What if the choices we make about beauty begin long before we ever choose a product?
Christine reflects on the formative experiences that shaped her relationship with natural beauty, health, and the Earth. Raised within a culture rooted in faith, food, healing traditions, community, and a deep relationship with the land, she traces how those early values continued to guide her through motherhood, environmental activism, and eventually into the natural beauty industry.
When a proposed landfill and incinerator threatened her rural community, Christine’s growing awareness of environmental toxins began to intersect with another part of her life: beauty. That connection eventually led her to create one of New York State’s early all-natural salons and continue exploring how the products we use can affect water, soil, air, and our own well-being.
Through it all runs one simple thread: when we stay centered in our values, the path forward can become clearer.
Mysteries to Uncover:
- How the values we inherit through family, culture, faith, and the land may quietly shape the way we understand health and beauty.
- What changes when beauty choices are considered not only for ourselves, but in relationship with water, soil, air, and the wider environment.
- Why staying centered in your values may offer a steadier compass when life, work, or the choices in front of you begin to change.
About Me:
I’m Christine Shahin, a natural hair colorist, eco-beauty pioneer, educator, and author of Natural Hair Coloring: How to Use Henna and Other Pure Herbal Pigments for Chemical-Free Beauty. For more than two decades, I’ve helped people embrace their natural beauty through henna and other pure, plant-based pigments.
My work blends practical education with a deep respect for traditional beauty practices, helping people transition away from conventional chemical dyes while reconnecting with healthier, more sustainable approaches to hair color and self-care.
Connect:
Website: https://christineshahin.com
With heartfelt thanks to Tarek Haddad for the beautiful music that helps bring the spirit of Goddess Beauty Mysteries to life.
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[00:00:05] Welcome to Goddess Beauty Mysteries, the podcast exploring henna, ancestral wisdom, and plant-based beauty traditions. I'm your host, Christine Shahin, author and founder of Goddess Beauty. Together we are bringing ancestral wisdom into the present to create a more beautiful and sustainable future. Thank you for joining me to remember the Goddess Beauty Mysteries.
[00:00:34] Greetings, every beauty. I want to share with you today some of my formative experiences growing up, which, of course, always lays the foundation for who we become. I come from an ancient culture of love for people, land, and faith, and something greater than what is visible.
[00:00:56] My father was an Eastern Orthodox Christian priest, my mother a cultural culinary queen, and a gourmet food trailblazer. Value is often invisible in heartbeats, breath, challenges, purpose, relationships, resilience. Centering values gives us purposeful direction.
[00:01:23] From a young age, the cultural food, religion, and healing traditions I was born into connected me to health and beauty naturally from the sunrise prayers and the evening vespers in the forest at church camp in the Allegheny Mountains of New York State. Having been rooted this way, it is natural for me to hold these values that we lived in our community.
[00:01:53] Our home is a place where non-toxic has been the standard for decades. And what might look like a career that shifted has always been about living aligned with ecological, economic, and labor and human rights.
[00:02:12] When our children were young, our rural community in the foothills of the Adirondack Mountains was sited for a regional landfill and incinerator. We stood our ground. We won the battle, not the war. At the same time, a beloved hairstylist friend died in a car crash. He used to keep our family's heads neat.
[00:02:41] Heartbroken, heartbroken, with shaggy heads, I made the connection to toxins in the beauty industry, ending up in water, soil, air, and decided that I would get a license in cosmetology and use my folk herbalist knowledge to create a natural salon.
[00:03:02] It was 1990, and I created one of the first all-natural salons in New York State on what was a side porch of our home. The concept of having a home salon seemed perfect. It would allow me time with my children, or so I thought. Until the reality that clients need services usually after work and in the evening and on weekends.
[00:03:31] My involvement on various environmental committees brought me an opportunity to direct a multinational youth initiative called Kids Against Pollution, which I accepted and I was able to actually include my children and work with others as stakeholders in their future. We learned about environmental impacts on our health. We met with governmental leaders.
[00:04:00] We made friends far and wide while remaining a family unit. Our adult offspring today continue to practice the civic duties they learned as children and remain active in their communities. As my children grew and left home, my position with a large environmental organization was phased out due to funding priorities.
[00:04:28] I was able to return to my goal of natural non-toxic beauty when I took a position managing a natural health and beauty department for a cutting edge, very popular wellness center. There, I discovered that shoppers must be our own label readers since retail margins can take preference over product ingredients.
[00:04:58] Consumers blindly trust packaging claims and store names. Less expensive items typically have more questionable ingredients, though this can also be true in the more expensive products. We must inform ourselves and be label readers. I eventually created a Green Steps Shoppers Guide for the Wellness Center that I will share in a future podcast.
[00:05:27] What I want to remember here is when we stay centered in our values, tough decisions become easier to make. My eco-activism took on a direction that led me to where I am today.
[00:05:45] If you have been wanting to make shifts in your relationship to yourself and how you practice beauty, I invite you to join me on this path by booking a consult with me and we can journey ancestral wisdom traditions together. Thank you for listening, for participating, and until next time, beauty and blessings, naturally.
[00:06:17] Thank you for joining Goddess Beauty Mysteries podcast, where together we bring ancestral wisdom into the present for a sustainable, beautiful future. To join the remembrance conversation, head over to christinejaheen.com. Share your personal cultural ecological beauty traditions and we will connect with you directly.
[00:06:39] While there, subscribe free for eco-cultural tips, gatherings, purchase my book, purple hair coloring consults, and Goddess Beauty herbs. Until next time, beauty and blessings, naturally. Thank you.