I could make baby booties, I thought. Or weave tablecloths. Loving fabrics, yarns and weaving the way I did, I figured that maybe I could make an income doing a crafty cottage industry from home. This was 19 years ago, and I was wracking my brain for ways that I could work from home after my daughter was born. You see, I had some unusual needs: I wanted to be at home for my daughter’s growing up, I needed to work from home for my health, and because of my health problem I had to change careers.

To sort this dilemma out, I chose a place on the wall to put post-its with money-making ideas. So yes, there was one post-it with baby booties, one of many ideas. I was in a radical sea change in my life and needed to get myself on a meaningful career track and was unsure about which way to go. I’d been severely poisoned eight years before and had become so chemically sensitive that I was your basic bubble case. It took about six of those eight years to find a place to live where I actually felt well and normal because it required living without modern day synthetic chemicals. Once there, I began to get my life back on track. I finally, blessedly, was well enough to have a baby. And I needed to get a new kind of job. I had been a painter and sculptor and had to abandon the field because of the chemicals used in those arts.

When I think back at that time, I remember three things vividly: A wall covered in post-its; my beautiful daughter’s face, skin, body, hands, feet, eyes and emerging personality; and the increasing number of post-its focusing on synthesizing what I had learned about poisons when I was so sick, something to help the world be safer and healthier for my daughter, the planet and everyone else. So thank goodness my desire to change her environment was stronger than my insecurity about writing, because the final post-it, the one that won, was to start a clearinghouse of information about non-toxic living.

Next thing I knew, during my daughter’s naps, I was learning how to use a computer and I began a file on non-toxic cleaning. Who knew I’d love to research and compile information so much, but that I did and before I knew it I had a nontoxic cleaning manual written. It isn’t that I love to clean, but that I had to learn how to be really clean and green (the name of my first book) when I was sick. And the rest is history. I’ve since written four practical books on the green lifestyle and am a green lifestyle expert on an international level. My daughter is now 19, a freshman at college, and the author of her own blog “The Adventures of Green Girl.”

I have gained good health by living in a healthy home. But the deepest gratification in living a less toxic way of life is knowing that my family’s health has been protected from unnecessary chemical overload. I worried a lot less because I knew our home was a haven, a natural sanctuary, a place for our bodies to rest and recuperate. This is what I want for everyone, what was at the heart of that last post-it.

The Chi part? When people are as sick as I was they often are on a healing quest, especially if their illness is off of Western medicine’s beaten path. And then you throw a stubborn case of Lyme disease into the mix, and I found myself exploring quantum physics and healing with energy and vibration. Combined with clean, fresh air and good food, I found it worked. “Chi” or “prana” is life energy, life force. Green Chi? Recognizing that real green is pure and harmonious life energy.

Recently named one of the top 20 environmental leaders by Body & Soul Magazine, Annie has authored four books, including “Home Enlightenment” (Rodale Press, 2005) and “Better Basics for the Home” (Three Rivers Press, 1999). A renowned expert in non-toxic and green living, Annie is the executive editor of Care2’s Healthy & Green Living.