family – Holistic Living

A Simple Wish For You This Christmas

What is Christmas? It is tenderness for the past, courage for the present, hope for the future. It is a fervent wish that every cup may overflow with blessings rich and eternal, and that every path may lead to peace.Agnes M Pharo For as long as I can remember, Christmas has been a time of beautiful sights, sounds, smells, a time that feels vibrant yet peaceful. My parents never seemed to turn themselves inside out in order to cultivate the sense of magic I felt, yet it was there all the same. It was in the adventure of walking back into the trees on our farm to find our Christmas tree - always more Charlie Brown than full and spectacular. My father used this as an opportunity to care for…

by Mackenzie No Comments

Distracted or Tuned In?

be the change, community, family, live with intention

On a scale of 1 - 10, how distracted do you feel? Have you given any thought to how you spend your time? Like…really thought about it? Are you going about your minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years consciously? Intentionally? Or are you just…going with the flow of the life we end up living, prescribed by expectation and/or default? It’s worth spending a few minutes really reflecting on where your time actually goes. I feel like time is flying faster than I really want it to. My kid is growing so fast. It’s happening right before my eyes, + the moments are so fleeting it’s hard to capture them fully. I try to be present, mindful, aware, savour it all, + yet the clock tick tick ticks on…and now they’re…

by Mackenzie No Comments

THIS TIME IN WHICH WE FIND OURSELVES

be the change, community, family, grow heal love, home, keep it simple, live with intention

Parents. We're stressed about the choices we have to make. Back to school? Stay at home? Have to work? Tough choices. But let me try to relieve one part of this burden from your shoulders. Your children's future will not be messed up because of this year or two of un"normal" school. I say this as a parent of a kiddo going into grade 2, having registered him to return to class, watching local Covid numbers daily to see how they're trending, + also putting plans in to place to home school while also working from home. I say this with the perspective of having experienced the public school system, home schooling, starting at new schools three or four times, including starting at a new high school for my last…

by Mackenzie 1 Comment

ALL ABOUT FOOD

be the change, community, environment, family, home

Guys, this one is a long one. I'd grab a cup of something. Give yourself about an hour. + give it a start. You might want to come back to it. Or just browse through looking for something useful specifically for you. This isn't about food like you might think it's going to be about food...I'm not going to be talking about anything related to diet. Rather, I'm going to talk about how our family has been doing food + food planning for the past bunch of years, + where we're going to be headed in the next few. I'll dig more into this 'why' in the next section, but in brief there's my holistic view of how our relationship with the growing, production, + processing of what we consume…

by Mackenzie No Comments

YOUR BEST DAY STARTS WITH YOUR BEST SLEEP

essential oils, family, live with intention

Sleep! So important! Stay tuned below for a wealth of info on all the Ws of sleep. + most importantly, the 'How' of getting enough good quality sleep. When Aaro was a baby we joined a mom+baby group. They hosted a sleep expert one week + it changed the way I thought about sleep, not just for my babe, but for me as well. There's so much necessary benefit we gain when we sleep, but we generally put sleep last on our priority list because there are so many seeming priorities during the day. + sometimes we just need some time + space to mindlessly scroll on social media. For me that alllllways happens at night. Usually right before I get ready for bed. It's a bad habit, because at…

by Mackenzie No Comments

DOING SUMMER SIMPLY

family, keep it simple, live with intention

Summer. A time to focus on the family. Although, if we're being honest...all year long is the time to focus on the family.Yet. Summer has a special place in our hearts - we've all anticipated the freedom of those long summer days, sprinklers + splash pads, watermelon + popsicles, picnics + barbeques, camping + late nights...Summer can be insanely wonderful + create all sorts of the best memories. + it can also be stressful, chaotic, + way too busy. + often, a little lot of both. get your simple summer ebook here Over the years, I've learned how to do summer really simply. + mostly due to the fact that we've had my step-daughter come to stay with us for longer stretches of time. Now that she's older, + things…

by Mackenzie No Comments

A SIMPLE GIFT

family

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN 2016 ON focusonsimple.co [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-MBfn8XjIU&autoplay=1] Truth be told, I've already had my Mother's Day gift. My beautiful moment, holding my child, forehead to forehead, rocking back + forth to a beautiful song. A song typically meant as a romantic love song, but the gist being you need to love like you might not get the chance to in any given future moment. So the song was playing + my precious, gorgeous, fine curly headed child snuggled in my arms. + I'd dip him + his golden curls would fall upside down. + he'd laugh + giggle. + I'd pull him up + hold him tight + he'd say 'again'. So I would. Again + again. Because one day I won't be able to. There are moms who…

by Mackenzie 2 Comments

3 LIFE GOALS WORTH WORKING ON

family, grow heal love, keep it simple

A bit o' truth from this little journey of ours. I've discussed before about some of the challenges our family has dealt with over the past year (plus). There has been no 180degree turn. but I'm climbing steadily to a place of peace, positivity, acceptance, growth. This is how it's happened : No light bulb, no switch flip, no lightning bolt of revelation. A slow, steady, uncomfortable, sometimes unbearable, stumbling crawl in a progressively upwards direction. There have been times that have seemed light + beautiful. + times when I've wanted to just scream, give up, + slide back down to start again. Two steps forward, one step back, repeat, sometimes three steps forward, no steps back. It's a big learning curve for me. Learning to heal, learning to grow together,…

by Mackenzie No Comments

GRIEF + GRATITUDE

family, grow heal love

I was pregnant. Then, I had a miscarriage. Being pregnant was miraculous, given that we had done everything possible to NOT to be pregnant. I had two glorious days of familiar exhaustion + nausea, + the settling of a new presence fitting in with me. + then nothing. Absence. Emptiness. A return to feeling ‘normal’. On one hand, + I'm not sure why, I expected a miscarriage to happen. On the other, I really wanted a second child + happily continued to plan for a babe + start my countdown to the end of the first trimester. When it would be 'safe' to openly celebrate this pregnancy. Life continues. Until it doesn’t. The first signs of blood were, not necessarily a surprise, but heart wrenching all the same. My refrain; “No... No...…

by Mackenzie No Comments

VALUING FAMILY

family, live with intention

ORIGINALLY POSTED IN 2012 ON focusonsimple.co I wouldn't class myself as a feminist, per se. However. There are some accepted imbalances that really piss me off. One of them, as previously posted, is the expectation that women give up their own name to take on their husband's. There is no logic for this choice at this point in history. really, there's none. Another is how difficult it is for women to become really + truly successful in the workplace + in their careers. A friend sent me a link to an interesting article, on why women can't have it all. It made so much sense to me, + validated a lot of what I feel is wrong with workplace culture + culture in general, + with society's placement of value on workplace vs. home +…

Category: family