To read the blog: https://www.hivewellbeing.ca/post/welcome-gracie-juniper

Read the blog, https://www.hivewellbeing.ca/post/what-matters-most

I think we’re being called to radically reshape what we’ve inherited

Are we up to the challenge?

Read the blog here, https://www.hivewellbeing.ca/post/the-breakdown

Read the blog; https://www.hivewellbeing.ca/post/home-part-1

Read the blog: https://www.hivewellbeing.ca/post/re-treat

I focus on the bright spots.

Read the blog, https://www.hivewellbeing.ca/post/bright-spots

Read the blog: https://www.hivewellbeing.ca/post/pleasure-joy-fun

Read the blog, https://www.hivewellbeing.ca/post/heart-magic

It’s Good Friday 2020…

Recording this piece dropped me right back into this moment - watching as my kids attempt to ‘socially distance’ themselves from their peers, leaving me unsettled and angry.

Knowing I’d be met with outrage, I started to share my concerns about what this Weird Time was about to herald for us all, and I was unfriended over and over - but I was also met with a lot of compassion and understanding. Spoiler alert: I called a lot of what unfolded over the next two years.

Ready for this?

Original blog found here: https://www.hivewellbeing.ca/post/is-it-the-right-thing

Check out the blog: https://www.hivewellbeing.ca/post/the-wisdom-of-now

Read the original blog, here: https://www.hivewellbeing.ca/post/what-s-missing

Recalling my backpacking years in Australia and relating it to the angst of just hanging in there during this Weird Time. So much outside of my control, how do I cope when all I want to know is what’s next??

Read the original blog: https://www.hivewellbeing.ca/post/so-what-s-next

Check out the blog: https://www.hivewellbeing.ca/post/only-way-out

You wake up feeling well rested. You see the sun shining around the cracks of your curtain in the bedroom and know in your bones it will be a warm day. Rising out of bed, your body feeling capable and strong, you move with ease to the kitchen.

Here we explore the themes of being given the gift of time, can you create it to be the ideal version for you?

Read the original blog: https://www.hivewellbeing.ca/post/a-life-that-is-good

Read the original blog: https://www.hivewellbeing.ca/post/all-at-once

See the original blog: https://www.hivewellbeing.ca/post/don-t-censor-joy

My original blog: https://www.hivewellbeing.ca/post/microfocusing-on-the-moment

Find the blog here: https://www.hivewellbeing.ca/post/claiming-who-you-are

A small recap, as a family of 4 plus one on the way, of our time spent on our three month RV tour through the US and western Canada in 2019.

Original blog post: https://www.hivewellbeing.ca/post/south-facing-adventure-1

Here I talk about my life as a Canadian trudging through winter and wondering what it would take to truly commit to a snowbird lifestyle.

Original blog post: https://www.hivewellbeing.ca/post/the-season-of-winter-1

We’ve extended our time here at the river by another month which feels both like grace and frustration, because I just want to get on with it now. It being when I find my dream property and create my sanctuary, that old story. A story that is still being written in my heart but not yet in the 3D world. But this wasn’t actually meant to be about all that, this was meant to be about perception.

Emmy’s Substack is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber!

The forest is closing in around us, I forgot just how lush and thick the woods were when we first moved here in late summer. We’ve gotten used to seeing our neighbours houses towering high up above us on the steep hilltop. Now the oaks and maples are circling in, their unfurled leaves creating a green hug with us in the centre. The lilacs are in full bloom, the gardens have been a delightful surprise, not knowing that we would be treated with daffodils, irises, tulips. We have seven thick and tall peony bushes that are just going to burst into the most fragrant lavish blossoms.

The river is filling in too, drained for the winter and now being replenished. The geese have been here all along and now loons have joined, their mournful call always beckons me to stop and listen, breath held. The birds here are as plentiful as the gardens, I couldn’t begin to name them all but feel like I’m in a bird-call soundtrack at all times and love it.

I sit outside with the dogs in the early morning, they’re tethered as they must be and they have a good distance they can roam but they want most to be free. They escape frequently, springing each other off their collars or unlatching the door of the sunporch where they sleep in the midday heat (seriously they can do these things) and it’s aggravating but I can’t blame them. I too wish for them to run around like the wild animals they are, if only they wouldn’t run up to the road and bark at every passerby, circling people while mowing their lawns, refusing to come back when called.

I too want to bust out of here and feel free, I too sense this impending feeling of constriction, but in both cases, the dogs and mine, the pressure comes from the same person. Me.

I’m tethering them up or holding their leashes, and I sense I’m restricting myself in the same way.

I recognize that I am the only person standing in my way at any given time. I am the only person dictating how things should be and not just allowing them to be as they are. I am the only person checking realtor.ca a dozen times a day even though I couldn’t buy anything I found, a twisted kind of torture. Where it both plucks at my heartstrings and ripples waves of sadness and failure through me. I am the one deciding that what is isn’t enough and that there must be something more laying just outside my periphery.

I feel divided about this, as I do most things; on one hand it feels like keeping hopes and dreams alive, always striving for that next thing that will make life feel how I always imagined it would. And on the other it feels like keeping myself in a vice of my own making because I can’t make what I want to happen, happen. If living life is on the other side of this time, then I’ve chosen for this time to be…surviving? Waiting?

I look at all the abundance nature effortlessly provides for me and curse my incessant need for more. All I want is what I’ve wanted since I let it go years ago, something of my own.

My own home, my own work, my own rhythm. My own.

I sense my drama as I sigh, deciding that this is my cross to bear. It’s my burden to carry. Burden, we’re all carrying one. And I also sense that we’re all feeling the magnitude of these burdens more these days than ever and I suspect that’s because collectively we all know the same thing.

We’re operating in a life that doesn’t support the vibrancy of life itself. We simply can’t keep doing life as we have been but what does that mean?

Yes I would love to talk about the 3D matrix and the codes of new earth that have been planted within us. I might lose some people here but it also feels like the level in which I need to speak to things on.

Because I do believe that we all share the inner wisdom that tells us that these old paradigms, this polarized, divided, us vs them, earth-pillaging, life-destroying, head down, deferring to a ‘higher authority’, way we’ve all lived for centuries ain’t cuttin’ it anymore.

And we likely agree on that and then disagree on solutions.

For me, to take the macro of what the collective and the world as a whole is feeling, and bring it to the micro level of my small and simple life, I look at where I’m playing out those destructive themes on myself.

I’ve banged my head against the wall, trying to unravel my own disillusionment, my own behaviours, patterns and beliefs to try to fix myself and stop participating in my own misery. I’ve journaled and cried and implored the Gods to help me heal these wounds, to understand myself better, to get to the other side of whatever this place is that I find myself in now.

But lately, I’ve been thinking a lot more about my own perception and how you can waste a whole lifetime in the trenches of introspective admonishment, but you can’t berate yourself into loving yourself. You can’t hate yourself and your choices into loving what is.

This calls for radical acceptance and surrender.

Also not new concepts to me, but here I am finding a different depth to them. The sweetness that accepting myself, my flaws, my life choices and mistakes, brings me. The grace that is found when I lay down my fight and surrender to life, in the here and now.

That’s presence.

I’ll use this moment to remind you that this moment is the only one you exist in. Oh man, let’s not get into quantum leaping and timeline hopping right now because right now, right now…I just want to be here.

Here in my healthy and whole body. Here thinking of a yummy after school treat for my kids. Here in the middle of the night when someone is needing me for their itchy bug bites or bloody noses. Here where my girlfriends and I gather and laugh until we almost pee our pants. Here where I stretch a little further in yoga and surprise myself at my strength. Here in the embrace of my husband who I still want to see at the end of the day after twenty six years. Here in the intense heat of a spring that suddenly burst upon us. Here in the sunshine where I listen to the waves, the birds, the breeze ruffle the tree leaves, I watch Olive’s side rise and fall as she pants in the sun. Here where I get to wonder what other homes I’ll live in, what other businesses I’ll create, what other adventures I’ll have.

Here.

I do want a home, I do want to know where our next paycheque will come from, I do want to pay our kids tuition up front and buy new wardrobes and sign everyone up for soccer and singing lessons and summer camps. I do want to express myself creatively and feel like I am walking the pathway to living the life of my dreams.

But can the peace of the very now moment overshadow the dark void of the uncertainty and wanting? That’s what I’m curious about now.

Just a year ago one of my very best friends slipped away after a very quick and intense illness. I think of her everyday. I think of her steadfastness, her solidness, her groundedness. Her long and sure hugs. That she always had everything I needed to borrow. She wasn’t these things in a ‘new age’ way, she just was herself, fully. And her life was small in that she kept her circle of friends and family tight, she was a homemaker and volunteer at her kids school, active in sports and clubs. But she had this massive impact that I wonder if she had any sense of. She is my beacon constantly, to remind myself that what is right here before me is the best of life, always. And that nothing is guaranteed and I sure as shit don't want to come to the end of it all and go, “ohhh so that was what this was all about”.

I don’t want to miss it. I don’t want to resist it. I don’t want to fight it. I want to pull myself back up from the rubble, look around my current accommodations, brush off my hands, fix a smile on my face and start packing up the boxes with zeal. I don’t know where I go next, I don’t know how the story unfolds but the story is unfolding, these are the pages, the chapters, this is the novel. This is where I belong. All happening now. And it doesn’t get better than this.

Know someone who would this would resonate with? It’s a free post, please share it!

I’m exploring themes like woman and motherhood, business ownership, holistic wellness, how life changed since 2020 (ahem!), and sharing my experience being a semi-nomadic mother of three and homemaker - trying to reconcile my deep desire for travel and adventure AND the sanctuary of home.

On one hand, life is so intense, challenging and tough to navigate. On the other, it’s full of miracles, joy and wonder.

Thanks for being here!

Read the blog: https://emmypickering.substack.com/p/the-greening

I was also unsure how to approach the new year, what would 2024 hold? I knew what it wouldn’t hold, the dreamy farmhouse property we offered on in December. When I got the official news on the afternoon of the Winter Solstice I actually collapsed to the floor. It was fully dramatic and completely self-indulgent. I wailed and sobbed and yelled out loud, I scared my dogs. I worked through it enough that when Steve and the girls got home from school I was collected.

The girls also cried when we told them, that was probably the most heartbreaking of all. We have looked at many properties over the last few years, we never got so invested before. This one felt like it was something that belonged to us and it was snatched away.

It was dismal, I let myself wallow in the sadness of letting go of that house, and I also started to get curious. Maybe there’s a different life for me than I anticipated? If everything is happening in my favour, as my positive nature wants me to believe, then what could this all mean for me? “It’s this or something better” my friend Laura sagely reminded me.

And as this farmhouse dream was slipping out of my hands, making me question all I had desired, the property we were buying from our family friend was also troublesome. Not only was the house still not vacated well into January, far past the cut off we had agreed upon, there was false information given which was halting the legal transaction of the house.

Emmy’s Substack is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

By the middle of January, Steve was going through the phases of grief. You know these? The disbelief, the trying to change course, affect a different outcome, and a deep seething anger. It’s not really my story to share, I was only a witness to what this process was like for Steve but it felt dark and consuming and binding. It definitely washed into our family lives and there was one week in particular where I had had enough.

Enough of not getting what I wanted, enough of showing up willing, brimming with eager creative ideas and hope, and not having the desired outcome. I was frustrated that we had risked even more to try to change the path we were on and were still coming up empty handed. This wasn’t one of those stories where the righteous prevailed and their dreams materialized, it was one where there was no peace, no joy, no reward.

That’s one perspective. If you know me you know that I’m always going to get to the part where I flip the script and choose a different lens to see a situation through. I’m just not there quite yet.

The end of January brought resolution, just in very different terms than we had anticipated. The property had now changed hands and was vacated but the deception, or miscommunication, meant that it wasn’t holding the equity we were led to believe it had. This meant that the neat row of dominoes we had lined up weren’t going to fall, the house wasn’t the trigger we thought it was.

February came with some big decisions. Not being able to free up funds meant not being able to further invest in the property developments Steve had worked on for six months. It meant having spent tens of thousands of dollars on plans and infrastructure and not having a way to keep going. It meant having a duplex worth of windows and exteriors doors and nowhere to utilize them. It meant having incurred loans and not knowing how to pay them.

The property we had just bought was a mess, what were we going to do with it? It needed a complete top to bottom refresh, it had been renovated extensively by Steve, as it happened, just five years before, but it had been treated poorly and was in disrepair. What were our options here?

We could flip it, we’ve done that a dozen times, we’re no strangers to making something beautiful and appealing. But what about capital gains? With this softer market, how could we get enough out of it to pay off the loans and the taxes and even break even? We could rent it out, it’s in a desirable neighbourhood, the rental income could carry it. But we’ve had tenants before and often it’s more headache than it’s worth.

We could live in it. As it stands we need a place to live ourselves in less than three months. It’s a far cry from the expansive farmstead we dreamed of, but wouldn’t it be an answer to a prayer?

It doesn’t solve the issue of paying back the loans, neither living in it nor renting it, and it doesn’t get us any closer to where we wanted to be.

I want to pause here. Because as of the time I’m writing this I’m actually still immersed in these scenarios, this is just the thing I was avoiding by not writing. I don’t know the end of this story yet, it’s happening in realtime.

I look back over the past few years and am curious about what I’m meant to learn. I know I’ve approached life differently, taking the unconventional route, risked where I maybe shouldn’t have. When we left for Costa Rica, we let go of everything we owned, who does that? When we maybe should have been buckling down and finding a more traditional way to solve our financial problems we just took another radical leap towards the unknown.

It’s in those moments that I think I just don’t know how to adult that I also have to look at the unique experiences we’ve had. We’ve travelled with our girls, they’ve lived with different cultures, different attitudes, different ways to approach life. They’ve attended all manner of schools - private, international, public/Catholic, nature and homeschool pods. We’ve struck up businesses along the way, we’ve made lifelong friendships.

We’ve kept betting on ourselves. And we’ve pivoted every single time things got rough, determined to find another way towards our dreams. We’ve done this with our kids alongside, with our relationship prioritized, we’ve done this with the family values we hold paramount at the forefront of all of our decisions.

And when I see it that way, I see how I’d do it all over again.

In January when Steve was in the muck, more than he ever had before, when he had to have forthright conversations with lawyers, with the family friend we were dealing with, with his investors, he accessed a part of himself he hadn’t before. Maybe there is no reward without risk, I’m still working that out, but I know there is no growth without discomfort. And we have been extremely uncomfortable for a good while now. I can see how it’s changing us, I can see how even though we have stumbled, we have gotten angry or we’ve hermitted away, how we have made mistakes that impact more than just ourselves, we haven’t given up.

And I also see that there is a gift in deciding the narrative of this story. It can easily be one of defeat, of trying and failing and resignation to less than we desire. Of settling. It can also be a story about how we keep learning what really matters, we keep getting new experiences to see the world as something that’s always working out for us, if we choose to see it that way. Apply that to your own life, if every perceived negative experience was actually God/source/higher power’s/wisdom’s way of giving you exactly what you want in a different package, what would that mean for you?

In December I went to a friends house and burst into tears when I saw how beautifully decorated her home was for the season. We’ve spent the last five Christmases in five different locations. Said differently, every year of Edie’s life has been spent somewhere new. I ached to just feel at home. I watched as different friends of mine were getting things I have dreamed of for years. A farm, a work opportunity, travel, whatever it may be. I felt my insides disintegrate at the contrast of what I was experiencing and wondered how nice it must be to just have it figured out.

Funny how that’s what I hear most when I share this writing, the responses from readers have been about feeling seen, not feeling so alone in ‘not getting life’. We have many perceived ideas of what other people’s lives and experiences are, how isolating it is when we steel ourselves away for not being good enough, not knowing enough, not being of equal value. When we lose our connection to the whole we see life through this narrow focus and forget that we’re all wounded in our own way.

It’s only a couple months later and I don’t feel in the depths of despair as I did in the fall and winter. I’m sharing that part because it’s important to remember how quickly things can change. Sometimes for the better, sometimes for worse. And most surprisingly is how we ourselves can change. Our desires, our dreams, the things we’re holding fast to. Our beliefs. Our limitations. When we give ourselves the grace to get things ‘wrong’, when we let go of needing to know everything that’s to come, we see how great things actually mostly are. Right here, in this now moment. In the suspended nothingness of life, in the unknown.

So I wrap this up here for now without knowing how it all ends. In less than three months I will be writing to you from somewhere else entirely, I wonder where that is. But right now I have pumpkin banana loaf baking in the oven, I look out from the dining room table where I’m writing and see the grey calmness of the river. My dogs are breathing softly on their bed in the kitchen, Edie is watching Bluey and singing to herself. Steve has taken Gracie and Lily to gymnastics and I have restorative yoga shortly. In a moment I’m going to fold some laundry then have a tub, read the newest novel I got from the library. Tomorrow I take two of my girls to meet our friends just an hour away for an overnight in a hotel, a way to celebrate March Break and do something fun and out of the ordinary. And every part of this is good, because moment by moment life is good.

This could all still go so many ways, I don’t know what this investment property will mean for us down the road, I don’t know if we will one day make use for all those custom windows and doors in some way that I just can’t yet see. I don’t know if another way to stay with the original plan will show itself or if an even better plan is emerging right now. Emerging along with the snowdrops and crocuses bursting from the winter-moist soil, the trill of spring birds singing a song of new life. There’s excitement in that, right now there is, because when nothing is certain, everything is possible.

With Christmas just around the corner we imagined ourselves settling into this new home in the new year.

And then something unexpected happened.

Stay tuned for part 3.

Read the blog: https://emmypickering.substack.com/p/the-great-plan-part-2

To say things haven’t gone as I expected the last few years would be an understatement, I suppose I’m not alone in that sentiment. I was always a person who unequivocally knew that things always work out, the best case scenario isn’t just possible but likely, things go in my favour. I will say this has been tested.

Emmy’s Substack is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

The real beginning to this story is too far back to bring up to the surface so instead we’ll start here. The summer of 2023, we were homeless in the sense that we had left our beloved Barriefield rental and hadn’t yet found where we would next go. Who does this? We do. More than once actually. So here we are in July, finding ourselves staying with incredible friends at their spacious country home complete with pool (really not a bad place to be homeless). In fact, over the summer we stayed at several places, with or without our friends who owned them, and each one had a pool. Each one had comfortable space. Each one had beautiful surroundings. So we knew that even in our frustration and disappointment we were held so well. We decided that the theme for the summer would be ‘organized chaos’, having gone through a very similar situation before, we just had to choose it as our own making. We used the summery weather to hit up beaches, swim in pools, go for country drives, read books in the sunshine. All three of my girls have summer birthdays, one for each month, so June, July and August had their high points, a pinnacle to look forward to. There was a week of summer camp, a first for our family, and truly so much easy fun to access along the way.

Yet in the background there was the looming of ‘what’s next’, humming loudly for Steve and I to hear. We knew we couldn’t buy a house, nor could we find anything we would want to, and so we set our sights on a short term rental. Again. We felt certain that in the time of the lease we would absolutely sort out all these loose threads we’ve been tangled up in. When we found this short term rental, a sweet little cottage on the river, a throw back with its coloured carpet, faded wallpaper, honey coloured wood, 60 year old furniture, we knew it could work for a time. It could be just the thing for us, a combo of the most beautiful waterfront setting (swoon!) and not so homey that we couldn’t imagine leaving.

It all came together, this cottage for just enough time and some brilliant projects that Steve struck upon. School was starting, the first time for Edie Plum, we adopted two puppies, my little holistic beauty and wellness business was moving along at a slow pace online. We even lucked out with an amazing late summer, into October we still laid down at the dock, the kids and Steve fished in the evenings, boated along the river from island to island, we swam in the cooling water. For a brief moment it felt like it was all on the up and up.

It just didn’t last.

The worst part is that I felt I already knew that would happen. Was that my intuition speaking or my doubt? Was this going to happen all along or was it self-fulfilled prophecy?

As I write this I feel like, why am I being so dramatic? There is devastation in such huge ways happening worldwide right now, this story is such small potatoes in comparison. Yet it’s my life and it’s the only lived experience I have to share, so I do. I’ve set out on a mission to find HOME, to put down roots and begin what feels like the next phase of life, to find not just a house but a place to create a legacy from. It feels like I tripped over something and four (or maybe it’s 5?) years later I haven’t righted myself, I’ve been stumbling forward. The worst part is it feels so silly, so immature, I’m a 41 year old married mother of 3, how haven’t I figured this out yet? Sure some people aren’t solid in their work, or don’t fully know if they’re aligned with their passions, or are still trying to sort out their finances, or are on the lookout for their forever home. I’m doing all of it, I feel like I don’t have any of these ‘adult life skills’ sorted out. I’ve always hated being vulnerable with people, I’d prefer people think I’ve got this. And it’s not a front, I have so much good in my life, it feels whiny to focus on these hard parts. I’m acknowledging it’s all just part of my story.

From July to October, the projects Steve poured himself into were all in action simultaneously which was dizzying and exciting. He had signed on as the developer of some land, other partners were the landholders and investors. It felt like the culmination of his fifteen years of house building, where we had just made ends meet for over a decade we could finally be in the position to generate enough income to get ourselves back into the housing market and feel secure. The process was anything but smooth, from the plans that took months longer than anticipated to permit setbacks, it felt like, even though on paper this seemed like a foolproof plan, the universe was trying to slow it all down for a reason.

In 2020 both of our businesses took massive nosedives and it seemed as though we had finally hit upon a solution, a way to truly put one foot before the other and walk with intention to the life we wanted. So much energy, commitment, stretching into the unknown and trust was required for Steve to go head first towards what he believed would be life changing for us. What’s that saying about risk and reward?We’re risk takers, we found people who could loan us what we needed to roll the project forward. Each part of these projects hinged on the one before, like dominoes everything was poised to fall perfectly into place once the trigger was pulled.

But there was a hitch. By late November, with the property development project already in the works, permitting happening, plans paid for, materials ordered, we hit a major problem. We had entered into a transaction with a family friend, this was part of our investment strategy and that was going to give us the resources to pay back the loans and further the developments, but it became painfully clear that the deal was actually not as it had seemed.

Suddenly everything we’d been working towards was at a standstill.

Stay tuned for part 2

Read the blog: https://emmypickering.substack.com/p/my-lucky-sign

Book I reference is E2 by Pam Grout

Read the blog: https://emmypickering.substack.com/p/making-home-pt-3?r=qlbbl

What even is homemaking?

I shied away from sharing this for a long time but it's a conversation I'm curious to explore. Do you long to create sanctuary from your home? Do you feel qualified to do it?

Read the blog here: https://emmypickering.substack.com/p/making-home-pt-2?r=qlbbl

Stay tuned for part 2!

Read the blog: https://emmypickering.substack.com/p/making-home-pt1?r=qlbbl

Read the blog here: https://open.substack.com/pub/emmypickering/p/welcome-post?r=qlbbl&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true