My Young Living Journey

My name is Tiamae Dulany and I live here in Cypress with my husband and two children.  My husband is a native Texan, but I actually moved to the state in my twenties, having been born and raised in northern Idaho.  Growing up, my parents owned twenty acres on the foothills of a gorgeous mountain in the panhandle where they started a homestead.  We were very independent compared to the average family.  We lived on next to no water and still raised our own animals, grew and preserved our own food, ground our own flour, harvested our own trees for firewood, sewed our own clothes, and often made (or at least knew how to make) just about anything needed for daily living.  

Because of my background as a child, the idea of using natural, homemade remedies and relying on botanicals to protect one’s health and support the human body was nothing new.  I grew up in a home where we made our own teas, salves, poultices, creams, perfumes, cleaning products and more.  It wasn’t unusual for essential oils to be included in such homesteading concoctions.  Though I acquired a lot of homesteading knowledge growing up, I still had a lot to learn.  Initially,  I wasn’t terribly concerned about the brand of the oils that I used.  The concept of oil “purity” wasn’t even on my radar.  Growing up, we always bought everything (including essential oils) in bulk to get the best bang for our buck.  After leaving home, I was content to purchase whatever bottle happened to be on sale at the local store because I thought oil was oil.  I believed you could flush extra cash down the drain paying for a fancy label and an exclusive-sounding brand name, or you could buy the exact same oil in an ordinary bottle with a generic label and keep more of your hard-earned cash in pocket.  

Unfortunately, I didn’t realize that not all things are equal.  I equated purchasing oils to purchasing a standard commodity like printing paper.  It took me years to learn that buying a product as delicate and complex as essential oils requires a much more educated, discerning eye and necessitates stringent expectations regarding growing, harvesting, testing, extraction methods and more.  I have learned the hard way that not all oils are equal.  Over the course of my oil-sourcing journey, I have had a wide range of experiences with oils from a plethora of companies as I tried to find the best quality I could afford.  Along the way, I have ended up with oils that contained particulate matter, oils that smelled off or just plain rancid, and even certified organic therapeutic grade oils that blistered a family member’s skin.  At the end of this bumpy ride, I found myself looking to Young Living for a solution.  

I signed up under a friend, and when my starter kit arrived, I was astounded to find that every oil from Young Living smelled decidedly better than what I already had on hand from other companies.  I know they say you can’t truly tell the quality or effectiveness of an oil by smell alone, but I still found it curious that, without exception, each Young Living oil smelled superior to the competition.  I thought maybe it was just a difference in my own, personal preferences in scent profiles, so I invited everyone in my household to a blindfolded smell-off between oils.  The result was unanimous with every oil: Young Living essential oils simply smelled better.  It was like the difference between smelling canned orange juice concentrate and a freshly zested orange.  Young Living’s products smelled so much fresher and more “alive,” for lack of a better term.

This development was very surprising to me and really stuck with me.  As I mulled my findings over in my mind, daily issues came up in our household where I was able to put our oils to the test.  I found that Young Living’s products were incredibly effective at supporting my family’s digestive and nervous systems, among many other things, and seemed to go a lot further than the other brands on which I had been relying.  After a few months, my interest in Young Living oils was firmly rooted.  

About five months into my experience with Young Living, I received a concerning phone call from my parents, who are in their 70s and had found that maintaining their health had become a challenge for them.  During this phone call, my mother informed me that my father had been given only a year or two to live due to the health challenges he had been facing over the last few years.  My mother also informed me that she, herself, had been battling some extremely concerning conditions.  I immediately began researching ways to support their systems as a whole with essential oils while they strove to get their health back on track, partnering with their team of physicians and specialists.  Within a month of that phone call, I was on a plane to Idaho.  For the next two weeks, I carefully helped my parents begin a wellness-centered routine that focused on a combination of elements including nutrition, body work and essential oils.  By the time I flew back to Texas two weeks later, I was astounded to see the measurable strides they had made towards sustainable, vibrant health.  In fact, many of the improvements we witnessed in their overall quality of life weren’t even on our radar- they were things we weren’t even specifically aiming to support!  I was simultaneously shocked and delighted the day my mother’s own doctor had come to her, asking what she was doing differently to effect such a remarkable change in her health.  This was key for me in my own understanding of essential oil efficacy because I had been raised around essential oils all my life, but I had never once see them in action like this before.  

​

Before my trip to Idaho, I had fallen in love with Young Living’s products, but when I returned, I was on fire for them because for the first time I was witness to the astounding, transformative ways that a human body can be supported when given access to the highest quality essential oils available on the market.  Since then, my passion has only grown as I work together with my Young Living family to share the exciting prospects of living a vibrant life of health and wellness above the line of dis-ease.