Over 40 & Fabulous Facebook ad: “Once a Year. This Batch Is Almost Gone”

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I lost my granddaughter at 66 because I can't smell. She told her mom my house makes her sick. I can't smell a thing. But that I heard. I was in the kitchen. She was in the hallway with her mom. She didn't know I was there. "Mommy I don't want to go to grandma's house. It makes me sick." My sweet girl. The one who used to fall asleep on my chest every Sunday. That girl just told her mother that being near me makes her sick. I stood there holding the counter and I couldn't breathe. Makes her sick. What makes her sick? What is she talking about? I lost my sense of smell a year before Covid hit. It never came back. Not even a little. I can't smell my food, my clothes, my house, my own skin. Nothing. So when my granddaughter says something makes her sick, I can't just sniff it out like a normal person. I'm blind. That night I didn't sleep. I crawled through every room on my hands and knees trying to understand what she meant. Pressed my face into the couch cushions. Nothing. Held my curtains against my nose. Nothing. Put my face flat on the carpet. Nothing. What is it, baby? What are you smelling? I was begging my house to give me an answer my nose couldn't. I cleaned everything. Every surface, every fabric, every corner. Had the pipes checked. Had someone look for mold. Opened every window for days in the middle of winter. None of it mattered. Because I couldn't tell if any of it helped. I was fixing things in the dark. And the whole time there was one place I never thought to check. Something in the back of my mind was already whispering it. I just wasn't ready to hear it. Then I started remembering things I had been too afraid to connect. My granddaughter pulling away from me. Not all at once. Slowly. First she stopped sitting in my lap. Then she stopped hugging me. Then she started staying on the other side of the room. I told myself she was just growing up. Kids do that. But then I thought about my son. Last time he hugged me at the door, he held his breath. I felt his chest lock up against mine. Just for a second. He thought I wouldn't notice. But when you lose your smell, you start feeling things other people miss. Your whole body pays attention in ways it never did before. I felt him stop breathing. After the hug he opened both windows in the guest room. It was November. Then I thought about my neighbor. Every Tuesday we have coffee. And every Tuesday for six months her chair moved a little further from mine. One week she said let's sit outside. It was 45 degrees. Then my book club. How Carol opens a window when I arrive. How Janet switched seats last month. How nobody says a word but something shifts every time I walk in. Nobody told me. Not one person. But every single one of them did something. Standing alone in my hallway at 1 AM, all of it hit me at once. The windows. The chairs. The held breath. The distance. My granddaughter's words. They could all smell something I couldn't. It was never the pipes. Never mold. Never the house. It might be me. That thought almost broke me. I stopped inviting people over. Birthdays became phone calls. I quit book club. I couldn't sit in Carol's living room for two hours wondering if everyone was waiting for me to leave. You want to know the loneliest feeling in the world? Sitting in your own living room afraid to answer the door because you have no idea what hits people when they walk in. And you can't fix it because you can't smell it. And you can't ask because you're terrified of the answer. I showered twice a day. Bought the most expensive body wash I could find. Scrubbed until my skin turned red. Stayed up past 2 AM searching things I was ashamed to type. "Why do old people smell." "Can you stink and not know it." Found women my age asking the same questions. All of them doing everything right. Not one had figured it out. I closed my laptop and sat in the dark. This is my life now. A grandmother who makes her own granddaughter sick. And I can't even smell why. Then Margaret showed up. No call. No text. She just appeared at my kitchen door on a Thursday with a paper bag. Put it on the table. Sat down. Took both my hands. And said three words nobody had said to me in years. You smell, Linda. I broke down. Not from shame. From relief. Finally someone loved me enough to say what everyone else was too polite to say. And then she told me something that changed everything. Margaret worked in elder care for 30 years. Thousands of older people. And she told me something no doctor, no family member, no friend ever did. She said our bodies start making a compound as we age. Called Nonenal. It comes out through the skin. Musty. Stale. Sour. The kind of smell that gets into furniture, blankets, walls. And here's what made my jaw drop. Every person she ever cared for who had this smell was clean. Bathed. Groomed. It didn't matter. Because Nonenal is not dirt. It's not sweat. It comes from inside the skin. And regular soap, no matter how expensive, no matter how hard you scrub, cannot touch it. Every shower. Every body wash. Every time I scrubbed my arms raw. None of it could have worked. Not because I wasn't trying hard enough. Because soap was never built to fight what was actually on my skin. Margaret said her staff tried everything for 30 years. Air fresheners. Essential oils. Special detergent. Organic soap. Nothing worked. Because nothing was going after the actual cause. Until one day a nurse brought in a soap made with Japanese persimmon. Persimmon has something that grabs onto Nonenal and breaks it apart. Not covers it up. Not hides it. Breaks it down. Gone. Within days the staff saw the difference. Not air freshener fighting something underneath. Just clean. Then she opened the paper bag. Inside was a bar of Goda soap. She put it in my hands like it was medicine. "I already ordered it for you. Two more bars are coming next week. This is the one we use. Has been for years. The concentration is right, it actually works, and it's made with real Japanese persimmon. Not some watered down version. The real thing." She paused. "Just so you know, they sell out. A lot. So when you get low, don't wait." She squeezed my hands, got up, and went home. I used it that night. Didn't expect anything. First thing I noticed was my skin. Softer. Like something that had been sitting on it for years was gone. A layer I didn't know was there. But I couldn't smell it. I still can't. So I had to wait and watch the people around me. Week one. My daughter sat right next to me on the couch. Arm against arm. She hadn't done that in a very long time. Week two. Margaret came by and didn't say a word about any smell. Week three. My son hugged me at the door. His chest opened up. He breathed in. Full breath. Face near my neck. Like it was nothing. Like I was just his mom again. Week four. My granddaughter walked through the door. Dropped her backpack. Walked straight to me. Climbed into my lap. Put her little head against my chest. And fell asleep. I sat there with her hair under my chin and her breath on my collarbone and cried so hard I had to cover my mouth so I wouldn't wake her. I thought about the nights on my knees begging my house to tell me what was wrong. The scrubbing. The shame. The years alone. It was never the house. It was on my skin the whole time. And nobody told me. And I couldn't smell it. And nothing I tried was ever going to work. I can't get those years back. The Tuesdays alone. The birthdays by phone. The nights replaying what my sweet girl said about me. But she's here now. On my chest. And whatever kept her away is gone. If nobody in your life is honest enough to be your Margaret, let me be her for you right now. It's called Goda. It's the only soap I use. It's the only soap Margaret gives to the people she cares for. And it's the only thing that ever made a difference. [GODA PRODUCT LINK] It costs less than the fancy body wash I was already wasting money on. The one that was never going to work. Because every day you spend guessing is another Tuesday alone. Another birthday by phone. Another moment where the person you love most buries her face in her mother's sleeve because she can't stand to be near you. And you just stand there. Unable to smell a thing. Hearing all of it. Don't wait until they're out of stock again. Margaret warned me. She was right. I lost my granddaughter at 66 because I can't smell. She told her mom my house makes her sick. I can't smell a thing. But that I heard. I was in the kitchen. She was in the hallway with her mom. She didn't know I was there. "Mommy I don't want to go to grandma's house. It makes me sick." My sweet girl. The one who used to fall asleep on my chest every Sunday. That girl just told her mother that being near me makes her sick. I stood there holding the counter and I couldn't breathe. Makes her sick. What makes her sick? What is she talking about? I lost my sense of smell a year before Covid hit. It never came back. Not even a little. I can't smell my food, my clothes, my house, my own skin. Nothing. So when my granddaughter says something makes her sick, I can't just sniff it out like a normal person. I'm blind. That night I didn't sleep. I crawled through every room on my hands and knees trying to understand what she meant. Pressed my face into the couch cushions. Nothing. Held my curtains against my nose. Nothing. Put my face flat on the carpet. Nothing. What is it, baby? What are you smelling? I was begging my house to give me an answer my nose couldn't. I cleaned everything. Every surface, every fabric, every corner. Had the pipes checked. Had someone look for mold. Opened every window for days in the middle of winter. None of it mattered. Because I couldn't tell if any of it helped. I was fixing things in the dark. And the whole time there was one place I never thought to check. Something in the back of my mind was already whispering it. I just wasn't ready to hear it. Then I started remembering things I had been too afraid to connect. My granddaughter pulling away from me. Not all at once. Slowly. First she stopped sitting in my lap. Then she stopped hugging me. Then she started staying on the other side of the room. I told myself she was just growing up. Kids do that. But then I thought about my son. Last time he hugged me at the door, he held his breath. I felt his chest lock up against mine. Just for a second. He thought I wouldn't notice. But when you lose your smell, you start feeling things other people miss. Your whole body pays attention in ways it never did before. I felt him stop breathing. After the hug he opened both windows in the guest room. It was November. Then I thought about my neighbor. Every Tuesday we have coffee. And every Tuesday for six months her chair moved a little further from mine. One week she said let's sit outside. It was 45 degrees. Then my book club. How Carol opens a window when I arrive. How Janet switched seats last month. How nobody says a word but something shifts every time I walk in. Nobody told me. Not one person. But every single one of them did something. Standing alone in my hallway at 1 AM, all of it hit me at once. The windows. The chairs. The held breath. The distance. My granddaughter's words. They could all smell something I couldn't. It was never the pipes. Never mold. Never the house. It might be me. That thought almost broke me. I stopped inviting people over. Birthdays became phone calls. I quit book club. I couldn't sit in Carol's living room for two hours wondering if everyone was waiting for me to leave. You want to know the loneliest feeling in the world? Sitting in your own living room afraid to answer the door because you have no idea what hits people when they walk in. And you can't fix it because you can't smell it. And you can't ask because you're terrified of the answer. I showered twice a day. Bought the most expensive body wash I could find. Scrubbed until my skin turned red. Stayed up past 2 AM searching things I was ashamed to type. "Why do old people smell." "Can you stink and not know it." Found women my age asking the same questions. All of them doing everything right. Not one had figured it out. I closed my laptop and sat in the dark. This is my life now. A grandmother who makes her own granddaughter sick. And I can't even smell why. Then Margaret showed up. No call. No text. She just appeared at my kitchen door on a Thursday with a paper bag. Put it on the table. Sat down. Took both my hands. And said three words nobody had said to me in years. You smell, Linda. I broke down. Not from shame. From relief. Finally someone loved me enough to say what everyone else was too polite to say. And then she told me something that changed everything. Margaret worked in elder care for 30 years. Thousands of older people. And she told me something no doctor, no family member, no friend ever did. She said our bodies start making a compound as we age. Called Nonenal. It comes out through the skin. Musty. Stale. Sour. The kind of smell that gets into furniture, blankets, walls. And here's what made my jaw drop. Every person she ever cared for who had this smell was clean. Bathed. Groomed. It didn't matter. Because Nonenal is not dirt. It's not sweat. It comes from inside the skin. And regular soap, no matter how expensive, no matter how hard you scrub, cannot touch it. Every shower. Every body wash. Every time I scrubbed my arms raw. None of it could have worked. Not because I wasn't trying hard enough. Because soap was never built to fight what was actually on my skin. Margaret said her staff tried everything for 30 years. Air fresheners. Essential oils. Special detergent. Organic soap. Nothing worked. Because nothing was going after the actual cause. Until one day a nurse brought in a soap made with Japanese persimmon. Persimmon has something that grabs onto Nonenal and breaks it apart. Not covers it up. Not hides it. Breaks it down. Gone. Within days the staff saw the difference. Not air freshener fighting something underneath. Just clean. Then she opened the paper bag. Inside was a bar of Goda soap. She put it in my hands like it was medicine. "I already ordered it for you. Two more bars are coming next week. This is the one we use. Has been for years. The concentration is right, it actually works, and it's made with real Japanese persimmon. Not some watered down version. The real thing." She paused. "Just so you know, they sell out. A lot. So when you get low, don't wait." She squeezed my hands, got up, and went home. I used it that night. Didn't expect anything. First thing I noticed was my skin. Softer. Like something that had been sitting on it for years was gone. A layer I didn't know was there. But I couldn't smell it. I still can't. So I had to wait and watch the people around me. Week one. My daughter sat right next to me on the couch. Arm against arm. She hadn't done that in a very long time. Week two. Margaret came by and didn't say a word about any smell. Week three. My son hugged me at the door. His chest opened up. He breathed in. Full breath. Face near my neck. Like it was nothing. Like I was just his mom again. Week four. My granddaughter walked through the door. Dropped her backpack. Walked straight to me. Climbed into my lap. Put her little head against my chest. And fell asleep. I sat there with her hair under my chin and her breath on my collarbone and cried so hard I had to cover my mouth so I wouldn't wake her. I thought about the nights on my knees begging my house to tell me what was wrong. The scrubbing. The shame. The years alone. It was never the house. It was on my skin the whole time. And nobody told me. And I couldn't smell it. And nothing I tried was ever going to work. I can't get those years back. The Tuesdays alone. The birthdays by phone. The nights replaying what my sweet girl said about me. But she's here now. On my chest. And whatever kept her away is gone. If nobody in your life is honest enough to be your Margaret, let me be her for you right now. It's called Goda. It's the only soap I use. It's the only soap Margaret gives to the people she cares for. And it's the only thing that ever made a difference. https://goda.co/products/miracle-body-wash-3a It costs less than the fancy body wash I was already wasting money on. The one that was never going to work. Because every day you spend guessing is another Tuesday alone. Another birthday by phone. Another moment where the person you love most buries her face in her mother's sleeve because she can't stand to be near you. And you just stand there. Unable to smell a thing. Hearing all of it. Don't wait until they're out of stock again. Margaret warned me. She was right. After my husband's death, my best friend never came back. She was his, and I never asked why until I found out about the girls' night. I'm 63. Frank and I were married 38 years. We met at the plant in Toledo. I was 22. He was 26. For 36 of those years this house was full. Frank knew everybody. The plant, the church, half the street. Our table seats 6 and we used all of them. Bev was the one who was mine. Coffee at the diner on Reynolds, every other Tuesday, 31 years. Then Frank got sick. It took 14 months, and they stopped coming while he was still alive. There were over 200 people at the funeral. The last coffee was 2 weeks after it. Nobody put another one in the calendar. In April I did. Bev answered on the second ring, so pleased to hear from me. She is always so pleased to hear from me. That is not a complaint. "I was thinking we could get a coffee," I said. There was about half a second there. "Oh honey. Yes. Let me look at the week." Then she kept going, because Bev cannot leave a gap alone. "It's just that Wednesday's taken now. Since March. I didn't want to bother you with it, you've got so much on, and honestly you're doing so well, I say it to everybody, I don't know how you do it." "Taken." "The girls' night," she said. "Me and Dot and Marilyn and Ellen. You know how it is." I said that sounded lovely. I asked about her knee. She told me about her knee. I hung up and stood in the kitchen with the phone in my hand. It did not take me long. They came for Frank. That is the answer I have had for 2 years and it is a good one. He knew everybody. He brought them home. When he went, they went. Bev with them, apparently, and she was the one I thought was mine. It does not cover a Wednesday with 4 women at it. I want to be clear that nobody did anything to me. Nobody was unkind. Every person in this story would be horrified to read it. And I did ask. That is the part I would want you to know about me. For a year and a half I asked. I asked Bev for a coffee like we always did. I asked Dot about the church sale. I asked Marilyn if she wanted to go to the garden center when it warmed up. Everybody said yes. Nobody said when. And every one of them finished with the same sentence, so often that I stopped hearing it as words. If you need anything, let me know. Nobody has ever needed anything from me. They need me to be fine, and I am very good at being fine. So somewhere in the second year I stopped asking. A yes with no date on it is worse than a no. I answer "I'm fine" and then I ask a question back. Every single time. It works every single time. Nobody has ever pushed past it. I don't suggest things, so nobody has to find a way to say no, and I am never the one who makes the number wrong. The 2 chairs on the end of the table stopped getting pulled out. I could not tell you which week that started. I bought a coat in a color Frank would have whistled at. It is in the closet with the tag still on it. None of that was a decision. Every bit of it was reasonable on the day. Put together it is 2 years of making myself easy to not invite. The one place I still go on my own is church, because nobody has to be asked to church. There is a woman there called Ruth. She is 64, and she buried her husband a year before I buried mine. After the service people stand around her in the parking lot until she tells them she is going home. She always smells of citrus. Like somebody had been peeling oranges in the room before you got there. At the end of June I was in the Kroger on Wexford, in the aisle with the paper goods, and I heard Bev on the other side of the shelf. She was talking to somebody. I knew the voice before I knew the words. "...Frank. Two years in September." I could not hear what the other one said. "Oh, it hit her hard. Harder than she lets on. She's amazing, honestly, she doesn't need any of us." Then her voice came down, the way it does when she is being kind about somebody. "Between you and me, I don't think she's been taking care of herself since. You can tell." I stood there with a package of paper napkins in my hand. She was not being cruel. Somebody had asked after me, and she was worried, and she was telling it the way she had it. I just did not want her to come round the end of that shelf and find me standing there. So I put the basket down on the floor where I was, and I walked out to the car, and I drove home without the shopping. I got as far as the kitchen with my coat still on. Then I sat down on the floor with my back against the dishwasher and cried the way you can when there has been nobody in the house for 2 years. I do take care of myself. I get up, I get dressed, I do my hair, and there has been nobody to do it for since the September before last. But you cannot say that to a shelf. People tell me I'll meet somebody. They mean it kindly and I never know what to do with my face when they say it. I am not looking for a husband. I had one for 38 years and I nursed him at home for the last 14 of them. I am not washing and ironing and cooking for another one. He was mine. You don't replace that. It was never a man I was short of. What I was short of was somebody at that table. The next morning was Sunday, so I went to church. I sat where I sit. Second row from the back, on the left, on the end. Ruth came in late and sat down next to me. She has never sat next to me. There were 30 empty seats in that church and she came the whole way down the side aisle to the end of my row. She did not say anything about it. She found my place in the book for me, because I had lost it. Afterwards, on the steps, she said, "Have you eaten?" "I'm fine." She kept looking at me. "That is not what I asked you." Nobody has done that in 2 years. So we went to the place across from the lot and she bought me eggs and let me say nothing for a good long while, which I have decided is a skill. And then I asked her the thing I have never once asked her. "Ruth. You always smell lovely. What is that." She laughed at me. "That took you long enough." Then she put her cup down. "Somebody told me I had let myself go. About a year after Ed. My own sister told me that." "That is a cruel thing to say." "It was. And she was wrong, and it took me 6 months to find out how wrong." She looked at me. "Do you cook with garlic?" "What?" "Do you cook with garlic." "Every week." "Wash your hands after. Hot water, plenty of soap. Then smell them." "They still smell." "They do," she said. "The hands are clean and the garlic is still there. It's a molecule. There is nothing on it for soap to get hold of, so it sits." "Past a certain age the skin starts making one of its own. Nonenal. Same problem exactly." "Nonenal." "Ordinary soap goes straight over the top of it." "Since when." "It varies. Some at 45, some at 70. Nobody tells you it's coming, it just turns up, the way the gray does." She stirred what was left of her coffee. "I was 61. 40 years a district nurse, and I did not know that about my own body." "So nothing was neglected." "Nothing was neglected," she said. "The skin changed. It changes for every woman in that church." I sat there and heard Bev's voice again, through a shelf of paper napkins. She had not been wrong about what she could see. She had been wrong about what it was. Then she picked up her bag, and I heard myself ask her what she uses. She had it with her. I do not believe that was an accident. Small, in tissue paper, orange the way a persimmon is orange. "It's a soap. Made out of persimmon. The tannins take the stuff apart instead of laying something over the top of it." She put it in my hand and closed my fingers around it. "That's the one I use. It's called Goda. I have used it since the year my sister said that to me." "Ruth." "I keep a spare, because they only make it when the fruit comes in. Take that one, I'll get another." "Why did you have this in your bag." "Because I have been waiting 2 years for you to ask me," she said. "I was not going to offer it." I know exactly how that sounded on the drive home. It is a bar of soap. I nursed a man for 14 months and buried him, and here I was being handed a bar of soap by a woman who had bought me eggs. I used it that night anyway. There was nothing to lose except a shower I was taking regardless. The first week I could not have told you anything except that the bathroom smelled nice. The second week I caught it on the inside of my own wrist in the middle of the afternoon. I stood in the kitchen holding my own arm like a fool. Citrus. Still there at 3 in the afternoon. The third week I took the coat out of the closet and cut the tag off. Nell is the reason I go to Claire's on Sunday afternoons. For about a year she has been coming in for the hug and off across the room before you have your arms up. The last Sunday in July she climbed into my lap during the ball game and stayed there. The whole 3rd inning. Her head under my chin, doing the thing she does with my necklace. Then she said, "You smell like the orange kind." Claire was 4 feet away looking at her phone. Nobody in that room noticed that anything had happened. The Sunday after that a woman I have never spoken to stopped me between the pews. "I'm sorry, I have to ask. What is that." "It's a soap," I said. "It's called Goda." "It's citrus." "Persimmon," I said. "That's all it is." She wrote it on the back of her hand. She did not know one thing about me. She had never met Frank. Dot caught me outside the hardware store that week. Dot has said about 4 sentences to me in 2 years and 3 were about her hip. She stood closer than she needed to. "You look well," she said. "You look like yourself." She did not say I looked better. She said I looked like myself. And Dot is the one who tells Bev everything. Bev called on a Tuesday in August. She did not apologize and she did not explain, and I never asked her to. She said, "Would you have us Wednesday? At yours. Dot's boiler is out and Marilyn's got the grandchildren." Which is not the reason, and we both know it, and neither of us said so. I said yes before she got to the end of it. "There'll be 5 of us," she said. 5. On the Tuesday night I pulled out both chairs on the end of the table. Then I put one back. Then I sat and looked at the table for a while. They came at 7. The last car went at 20 past 11. I have not had 5 people in this house since he died, and the thing I keep coming back to is not that they came. It's that at half past 10 I didn't start collecting up the glasses. Marilyn told me on the step that I am amazing and she doesn't know how I do it. I said thank you. Then I asked her if she wanted a coffee on Tuesday. Not sometime. Tuesday. We are going Tuesday. Ruth is coming too, because I asked her on Sunday, and she said yes, and then she said what time. Ruth told me after church that Goda is back on the website. Marilyn ordered hers. Dot ordered 2. The girls' night is at my house again the week after next. Nell has already asked whether I'll still be the orange kind at Christmas. I told her yes. If everybody says yes and nobody ever says when. If they all finish with if you need anything, let me know. If somebody who loves you thinks you have let yourself go, and you have not. You don't need anybody to make a fuss of you. You need to know the one thing nobody was ever going to tell you. Then you get to stop being easy to not invite. Get the soap. Take the shower. Ask somebody to something. They only harvest the persimmon once a year. This batch is nearly gone. If you wait, you wait a long time. The table seats 6. It always seated 6. Your move.

Where the ad sends people

goda.co

Once a Year. This Batch Is Almost Gone

Smooths bumpy, textured skin on arms, legs & thighs Fades pigmentation, dark spots & uneven tone Smells like your favourite $300 designer scent