Hello to my beautiful LeCil tribe. Sending you so much love and appreciation!

As we close out our 4th year in business (so blessed), I feel I’m finally ready to share with you the rest of the story. Well… not exactly all of it… but I hinted there was more last time, so here it is.

Parenthood and a Challenging Journey

I already told you that motherhood hit me like a ton of bricks. To add to the difficulty, my first child was born with a significant developmental delay. (For their privacy, I’m not going into detail and am only sharing what they were happy to give me permission to share.)

The major symptoms were severe lack of speech and language and severe anxiety. It was a horrible spiral of them both; feeding each other with the lack of speech causing worse anxiety and the anxiety making frustration and inability to participate in speech therapy etc. exponentially worse.

My child was miserable every day (and therefore, so was I). They would scream and sob all day long, pulled their hair out in clumps creating bald patches so bad we had to shave their head, and would hit themselves repeatedly in the face when they could not convey what they wanted or needed. There is no pain worse than seeing your child suffer and not being able to ‘fix it.’ It was truly torture.

A Voice for the Voiceless 

Eventually, we worked out a mummy-baby language of our own using what few speech sounds and words my child was capable of. I was literally the only one who could understand them and translate for them. Another reason that I was forced to become that extra limb—not really an individual myself.

I often think my whole existence came into being to be the mother of that child. Think about it, I’m a vet. I spend all my days and training learning how to read my patients who can’t speak and tell me what’s wrong. I’m acutely attuned to subtle expressions and body language.

A voice for the voiceless.

And now I’d become the voice for my child.

The Lightbulb Moment

We did all the right things, followed the instructions of our GP and developmental pediatrician, and did the hospital visits and all the tests. Nothing really helped and we had no definitive answers. 

But then one month we had a revelation.

My child was not a good eater, and he had had diarrhea every day of his life. The doctors were not concerned, but I was worried about nutritional deficiencies, so I started him on a kids' multi. After a while, I noticed that on the days I gave it to him, he seemed a touch calmer, and his communication was a touch better. What is this? What is happening inside my child? It was subtle, but like I said, subtle symptoms and changes are what I’m trained and honed to notice.

I mentioned it to my doctors, and it was dismissed as bias. Which is certainly possible. But I had nothing to lose and everything to gain, so I decided to investigate a little further.

After all, what am I if not a scientist?

I stopped the multivitamin and started to give my child a different individual vitamin that was included in the multi each week and watched for the response I had seen in the past. Low and behold, I was able to isolate a particular vitamin that seemed to provide him some level of relief.

Eventually, we found one more. The improvements in his condition were amazing on these vitamins. I will never forget the day my nearly 4-year-old non-verbal child turned to me out of the blue and said, ‘I love you’… it’s forever burned into my heart.

Down the Rabbit Hole 

But the problem was none of the doctors I saw had seen anything like this, and unless you lived with us and were tuned into the subtle differences, it was hard to prove. But I knew better. There was something here. I went diving into the medical literature. The only time to study was at night when they slept. I would be up until the wee hours of the night diving deeper and deeper into the physiology and pathology of many health conditions trying to elucidate what I was seeing.

One particular expert said to me, ‘You are right, and we are starting to uncover it, but there will be no answers and certainly no treatment for at least 20 years.’ That was extremely disheartening.

Hope at Last

Then, thank goodness, I happened upon a group of pediatric neurologists overseas who were on the same line of thinking that I was. They had also seen cases like my child and were treating them with the vitamins I was, albeit at higher doses and supported by other treatments that I had not uncovered yet.

Guided by them, we tweaked my child’s treatment plan and, by the grace of God, scary amounts of money (sending us nearly bankrupt), hard work, and the incredible patience, bravery, and can-do attitude of my child, I am so beyond happy to report that they are considered clinically completely recovered and is now entering year 6 of primary school a happy and successful child in all ways.

During this, we had a beautiful second child, also challenged by the same condition. In their case, we caught it much earlier and were able to avoid a lot of distress and heartbreak.

And now..we Rest...but not for long!

I shudder to think how different our lives would look today if we had not discovered what we did. And further, I shudder to think how many children out there might be suffering unduly because research and clinical trials are so painfully slow. It can take decades for new medical discoveries to get to the point of actually helping our children. And that’s just not ok.

I debated a lot on what I should do about it. It would be easy to say my kids are ok now and just get on with life but my conscious and my soul could not stomach that. Initially, I thought I could make the most impact by leaving the veterinary industry, going back to Uni and studying human medicine. But the impost on my family of having their mother in such a high demand job would have let them down, so just as I was about to start, I pulled out.

Once a door closes as window opens as they say and around the same time, I was contacted by a colleague about a job opportunity working in human medical research! My chance to contribute to the body of knowledge without having to change careers! And that’s what I do to this day, helping animals and people alike and facilitating the betterment of our global medical knowledge.

Turning Pain Into Purpose - a Business with a Mission is Born 

BUT.. it still didn’t feel like enough.. I wanted to do more.. and faster. Initially my goal was to establish a charity focussed on fast tracking clinical trials of treatments proven to help children with metabolic neurodevelopmental disorders. As you would imagine, this is a huge undertaking and will take some time. In the meantime, one of the developmental paediatricians I mentioned earlier felt the same way. Frustrated by the slowness of progress and wanting to help the beautiful children in front of him, he started a non-profit focussed on advancing our understanding of complex neurodevelopmental conditions and building a process that moves promising ideas from basic research to clinical products that improve lives.

PERFECT…. But how can I help?.... I need to fund it somehow…how to raise money for a charity and help people everywhere feel good at the same time? hmmmmmm

And with that, inspired by my little glow up experience that I explained in part 1, LeCil was born.

Empowering confidence and self-expression through premium, accessible beauty solutions, while giving back to create a brighter, healthier future for all..  

Our Butterfly Moment

Those who have founded businesses know they take a lot of work and reinvestment to grow. We have put in the hard yards over the years to grow LeCil to what it is today and we are closer than ever to our goals. 2024 was a year of transformation. Much like my husk to happy reinvention LeCil has had its own cocoon to butterfly moment.  We have put literally everything we have into our beloved brand to take it to the next level. First and foremost: value and premium quality for you my beautiful tribe! Then branding, packaging, PR, marketing, you name it!

We have gambled big on our dream, and we hope that 2025 will be the year we can start truly giving back and feeding our passion by charitable donations to the non-profit (and others as we find them) to make this world a happier and healthier place in the name of our precious children. We can't wait for the day we can announce that we have made our first donation!! It won't be long now.

Thank you for reading this far, I appreciate you and wish you so many good things.

In a world that is confusing and conflicted, ‘Be your own muse,’ my gorgeous ones, and do what makes your soul feel good.

Much love,
Mel

A Note to You

I will not ever give names, medical advice, or details, so please don’t ask. I 100% support and respect the medical community and suggest that you do too. The best way to keep our loved ones safe is to trust our medical professionals. So please don’t read anything different to that in our story. At no point did we deviate from what is safe and medically recommended.

If you have any concerns or queries about yourself or your family members, please talk to your doctor.