A born and raised Wisconsin girl with nothing more than a mission to live an authentic life and be the woman I want to be while being the mother I need to be.

 

By 2009, I had already mapped out my dream of motherhood.  We knew I would stay home with our daughter and she would be homeschooled along with her three other perfect siblings that would one day come. It was so easy to fantasize about what our life would look like, especially parenthood.  But then real life happened.

Life and circumstances are going to happen and to me it’s all about finding, learning and growing from the WHY they happened

December 14, 2009 is the day I became a mother. Olivia was perfect, with all 10 fingers and 10 toes which I never even counted (do  people really do that?). Our nurse made the comment and it was my first moment of feeling inadequate; that’s right - I was a mom for all of 10 minutes and already felt like a failure because I didn’t count fingers and toes! I just assumed they would all be there; kids aren’t born sick or missing toes (well not mine, right? That kind of stuff doesn’t happen to me). WRONG!!!!

July 5, 2011 is the day the doctor called and calmly told me we needed to head to the hospital and prepare to be there for a couple days. With Olivia lying on my chest, I realized that if this called had come an hour later, she would have never woken up from her morning nap. She was literally dying in my arms as her kidneys were failing.

We were rushed via helicopter to our local children’s hospital in London, Ontario. A couple of days turned into a month-long hospital stay;  while we balanced electrolytes, we also learned to cope with the fact that our once healthy baby girl, with all 10 fingers and 10 toes, was actually a “sick kid” with a rare disease called cystinosis.

Her disease changed my life. But not in the way one might expect.

Her disease changed my life for the better. 

My marriage is better.

We eat better.

We enjoy the “small things.”

We live a little.

I’ll never forget the day of my Spiritual Awakening. It was a hot summer day and the nurses came in to take another round of blood from Olivia (I couldn’t handle the sight of blood so those were the moments I would get a break). I snuck out to have a smoke. As I sat on the garden wall with the sun beating down on me, I took a deep inhale and thought to myself,  ”there is no God. If there was he would never do this.” I didn’t know it at the time, but this is when my journey of self-discovery and yearning to find the meaning of life began.

This journey has me diving deep into my passions of psychology, child development, adult development, miracles and various alternative living options. I have learned that unless it’s a pair of super stretchy panties, there is NO one size fits all. We can learn from each other, take pieces from one another and apply it to our individual lives.

This is “Authentic Living”. I’m not here to tell you what to do, I’m here to share what I’m doing.

“Role model” is defined by Wikipedia as a person looked to by others as an example to be imitated. I believe that being a “good” mother is as simple as showing up and being a role model. The hard part is “un-stucking” ourselves from our conditioned life and building a life WE love - NOT the life our parents, grandparents, teachers, coaches, aunts or uncles wanted us to live.

I believe each of us has the power to change and by doing so we will change the world.

Are you ready to be a part of that change?

Connect with me.

If you want to connect with me you can follow me on Instagram and Facebook. And don’t forget to sign up for my newsletter. Each week I will share something on my journey to live an authentic life and be the woman I want to be while being the mother I need to be