Could the worst timing actually be the best timing?

Imagine this. We are 8 months into the hardest year of my family’s life and I announce to my husband one evening, while we are doing dishes, that I am going to start a blog and a podcast. The idea of a blog wasn’t a total surprise to him as it had been a someday project for awhile now. The real shocker was the timing and the urgency I had. 

At first my husband thought I had gone mad. “Why NOW in the middle of one of the hardest seasons of our life, would you want to start a blog?” Truth be told this was a completely valid question. We were both hanging on by a thread emotionally, dealing with all that had been thrown at us the past 8 months. We were in complete survival mode and feeling alone and isolated. Basic needs like self-care and laundry barely made the cut in terms of our daily priorities. Oh and minor detail – we were expecting our 4th child in 2 months. 

I admitted to slight insanity and that logically speaking this was definitely the worst timing in the history of timing to take on a new project.

But sometimes that’s the irony of life isn’t it? As humans our timing is usually far from perfect and there are often many competing factors at play in our decision making. I’m a logical, type-A person by nature, but some decisions don’t need logic and perfect timing.  

Life can be messy (hi we were living examples of it) and sometimes during those messy times you need to write a new playbook, re-prioritize things, and learn what you don’t know.

And that’s exactly how this blog started. I wasn’t trying to add yet one more thing to my overflowing cup, I was determined to go from barely surviving to thriving despite the nightmare we were in. 

I needed to heal, but how?

For months I was in a constant state of fight or flight – fighting to heal my kids and to put one foot in front of the other to survive. I could see and feel the toll this was taking on my mind, body, and soul – but there was nothing I could do to stop it. I was paying the price and I just had to hang on until I had the space to start healing myself. 

I am not a stranger to doing deep work (3 years in therapy was a game changer), but I could see this next chapter in my life was going to require more than a weekly one hour session with a therapist. No, to heal from this and get back on track to designing the life I wanted I was going to have to throw everything I had at it.

I was quite literally going to have to re-write my playbook and ask all the questions.

Combine my desperate need for self-healing and self-discovery – in order to (re)build a life that I love – with a desire to connect and a reminder from a friend about the importance of sharing stories and that’s where the motivation for this project came from. What if I created a platform where I ask all the questions and share my learnings? 

There is never a “right time” to start, but doing the work to build a life that you love? For me that felt urgent enough that I needed to re-prioritize immediately while potentially inspiring others along the way gave me purpose.   

The healing power of writing

I’ve never had a diary or taken the time to journal, but the power of writing lay somewhere in my subconscious mind. Despite being told I was “bad” at writing at a young age (and that I should stick with math) I’ve always loved to put a pen to paper. 

During some very dark days during this time, I had two friends that would check in on me regularly. I would sometimes respond with long text messages about how I was really doing. Every time I did that I would feel a huge release.

Writing it out helped me process complex emotions and confront these painful experiences. It was a light bulb moment.

So I started carving out time everyday to write for myself and it became an outlet for me. I’ve always been someone that has a ton of ideas, asks all the questions, and loves to learn. So much so that I often suffer from sleepless nights (add that to the list of things I want to explore).

Writing quickly became a form of therapy and one more reason to start this blog.

But i’m not an expert!

Help! I’m not an “expert.” In the past I always thought “i’ll start that food blog once i’m expert.” Or I’ll write about our world schooling journey once I’m an “expert.” Imposter syndrome amongst other things stopped me from starting the [insert topic here] blog before. 

That’s where the hardest year of my life enters the picture. Far from considering myself a so-called expert I felt like I was failing in every aspect of my life. Figuring out how to lean into tough moments to find my superpower? That’s something I had done a few times in life without even realising it, until I saw myself doing it again during this difficult year. 

Getting clear about my WHY for starting this blog helped me say goodbye to imposter syndrome (hopefully forever) and gave me the courage to dive into the vulnerability.

It also gave me the idea for the podcast – a platform where I could connect and learn from so called experts – and simultaneously share the learnings from those conversations? Sign me up.  

What lights me up? 

A silver lining of the challenging times that life inevitably brings is that it helps shine a light on what really matters. I’m guilty of getting caught up in all the chaos that daily life brings, but part of my path to healing and thriving was to re-focus on the things that light me up. And I wanted this blog to be a reflection of that.

So what lights me? Many things, but here’s a short list. 

• Deep conversations
• Asking hard questions, which inevitably leads to breaking some rules (or many!)
• True connection with people
• Raising my kids in the most intentional and thoughtful way possible
• Learning to be present with my mind, heart, soul and body
• Feeding my body what it needs both figuratively and literally 
• Always learning
• The importance of laughing 
• Food (one of my love languages)
• Travelling the world

Learning, thinking, and talking about these things lights me up. I started to wonder how all of these things weave together and become the building blocks to curate your life. This platform felt like a great place to start exploring all these pieces of the puzzle. 

Unicorn space

Before I decided to launch this platform a large part of my healing included personal development books and podcasts. I was devouring anything I could get my hands on. One of the books I read was Unicorn Space by Eve Rodsky. Picked as one of Reese Witherspoon’s book club picks, Reese says “Magnificent! Eve Rodsky illuminates the importance of investing in the creative pursuits that make your life more deeply fulfilling.”  

Eve Rodsky gave a name to what many of us probably don’t even realise we are lacking. She calls this vital time Unicorn Space – “the active and open pursuit of creative self-expression in any form that makes you uniquely you.”

Filling the gaps

When I announced to my husband that night that I’d be starting a blog and a podcast I was excited and hopeful. But I never could have imagined what a fulfilling part of my life it would be. It’s checked so many boxes  – a sense of purpose, a creative outlet, a space for connection, a path to healing and a platform to ask all the questions and document all the learnings.