Four years ago, Sigrid Geddes, who splits her time between Toronto and the Ottawa Valley,
was left with a persistent infection on the palm of her hand after a car accident that same year.
Trying everything to heal the wound with the application of drugstore products,
Sigrid applied a homemade salve mixed up by a friend. She noticed that the soothing properties
of comfrey reduced the swelling almost immediately, healing the sore, leaving minimal scarring.
Impressed by the results she asked her friend to teach her how to make the salve and began
to take an interest in crafting the many natural herbal products that comprise her line,
Sigrid Natural Skin Care.

At the beginning, Sigrid was on a different career path, but as life is wont to do, it threw her for a
loop and she found herself devoting time to making larger and larger batches to match the demand
at the same time as apprenticing, researching and experimenting with new products. Eventually she
left her job behind to focus exclusively on a line of creams that are “free of artificial preservatives,
alcohol, fillers, perfumes, colors and chemicals”.

Committed to buying close to home, Sigrid employs the practice of “wildcrafting”, harvesting
herbs from their “wild” or natural habitat for their use in medicinal and nutritional applications.
Many of the herbs used in the products come from her family’s garden in the Madawaska Valley
where she wildcrafts in the spring and summer, while using her cache in the fall and winter to hand
blend and supply the many Toronto and rural Ontario locations that stock her line.

One cream in particular has emerged out of an initiative that Sigrid and two friends
founded in 2007 ~ 'arising'. Along with Brandi Borsten and Carly Travers,
Sigrid co-founded a woman’s organization that offers a wilderness program as a way of
“bringing women together to connect, create and inspireeach other in a natural environment”.
For one week, every July, 'arising' brings together thirteen women
to commune together, wildcrafting herbs and creating skin care products under
Sigrid’s instruction, harvested from leaves, flowers and roots of herbs found in
Northern Ontario.

A cream born out of this collective is “Forest Girl Healing Salve”, wildcrafted and made by the group,
containing extra virgin olive oil, infused with flowers and leaves of a mixture of herbs found in the forest,
fields and meadows. The group also takes their handmade creations into the local farmer’s market
to sell, of which the proceeds are used to fund volunteer work shops for youths in the area.

If you would like to know more about Sigrid’s delicious herbal treats, please visit her website at:

www.sigridnaturals.com

And if you’re interested in ‘arising’ and want to know more, please visit:

www.arising.ca