When I was a child I remember that my dad ALWAYS had these horrible migraines. He would work all day and come home with his eyes barely open and he would go right to bed. He would have to lay in a room where it was pitch black because any sort of light would make his migraine worse. My dad never is sick or at least acts like he is ever sick or in pain so when this happened we knew they were bad. My mom would sometimes help him by rubbing the tops of his eyelids because he said it would help relieve any sort of pressure that he had. My sisters and I would always feel so bad and we were always so lucky that we never had to go through that.

Fast forward to my junior year of college. My dad is still getting these migraines, and now so am I. I was put on medication for other things that I was going through at the time and that is when they started getting really bad. I was on three different types of medication that I had to take daily and at the end of every night around 6 p.m. I would get these piercing migraines right in the front of my head above my eyelids. I also wear glasses and have poor vision so I thought that my prescription was just up to date as well and that could've been causing the migraines. So, I went to the eye doctor and I got new glasses and the headaches still were there every night.

With the medicine, from the beginning, I thought that it had something to do with it. All of the medication I was taking was probably not good for my body and it could have been causing these. I slowly got off of 2/3 medications and my migraines went down but they still stayed. They were bearable but still noticeable. I remember one night I came home and I was so nauseous and my head was pounding so bad that I almost threw up. After that, I went to the doctor and they told me that my only solution was to go on a medication for migraines for the rest of my life or until they calmed down. I was very skeptical on whether I should do this or not because I was still taking one of my daily medications still and I did not want to combine it with another one to only make my headaches worse.

I turned the medication down, and I went home to think about what else I could do. During this time my mother had discovered essential oils and she was really big into matching certain scents with certain things that it could help. For example, my sisters and I all have anxiety and during a panic attack, my mom would put the lavender essential oils on our wrists. It worked very well and we loved it! My mom texted me one day and said that my dad had a migraine and that she put some oils on him and the headache went away within a few minutes. When I got home, I had a migraine of course, and she pulled out her peppermint essential oils and she put it on my wrists, the back of my ears, and under my nose and within 10 minutes my migraine had become manageable. Eventually, it all went away when before the only way to get rid of my migraine was to fall asleep.

After discovering essential oils, I put the peppermint on me every time I feel a migraine coming on or if I have one. It is so much healthier than taking medicine every night and it is cheaper too! Thank god my mom found this out because I was not looking forward to taking a migraine medication for the rest of my life. Love you, mom!