The Passing of the Torch
Posted on July 10 2025
Hi! I'm Chandra, Claudia’s daughter. My mother has been lovingly creating products that heal your hands, feet, paws, lips, noses, and all your other dry bits for over 20 years. Heal My Hands has been a labor of love for her. She has created something that genuinely helps people, and when she attends an event and speaks to you face-to-face, you can see and feel that.
She is a problem solver; she had a pain point – her hands were so dry that she was bleeding on her knitting. So she took to the kitchen, did some research, then returned to the kitchen, followed by more research, and so on. You see where I'm going with this, right? She was determined to make something that worked and that was natural. And she did.
While she was doing all this hard work, I was doing my own thing, working, raising kids, and pets. I occasionally chimed in with a creative suggestion or two, but I must admit that I did not participate in making the product or managing the business. I accepted my freebies happily and have the baby-soft skin to prove it. I used our booth at the NYS Sheep & Wool Festival in Rhinebeck to store my purchases and rest my sore feet before heading out again for more shopping.
When my mom decided she was ready to step back and move on to other things, like writing books, my daughter and I offered to take this on. I honestly didn’t have to think too hard. My mom and Heal My Hands were linked for almost half of my life. She built this fantastic thing, and put so much of herself into these products that I couldn’t let her shut it down.
As I worked my Monday-Friday 9-5 job and while trying to start my own Sustainable Garden Design business, I didn’t put a ton of thought into what was involved in taking on Heal My Hands as well.
For the last three months, I've been juggling some pretty heavy things, and I've decided to ditch the 9-to-5, cross my fingers, and give Heal My Hands all I’ve got (I get my determination from my mom). While I have many exciting ideas running through my head, don’t worry. We will continue to highlight our amazing original products and introduce a few new items that align with our mission and goals, meeting both my mom’s standards and yours.
We are working diligently on a couple of new scents, introducing some tinted lip balms, and developing more exciting new products. Along with those new products, we will be redesigning our labels and website. However, rest assured that the quality of what is under those new labels will remain the highest quality skin savers that my mother could create.
So, don’t fret, I won’t let her or any of you down. (Plus, she is still sharing her wit and wisdom, and we still make the product at her house.)
