding neither of those things where we were. It became a chore to do our work, because all we were doing was wallowing and thinking of ways to fix our situation.

Though we both were able to come up with multiple possibilities for our situation, what really helped us was something that I had never realized was so much a part of my life. Growing up “green,” I was not only non-toxic physically, but I was also mentally non-toxic, if you will. Meaning, I had learned ways of freeing poisonous thoughts and feelings from my mind and from my emotions. Growing up, my house was full of crystals and other stones that promote well-being, happiness, and love; my room had about eight pictures, necklaces and statues of Ganesha, the Hindu god of intellect and wisdom; my house was feng shuied to promote serenity and energetic well-being; we had icons of the Buddha and of KuanYin, the Goddess of compassion and mercy; we had Tibetan prayer flags; we had singing bowls and tarot cards and meditation CDs; and my mom is a spiritual healer.

When I went to college, very few of these serene qualities about my life remained. I had never realized how much of being green had come from peace of mind, and my general state of belief that everything would be OK. I think that the lack of these things only perpetuated my stress and unhappiness. On the advice of my mother, Hannah and I began to incorporate these things into our lives: We visited my mom for healings, we got our own tarot cards, I got a key chain of Ganesha, we got a meditation CD from my mom. Though I can’t say that our minds are totally changed, we are more calm and more rational about our problems. We simply need to regain what we prided ourselves on, and so much of that comes from self-acceptance and self love.

Note to self: A non-toxic mind is as important as a non-toxic body.