Category: Sam’s adventures

Posted in Goal Setting, Reflections, Sam's adventures

Stops and Starts

Posted on by Snowrose

Sometimes I think that life is just a series of stops and starts. I’ve had such a strange relationship with education, and it continues! My next chapter begins with reapplying to my Master’s of Science in Psychology program, which I am happy to say is DONE. It feels like it has been ages because I started my master’s in the summer of 2022. I finished 3 courses and the first part of my thesis during my first year at Divine Mercy University. The program is excellent, and I love the asynchronous learning environment. It was sad when I had to take a leave of absence, but it was the right decision at the time. I am thankful that things have settled enough to get back on that pony now! My entire academic journey has been a series of stops and starts.

Stops and Starts

A time to go and stop

The reason I stopped my studies was a combination of factors. I suffered a miscarriage (we’ve had multiple; I plan to write about that sometime), and my husband’s career change process was going… well… awful. It was not the time to keep on going. I approached the change like a bookmark, not an ending, and did the hardest work of all: waiting. It took me 12 years to finish my undergrad, and I was used to that hard work of waiting and persevering, but this… felt different. When I went to university, it was because it was what I thought I ought to do. I graduated on the honor roll and earned the International Baccalaureate Bilingual Diploma in high school, so it would be a waste not to, right?

I chose linguistics because it seemed cool, and it turned out to be dramatically useful in improving my writing skills. Instead of struggling with writing due to dyslexia, I learned the English language from the inside out and could break down sentence structure to its constituent parts. I thought I would minor in music, and I went in hoping for the best. I was sorely disappointed to learn that the only music classes I could take were theory that I had already learned in high school (I took IB music). Religious studies caught my eye, and I started learning about world religions. I decided on a Double Major, like the keener I was… but then… I had to stop.

Learning what mattered

This was when my health, which had consistently been deteriorating due to undiagnosed celiac disease and a decade of black mold exposure, led me to slow down and, in many ways, stop. I graduated with a 3-year degree in four years… and stopped and started over and over again for the next 8 years to finish that elusive double major. It remains an unmet goal because by the time I had been ready to finish the last 2 courses for a major in linguistics, it had been too long to dive headlong and take 4th-year classes.

With a heavy heart, I stopped my double major and started a major in Religious Studies and a minor in Linguistics. I was so close, but it wasn’t what I wanted to do with my life, so it wasn’t worth the difficulty to catch back up and finish those classes. I learned that it didn’t matter if I did the greatest or best program, it was ok to do MY best.

A time to go and START!

Unlike my undergraduate studies, I have a purpose and direction in taking this Master’s in Psychology. When I stopped, I took the Chartered Herbalist Diploma that I had originally planned to take AFTER! So it wasn’t even a full stop for the direction I feel called to travel. Instead, the stops and starts have been purposeful and decisive. When it is time, it is time! It has been a long 3-year wait, but I am ready and itching to get back to it. I’m excited for this next chapter!

Posted in Sam's adventures, Stress Management

Accidents, Illnesses, and catching up; Oh my!

Posted on by Snowrose

This fall has been a dumpster fire of accidents, illnesses, and catching up on life! I have not been ill so many times since my son was in JK years ago. A flu, a cold, a stomach flu, and a cold that turned into a lung infection over the Christmas holidays! Thankfully, my son was barely sick when each ravaged through the house, and my husband only caught a few. That being said, my poor husband has torn the rotator cuffs in his shoulders at work and has been slowly healing with lots of physio! So many illnesses and accidents! I hope that this winter will be less overwhelming than the fall. My husband’s shoulders are slowly healing, though his left shoulder may need surgery (we will know after he gets an MRI). It has been quite a juggling act.

dumpster fire of accidents, illnesses, and catching up on life

Hard seasons like accidents and illness

I think it is fair to say that this was a particularly hard fall/start of winter for many! One of my best friends had her mother-in-law in the hospital with pneumonia, and most of the people I knew got very sick multiple times. Seasons like these stretch us to our limits, but thankfully do not last forever. I am hopeful to be able to get back into a rhythm as January continues.

Planning on catching up on life

Catching up

It seems as though I have been spending this January simply catching up on life. For anyone following my blog, you can see I’ve not been able to write in quite some time. Thankfully, I think I am finally getting a better rhythm again, as I have needed to prioritize housekeeping and homeschooling over writing until now. At this point, I will be re-adjusting my schedule to better accommodate the changes in my family’s needs with the limits my husband’s injuries place on what he can and can’t do when he is home from work.

Posted in Coaching, Health, Reflections, Sam's adventures

Taking rest in busy times

Posted on by Snowrose

This month has been surprisingly busy, and I have taken a short break from my blog/social media; taking rest in busy times is necessary. I personally find social media exceedingly tiring, and in truth, it is the first thing I will drop when life gets busy or I come down with a cold. While I do love writing, my blog is also lower on the priority list. I am hoping that November will be a bit smoother!

I think rest is underrated as an activity and should be considered a virtue in this busy world. When I say rest, though, I am not talking about doomscrolling. Taking rest involves a combination of adequate sleep and leisure.

Getting good sleep

Taking rest

A good night’s sleep is an important part of rest. I personally found the impact of sleep to be massive after my sleep apnea diagnosis. I spent years with interrupted sleep (like every mom does), but the sleep I did get was awful! You can read more about my experience with getting set up with my CPAP here. Adequate sleep means you are sleeping long enough at night with quality sleep. If you are struggling with sleep, it’s important to look at your sleep hygiene. When do you turn off screens for the day? Do you have a nightly routine? What sleep cues can you start to incorporate into your routine to help you wind down at night?

Taking rest and leisure

Leisure is the bigger part of rest that I feel is underrated in our society. Many consider being busy with a full timetable the epitome of living a good life. I argue that it is in slowing down and enjoying the present moment that you live life to the fullest. Leisure activities are things that refill you and rejuvenate you. They are fun! There is no one-size-fits-all list of leisurely activities, but take a moment and reflect: what activities refill you? I personally love ART, as you may have guessed. With this being said, I also love gardening, playing with/training my dogs, archery, video games, reading, learning theology, and playing board games. I have other interests too, but these often fill my soul when I need a leisurely activity that really hits the spot.

Posted in Coaching, Goal Setting, Health, Mental Health, Reflections, Sam's adventures

Passion: Finding and Pursuing it

Posted on by Snowrose

I’ve been listening to the audiobook “Prudence” by Fr. Gregory Pine OP recently. This, combined with life circumstances for myself and friends, has led me to think. I’ve been reflecting on the importance of pursuing your passion. While I believe there is an inherent need to work for the sake of supporting yourself or your family, I think it is wrong to settle. I don’t mean to be critical here, but I want to encourage true flourishing. In my opinion, it is a disservice to yourself and others to stagnate when you could be living a more genuine and fruitful life.

Why find your passion?

This is an important question to address. There is a trend these days to wanting to “live your best life”, but social media does not give a foothold on what this really means. In my opinion, living your best life is one where you live a life full of meaning (and the psychological sciences tend to back me on this). If you are living life, looking to the future for some place of happiness and contentment, you are missing the point. Life exists here and now in the present moment. When you are living out your passion, meaning is vibrant and service is life-giving. You may have hard days, but they don’t wear you down, leaving you empty.

What is your passion?

Some people have a clear idea of their passion, but not everyone does. Your vocational needs and state in life impact how you can live out your passion, but neither prevents you from finding it nor pursuing it when the time is right. There are many ways you can choose to live life and serve through work. Sometimes you will need to work for the sake of work, and finding your passion will come from reflecting on those experiences. In short, I believe your passion is the intersection of your interests and talents. In practice, this is actually a pretty broad space that will need discernment and reflection to narrow down.

A Venn Diagram of the intersection of Interest and Tallent showing Passion.

There are resources you can use to help you identify where you will flourish most, like the amazing work of Patrick Lencioni: 6 Types of Working Genius. I think this is an excellent tool to help you discover your passion and how to live it out most fruitfully. In general, though, if you take time to explore and really think about your interests and talents, you should find an area of overlap. The options of work that crop up from that overlap are where you are most likely to find something truly life-giving and meaningful.

A personal example:

After years of tumult accompanying my husband’s journey through mental illness and a career change, I found my passion, and he has found his. I personally realized that I am most interested in psychology, helping others, theology, and the arts. These have intersected with my talent for teaching, synthesizing information, art, and supporting others in this beautiful, budding business. I absolutely love this work and find it refilling.

My husband, after working in crime prevention, hoped to one day be a police officer, and looked at what he had enjoyed most in his jobs when he realized that was not a realistic option. He chose driving and went into the trucking industry. I can say long-distance trucking is NOT a family-oriented career, but he has finally found a position that he LOVES that suits our family’s needs. From wanting to clean up the streets of crime, he has discovered that his interests and talents overlap beautifully, keeping the streets clean… of garbage. He comes home satisfied even after a hard and messy day.

Want help finding yours?

If you aren’t sure where to start, come and see! As a coach, I can help you live out your best life and move towards flourishing and wellness.

Find out more!
Posted in Goal Setting, Reflections, Sam's adventures

Juggling Change

Posted on by Snowrose

This September, I have not been able to blog weekly like I had set as a goal. Changes in my son’s schedule and my husband’s work schedule have left me juggling change. As I mentioned in my last post on transitions, I find it pretty hard to navigate changes all at once. Juggling is my favorite metaphor for balancing the duties that come with being a wife, mother, and entrepreneur.

Juggling Change but Holding Routine

I think the successes this month have been worth the efforts to hold onto routine amid the change. Rather than blogging, I focused on a few other things this month so far. First, I published my gratitude journal, “Grow Your Happiness.” I have been delighted at the interest from an online Catholic community I am in. Then, I released some new, simple fabric designs to complement the Mini Saints and Sacraments collection on Spoonflower. I have also been working on creating French Prayer Cards to add to my free resources (the English ones were already there).

Meanwhile, on the mom front, I am getting back into the swing of my son’s various activities, homeschool routine, and adjusting the daily routines. I think one of my favorite parts of kids growing up is the enthusiasm they have for learning how to do certain chores. Obviously, my son is not interested in everything, but he has taken up learning how to vacuum with much gusto and excitement. Until this point, he was not quite old enough to use the vacuum. With the coming of the new school year and shuffling of household duties, he excitedly asked to try!

How is your household finding the September shift?

Posted in ADHD, Coaching, Mental Health, Sam's adventures, Stress Management

Transitions are hard!

Posted on by Snowrose

Transitions have never been fun for me. September is, for most of Canadian society, a month of many transitions. It is the start of the school year for students and parents. It is the start of activities, sports, and groups in the fall. It is when Parish life picks up after the summer break. There are so many transitions within this month!

What makes transitions harder for some than others? To an extent, we can rightly say that everyone is different! For those neurospicy individuals like me, though, transitions are distressing. I have an overlapping symptom set with Autism, and I find immediate transitions and longer-term changes to be very difficult.

What can help in tough transitions?

For me personally? I have found certain strategies work better than others to support me during times of transition. Being able to visualize the expectations inherent in each change has been the most effective tool to keep nervous systems regulated.

While some thrive with bullet journal set-ups, I find making them much more enjoyable than actually using them. I used to use handwritten agendas to mark my calendar and visualize my time and commitments. In the digital age, though, as a mom (who doesn’t really like carrying more than I have to after the years of diaper bags), I find phone calendar apps to be just as effective as a written agenda.

At home, I also use a whiteboard to indicate which days I have chosen for what household task. With homeschool, we have a dedicated bookshelf space with each day’s topic set aside. We use a master list with clear expectations of which day has which topic.

What have you found helps most during transitions?

Posted in Coaching, Goal Setting, Health, Mental Health, Sam's adventures, Stress Management

Exciting update: Grow Your Happiness

Posted on by Snowrose

Publishing soon!

Over the past two years, I have been steadily working on a book titled “Grow Your Happiness.” In this book, I offer a method of increasing your baseline happiness through intentional gratitude. The front matter explores the scientific literature on dispositional happiness (the day-to-day baseline happy feeling you return to after ups and downs) and how gratitude can increase that.

The book is almost ready for publication and will be published in September!

In “Grow Your Happiness”, I have made the scientific information accessible and easy to read, despite citing over 20 studies and primary sources. You will learn the real impacts of this virtue on the happiness you experience. Next, after exploring how gratitude can make you a happier person, you will find 365 prompts. These prompts were intentionally chosen to increase the breadth and depth of this important virtue steadily over time.

A sneak peek inside:

I’ve given the book a sunflower theme, with earth tone colours. There will be a Kindle edition in plain text for anyone who wants to use their preferred journal. I chose the sunflower theme to symbolize the journey of growing happiness. Sunflowers are beautiful plants whose blossoms always look towards the sun. After all, they need direct sunlight and grow into huge flowers that brighten up any space they are planted in. Accordingly, I hope that everyone who uses this journal can also look at the proverbial sun of gratitude and blossom into happier people!

Here is an example of the journal theme:

I hope that this book will reach many people. I believe it will make a dramatic impact if used intentionally. Gratitude is such an important virtue! Although this book focuses on increasing dispositional happiness, the research shows much more. There is research coming out showing that gratitude can positively impact your relationships, health, and more!

Posted in IFS, Mental Health, Reflections, Sam's adventures, Stress Management

Building Community

Posted on by Snowrose

I have often wondered what it would be like to live somewhere where building community is part of the culture. Over the last five years, I have been trying to build community intentionally, and I have found it to be needlessly hard. Canadian culture, especially in the big cities, is not anything like the international community imagines. We have an overdeveloped sense of autonomy and an individualistic mindset. From the conversations I have had with those who immigrate to Canada, the culture shock is isolating. As someone born and raised here, I love my country, but I hate the autonomy of our culture.

My experience has been common: building community is hard. It is easier to live interdependently in rural areas, but in the city? Oh boy, individualism is the ideal. This has been detrimental to our population for so many reasons. While everyone has a fundamental integrity need for agency, individualism takes this principle too far. People wonder why rates of mental illness are continuously on the rise in Canada. The simplest answer? Broken homes and no community. I realize those topics are heavy and loaded, but as an adult child of divorce, I can attest to the impact of both. Canada is a land with so much potential, despite its cosmopolitan history. It’s not too late to turn things around for the next generations.

The solution? Intentional Community Building.

If we want to turn the tide on mental illness and suicide, we need to work intentionally to make and foster a culture of community. To be honest, we need to embrace the Canadian stereotype and welcome the level of hospitality and kindness that the international stage believes we have. To be honest, I don’t know the steps needed to make that change, but I know it is the direction that we need to go.

It has taken me 5 years to start seeing the fruit of building up a community at my local parish, with consistent support from my friends who live in other parts of the city. It took even longer to overcome the internalized autonomy. I believe every effort is worth it. As I have learned more about psychology, I’ve come to understand the importance of community. We are a species that thrives on healthy interdependence. Isolation kills, community gives life. Let’s work together on building a community.

Posted in celiac disease, Recipes, Sam's adventures

Birthday Delights

Posted on by Snowrose

Last week was filled with birthday party prep! There were many birthday delights for our son! This year, we hosted a shared birthday party with one of our close family friends, and it was a huge hit! I am amazed at how quickly these kids grow up. If you aren’t a parent, the phrase “the days are long and the years are short” does not make sense. I can say with all honesty that the older Tristan gets, the faster the years seem to go by.

Today’s blog post is all about one particular birthday delight: CAKE! Like many boys his age, Tristan loves Minecraft! He had been asking for months for a Minecraft cake. We scoured the internet for inspirational ideas- and this year I jumped out of the box… box mix, that is. It has been nearly a decade since I was willing to experiment with gluten-free baking! For the most part, I have been using tried-and-true box mixes. This is not the most creative way to bake, but I cannot express how much I dislike experimenting with flour blends. The early years of my diagnosis came with baking that a friend iconically said “tasted like rice and sadness”.

A fantastic find!

In comes a fantastic find: Ardent Mills Gluten-Free Flour Blend.

I had seen this brand recommended in various Celiac groups I am in on Facebook, but had never found it at the stores nearby. I had originally planned to make the cakes with gluten-free box mixes, but the Costco near our house had it in stock! What a VALUE!! I managed to make pancakes, 4 FULL cakes, and STILL had leftover flour for 15$!! To give those who don’t have to avoid gluten an idea, each box mix usually costs 6-7$ EACH. Oh, and those boxes only include enough flour blend to make ONE slab cake OR 12 cupcakes.

I had honestly forgotten what it was like to bake in normal volume. At first, I accidentally made way too much carrot cake. Though, really, can you have too much carrot cake? We have been enjoying the extra carrot muffins all week! I made one extra cake on purpose as a gift to our family friends in thanks. It was also a hit. I admit, as I was mixing all the batter, I did question the volume. It wasn’t until I was starting to fold in the carrots that I realized where I had made the happy mistake. Gluten-free baking with box mixes NEVER yields this much.

Birthday Delights: a Minecraft Cake

Now, with white cake, chocolate cake, carrot cake, (not) Rice Krispies squares, and Jello, the cake was ready to come to life!

The cake was built in two pieces because Tristan wanted a Nether Portal on the Outworld AND the Nether. It has been a while since I have made anything this complex, but I had so much fun making it! I grew up baking every week and was hit hard when I was diagnosed with celiac disease in 2012. I am so excited to keep baking with this awesome pre-made blend! It needs more liquids than regular flour, so recipes need to be modified appropriately, but that’s so much easier than figuring out the blend itself. I am so thankful that I stepped out of the box and made this cake! Tristan LOVED this birthday delight!

Posted in Health, Sam's adventures

Sleeping Soundly: a Cautionary Tale

Posted on by Snowrose

Sleeping soundly is a phrase that mothers tend to forget over the years. From the moment your baby is born, sleeping seems to become a thing of the past. Some children sleep well, and their mothers are blessed with sleep. I did not experience that. My sweet boy was born and did not sleep through the night until he was 3, by which point I was not sleeping through the night for another year. Then, over the last two years, I found that sleep no longer brought rest, even when I did sleep through the night. Turns out… I have sleep apnea!

I should have investigated this sooner, but to be honest, I didn’t know my poor sleep was not a normal part of motherhood. Sleeping had become difficult and unrestful, and I chalked it up to being a lighter sleeper… that is, until I started waking in the middle of the night feeling as if I were choking. It took getting quite bad before investigating! Nearly 9 months ago, I went for a sleep test. They found that my windpipe collapsed during REM and my oxygen went to 76%. I was likely experiencing this for the majority of my motherhood, but did not take my sleep needs seriously.

Although CPAP therapy took some time to get used to, it has made an INCREDIBLE difference. When I got my CPAP back in March, I found that I could not use the full mask without many leaks throughout the night. I’ve been using the Brevida Nasal Pillow mask instead. It took around two weeks to adjust to the air pressure in the CPAP at night. Instead of waking up choking, I would wake up with intense air pressure to keep my windpipe open. Within a month, I was relaxing so much that I needed to wear a chin strap to keep my mouth closed. This setup has continued to work for me and has become a very consistent sleep cue. It may look silly and weird, but it has made a WORLD of difference in my energy.

To any moms out there struggling with daytime exhaustion, restless sleep and sleepiness: don’t wait, investigate. If you are silently suffering from sleep apnea, you aren’t sleeping soundly. You matter and ought to prioritize your needs. It takes over a year to see the metabolic changes from treating sleep apnea. Over time, you will feel better and you will find sleeping finally breathes the life back into you!