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small farm dreams

January 27, 2010 in dream big, homesteading, shifting perspective by eringoodman | 22 comments

We’re in the midst of a January thaw here in Southern New England.

Yesterday was beautiful - sunny and warm, which for my children and their classmates meant extra time playing and running outside. (With spare sets of clothes tucked into their backpacks for the inevitable mud-sloshing that is just too fun to resist.) And for me it meant putting writing and other projects aside and tending to long-neglected barn chores.

Remember the chicken pen I started in November? 

Yeah. It’s still not finished. 

This wire fencing has been used to contain sheep, small children, and soon (fingers crossed) will help to keep the chickens safe and secure in their new pen.

It was this project that ignited the spark of anger between me and John on Thanksgiving.

Helping his wife stretch and staple wire was not his idea of a relaxing holiday. Sleeping in, surfing the Net, and watching a little football was.

I’ll let you use your imagination as to how well that went over with me as I was nursing dozens of tiny nicks and scrapes from the sharp wire, while trying to keep an eye on the kids who were allegedly “helping me” with this project I wanted desperately to finish before the winter in hopes of avoiding another mass chicken tragedy like we had last winter.

Yeah. It wasn’t pretty.

And it was this project that brought tears rolling down my face as snow poured out of the sky and piled up around our house on Solstice weekend, frustrated yet again with my inability to get anything I start around here done. 

But yesterday as I did my own mud-sloshing along with my neighbor, who was out walking his dog when I recruited him to “come help me for just a minute,” it was this project that filled me with feelings of contentment and peace.

It’s much bigger than making progress on the chicken pen (though trust me, I will be very happy when they are secured and we are no longer stepping in chicken poop).

What feels so good is how things are shifting in our home and in our family.

John and I are talking — more frequently and much more softly — about how things are working and about our shared goals for our family. We’re focusing more on the places where we are in alignment and less on the places where we do not see eye-to-eye.

Pigs are out. Indefinitely.

Milking goats. Maybe in a couple of years. But not now.

Rabbits are doable. Later this year. Maybe. 

In the whirlwind of cleaning and decluttering that has been happening in our home (inspired by One Small Change), the kids found this photo of Lily (about 18 mos. old) with her first flock of chickens and one of our Shetland sheep, George.

George and his sister Gracie left us the following fall. Both sheep were fond of jumping out of their pen, and chasing them down on a near-daily basis (with a toddler on my back and a baby strapped to my chest) was more than this sleep-deprived, aspiring farmer-mama could handle.

The other day, when the kids handed me the photo, I mindlessly grabbed a magnet and stuck it the fridge.

Yesterday as I walked through the kitchen I was struck by the beauty of the photo and the words on the magnet, a gift I received a decade ago from a wise friend.

 Having it all does not necessarily mean all at once.

 

sharing our space

October 5, 2009 in at home, dream big, getting organized by eringoodman | 14 comments

Lily is going to be a veterinarian when she grows up.  And she is going to live on a farm.

The plan, which our kids discuss nearly every day, is that she will live there with Quinn, who will be the tractor man and the fix-it man. And Lily will take care of all the animals on the farm. She will also have an office for small animals and when people come to bring their dogs and cats for their check-ups they will be able to spend the day at the farm and visit with all the farm animals.

As you can imagine, I think Lily’s farm sounds absolutely lovely and I want to do everything I can to support her dreams.

Except there is one problem.

For the past several weeks a model of the veterinarian farm has existed on our kitchen table (which, by the way, is located in the middle of our living room).

John and I try to go with the flow as best we can and it’s been kind of nice having cozy dinners huddled at one end of the table or eating picnic-style on the floor of the playroom, but lately the farm has been expanding daily, and having it reside on our table has created more than a few conflicts in our family.

The solution I came up with was setting up another table (a curb score from last summer) in our playroom that is just for the veterinarian farm. Lily was a little hesitant but when she came home from school and saw the new set up, she decided it just might work for her…

…which is good. Because having time and space to eat together really works for our family!

:: :: :: :: :: :: ::

{For more on the importance of family meals and some of our favorite meal blessings, you might enjoy this article I wrote in 2007 for RI Family Magazine.}

believing in dreams

September 28, 2009 in dream big, parenting by eringoodman | 25 comments

Our sweet Lily-girl wants a horse.

She talks about them. She writes stories about them. She draws them. She plays with toy horses. And stuffed horses. She reads books about them. She paces around our yard showing me exactly where the horse pen will go.

And at least five times a day she asks me when she is going to get her first horse.

And every time I do my best to nurture her dream, to trust that at some point it will happen, to encourage her to talk about every juicy little detail like how she will get a miniature horse first so she can get used to being around horses, then a Pinto (because we read in a book that they are good for beginning riders), then a Palomino, and then finally a dancing Lipizzaner (once she is an experienced rider).

And I drive all kinds of zig-zagging routes around town so we can admire her favorite horses. And I walk with her to our neighbor’s farm to visit with thier horses.

And I sit back and watch our magical manifestor, who does not yet understand the limitations of bank accounts and family budgets, attract more and more equine friends each day.

*** *** *** ***

One morning, a couple of weeks ago, as we were heading out to school, I spotted something in the field near our house.

“Oh Lily! You are not going to believe this,” I said, pointing to a horse and rider I’d never seen in our neighborhood before.

We dashed to the top of the driveway and then together, with Quinn in tow, made our way to the field, quietly taking a seat on a rock to watch.

After a short time the rider directed her horse over to us. It was as if looking at Lily she saw herself as a five-year-old, and she began talking directly to Lily, telling her stories about her first pony and the fun they used to have galloping through the fields near her house.

She patiently answered questions and for a good 10 minutes she talked to Lily about horse care, riding, and the various gates of the horse, which she encouraged Lily to practice on a drum.

She told us where she lives and how the field near our house is her favorite place to ride. Then, in typical small-town fashion, we discovered where our circles of friends overlap and explored our common interests (beyond horses).

And then it was time for us to say good-bye and head to school.

My sweet girl practically floated back to the car and could not wait to tell her teachers and friends every detail of her encounter.

Later at dinner, she retold the story to Papa. He listened attentively, but on more than one occasion gave me the look.

John and I are not completely in agreement on how to handle Lily’s horse obsession. He would prefer that I stop encouraging her because the reality is that we cannot afford a horse (of any size). At this point even paying for Lily to take riding lessons is beyond our family’s budget.

I truly respect his feelings. I understand the reality of our financial situation and I am careful not to make promises to my children that I know I can’t keep.

But I also believe that there are infinite ways for dreams to come true and the biggest, most important step we can take, for ourselves and for our children, is to believe in them.

I may not be able to buy you a horse, Baby Girl. But I promise I’ll do everything I can to help you live out your dreams!

making music

May 20, 2009 in baby steps, dream big, music + merriment by eringoodman | 4 comments

If you’ve been visiting here for a while you may remember seeing this picture, which I took last winter on my first day of guitar lessons. (Oh did it feel good to take that photo.)

For as long as I can remember I have wanted to be able to sing and play the guitar. And for as long as I can remember I have had a strong mental/emotional block that has prevented me from doing so.

My brain absolutely panics and shuts down when people start talking music theory. I just don’t get it. (Incidentally, I also have had the same experience with my attempts to learn a foreign language - wonder if the same part of the brain is involved??)

The experience of taking a couple of lessons a few months ago brought it all up to the surface. The very talented and really nice man who was teaching me lessons began by having me visualize myself playing the guitar and what kind of music I’d like to play and how it feels. And I was in my Bliss.

I visualized myself sitting on the floor of my kid’s room, singing Lily’s favorite lullaby, Blackbird, while playing my guitar softly. And I visualized myself incorporating music into my family yoga classes and singing in a fun, silly Laurie Berkner-esque style. And I imagined myself camping with friends and making music and singing along around a campfire.

Bliss. Bliss. Bliss. All of it. Pure Bliss.

And then the he began to give me an overview of the instrument and some music theory that I would need for background and I began to sweat.

As his words that my brain could not compute trailed off, I swirled around in waves of panic. Suddenly I was ten years old and back on the piano bench trying to fake my way through a lesson that I hadn’t really practiced for. And then I was 13 years old and attempting to squeak something other than the sound of a dying animal out of my flute in middle school.

And then I was adult in the church choir with the substitute choir director who had zero tolerance for people who couldn’t read music and expected us to “sight read” new pieces. I couldn’t do it. And spent much of the night faking a cough and going to the bathroom for water, embarrassed and sad that I was once again on the outside looking in to this amazing inner circle of special people who could read and make music.

I stopped taking guitar lessons. (And flute lessons and piano lessons and singing in the choir.)

But I have not stopped visualizing myself singing to my children and leading campfire sing-alongs and trusting that there is another way for me to get there.

And two recent gifts — an electric guitar from my brother-in-law and an acoustic guitar from our friend – which, thanks to my wonderful cousin, are now both hanging on our (half-painted) living room wall…

…are reminding me to pause frequently to remember these dreams and trust that the right people will come into my world, at the right time, with the right teaching style, or the willingness to play around casually alongside me, and that I will be playing my guitar and singing Blackbird to my sweet girl soon enough!

following the feel-good path

May 7, 2009 in dream big by eringoodman | 1 comment

{This is a guest blog by Hillary Boucher that I first shared here back in February. Since that time, I have frequently found myself coming back to this beautiful post and in particular these words:

The more we talked about those early years, and the dreams we shared, the more the world seemed to smile on us. People started mentioning opportunities to us and books fell into our hands that inspired us…

The more we followed this hopeful, feel-good path, the more the world smiled. And like magic, the steps continued to unfold effortlessly in front of us.

Thank you so much my friend for this. Inspired by you, I have been consciously seeking out the “hopeful, feel-good path” and oh do I feel the world smiling!!!   

In fact, I am now off to follow the feel-good path to NYC for the Chicken Soup for the Soul: Power Moms Book Launch Party. Have a wonderful weekend friends! See you back here next week!}

_____________________________________________

Believing in Dreams :: by Hillary Boucher

We’ve always lived “outside the box.” Since meeting in high school, my husband and I have dreamed of a life free of jobs that were routine, dull or dissatisfying. People would tell us, “It only gets worse from here!” which horrified us in our youthful excitement about life and its possibilities. We wanted to live out our dreams on our own terms.

We were married in 2003 and immediately went to live on an organic medicinal herb farm, hoping to find our alternative lifestyle there. We learned a lot about ourselves and met many great friends and inspirational teachers. But it didn’t quite fit.

We returned to our hometown afterwards, a bit lost as to where and how we were going to find our niche, we started to question our dreams. Life was starting to seem a bit more like “the hard work” we had been lectured about in our school years. We didn’t want to “get ahead” or “climb the ladder” so to speak. We wanted to live within the rhythm of Nature; celebrating the change of seasons and staying aware of the cycles of the moon. We wanted to wake up and decide how our days would be, not be strapped to a paycheck, debt and a boss. But we had tried and it didn’t work. So we rented a regular house, in a regular town, and got regular jobs.

We had fun hosting full-moon potlucks and drumming by the fireside in our backyard, and we enjoyed living near our families who celebrated the arrival of our two boys. On the surface it was wonderful, but we both knew there was something else for us. We knew we could be better fulfilled. I had turned into a disgruntled stay-at-home mother, burnt out from endless care-giving and no intellectual outlet. He had turned proud business owner, giving his customers what they wanted: 60 hours a week, complaining about taxes and how little he saw his family. We rubbed our eyes and looked at each other: Is this really how our life turned out?

We asked ourselves hard questions and offered honest answers as we assessed our life. Did we even have a choice in the matter? Did life create us or did we create our life? We felt a bit lost and even stuck in our present situation, and yet there was something that kept us pressing on. There was that seed we had planted when we had met at age 17, when the world had seemed full of magic and possibility. Returning to those feelings – that anything was possible – kept us plugging along, reaching for better.

The more we talked about those early years, and the dreams we shared, the more the world seemed to smile on us. People started mentioning opportunities to us and books fell into our hands that inspired us. Without much effort we came across a town that sounded too good to be true, and after camping and exploring the area we found it to be a perfect match for us.

The more we followed this hopeful, feel-good path, the more the world smiled. And like magic, the steps continued to unfold effortlessly in front of us. We bought our first home in this new town with ease and almost instantly made more money on our purchase than we had ever had. Upon arrival my husband was easily able to support us by working fewer hours and doing more of the craft he loved. We sold our car because we could walk everywhere and soon our bodies became lean and strong. Our walks led us to wooded paths, hidden fruit trees and fairy gardens. We gifted each other instruments and started learning to play music together. We met friends in our neighborhood to share dinners and childcare, and we started buying and eating our food fresh from local farmers, supporting our local economy and our family’s health. Too good to be true? Or exactly the way we wanted!

This month marks our one year anniversary of our leap of faith into a new town, a new home and a new community, and we find ourselves continuing to fulfill our dreams. The craft my husband shares with our community works best in summer so he is home for the winter and I now have time for my interests. He is blossoming as a stay-at-home father and I am blissfully enjoying the space to explore my passions outside of mothering. We will switch back in the Spring, finding balance amongst family and personal interest, and continuing to dream big. Here I am: living a dream and fully awake.

Hillary is busy co-creating with her family and recently launched a family blog documenting their exciting adventures as urban homesteaders, do-it-yourself-ers, paradigm shifters and infinite learners. Bookmark them or subscribe at www.infinitelearners.com and watch the story unfold.

week three :: new digs & new eats

April 26, 2009 in chickens, dream big, farms + food by eringoodman | 3 comments

It was a big week in chicken world.

After a few too many “accidents” on the playroom floor (darn chickens with no bowel control), Mama decided it was time to move the chicks outside.

(Last year we did an intermediate move into the basement, but this year finding space for a wading pool in our ridiculously cluttered basement felt way too hard, so we went straight out to the barn.)

Conveniently enough, having not really cleaned up after last year, much of what we needed was waiting for us in the barn, a rustic two-stall structure that once housed horses and sheep and now provides shelter exclusively to winged friends - chickens, bats and barn swallows.

There were some challenges, the biggest being a tractor with a dead battery that prevented us from opening the stall door, but Mama impressed the kids with her tool-wielding ability by removing the stall door, thus giving us access to the empty stall.

Like last year, we used a hog panel to create a safe space for the baby birds to explore, but because we moved out two weeks earlier this year the tiny chicks looked absolutely lost in the giant stall,  so I cut open a large cardboard box and made a smaller enclosure within the pen. 

Once everybody was relatively settled in their new space, Lily, the ultimate mother hen, set to work to find worms for her babies.

You see, chickens are not vegetarians. Chickens love bugs and worms and the more of them that they eat the healthier they, and the eggs they will eventually produce, are.

{See Mother Earth News and eatwild.com for more info.}

So she did some digging.

And collecting.

Quinn was happy to jump in to help. 

And then Lil returned to her chicks with the “delicious, fat, juicy worms.” 

And we all hung out and watched our funny little friends running and scurrying and stealing each other’s worms. 

And then before heading inside, we wandered around our yard checking strawberry plants, and blueberry bushes (photo below) and raspberry canes for evidence of wonderful things to come.

We may not be official homesteaders just yet. And I know we don’t really live on a farm. But when I have a morning like this – a perfect morning where the kids and I happily work in the barn, side-by-side, celebrating our shared love of nature and animals and digging in the dirt – I feel so much closer to our dream.

upcoming events :: monthly mothers’ circle

April 8, 2009 in community, dream big, events by eringoodman | 4 comments

As many of you know, I led my first mothers’ retreat in January and in February John and I co-led our first partner yoga class at an evening of refreshment.

Both of these events were amazing, dream-come-true-experiences and the feedback I received (and continue to receive) has been overwhelmingly positive, and often followed by “So…what’s next?”

Huh. Good question.

I tried a couple of times to schedule another retreat, but the studio wasn’t available when I was, and then the flu ravaged our house for almost a month and the thought of trying to do anything besides just get through the days was completely overwhelming. And even after it passed and I went back to work and started thinking about planning the next “big” event, something didn’t feel quite right.

So, of course, I’ve been journaling and reflecting and discussing with close friends and I keep coming back to the word I chose as my focus for 2009: sustainability.

And for right now, while my children are still very young, organizing and hosting smaller, more informal events feels more comfortable and more sustainable.

So what I came up with is a monthly mothers’ circle, which will meet on the fourth Friday of the month, from 7:30-9 p.m. at Focus Yoga in East Greenwich, RI.

And I have decided to offer it by donation (so that all who want to can participate), as a drop-in event (because it’s so hard to plan in advance when you are a mom) and with “babies in arms” welcome (because that’s the only way I would have been able to attend an event like this when my children were infants).

I also have included in my advertising that although the intention of this circle is to create an oasis of peace and support for mothers, it is open to all who are called to the circle because that is what feels right in my heart.  

So there you go. Monthly mothers’ circles are what’s next for me. And I couldn’t be happier.

Mamaste!

exhale interviews :: tracy cook

March 6, 2009 in dream big, exhale interviews by eringoodman | 6 comments

As I get ready to create my third Treasure Map, and this year, for the first time, to host a Treasure-Mapping funshop, I thought it would be great to talk with Tracy Cook, the undisputable Queen of Treasure-Mapping, and get the full low-down on this amazingly powerful process and the fabulously inspiring woman behind it.

ebg: Before we get to Treasure-Mapping, can you tell us a bit about yourself and your family?

tc: I live in Los Angeles with my husband and seven year old son. My career has been primarily in the entertainment business-working as a television writer and producer. My husband also works in television and my son likes watching it.

What was your transition into motherhood like?
It was both very natural and very odd. “Natural” in that taking care of my son and nurturing him was instinctive. I almost could do it without thinking but at the same time I did not have my son until I was 43 so it was an odd to finally be doing something so natural and so instinctive after so many years of only producing and writing TV. Of course by that time I had been working in television for twenty on years so it was I guess also instinctive. But not as rewarding as motherhood, I promise you!

In what ways did you nurture your spirit, or “return to center” in the early months/years of parenting? In what ways do you do so now?
Ah, the return to center question. This is a big discussion among all moms, isn’t it? I think for me the smartest thing I ever did was move the center point. In the first years of my son’s life I still had this imaginary center point that said, “As soon as he is done nursing I will be able to get my life back.” Or “As soon as he goes to preschool” or “As soon as he does this or that” – of course the whole thing is a big joke because there is no ‘getting back’ to that life. That life is morte. Once I figured that out I learned to be grateful for a moment or an hour or a day where I could find myself. Sometimes by writing or connecting online through community boards or making a coffee date with a friend or going to a spa or my personal favorite watching a whole bunch of TOP CHEFs in a row. Thank god, my husband will give me that space.

What forms does education take in your family?
We are in public school. We looked and very much considered private but in the end we landed at a public school. My son is thriving there and the whole family has embraced the school community one hundred percent. It has been a lot of hard work and a lot of joy.

Okay! Now let’s talk Treasure Maps, shall we? First of all, for the benefit of exhale. return to center. readers who are new to Treasure-Mapping, could you give us a quick run down of exactly what a Treasure Map is?
A Treasure Map is simple. Do you remember when you were in 9th grade art class and your art teacher taught you how to make collages? You would cut out images and glue them onto cardboard and usually there was some kind of theme? Well, that basically is a Treasure Map. Except the difference is that the theme is all about one thing-YOU. Specifically, all of the images on your collage are the things that you want in your life for the next year. And this map is made during one time of the year, on the Aries New Moon. I learned about Treasure Maps from my old astrology teacher Buz Meyers who demanded we all make our first maps in 1996. My friends and I had immediate success with our Maps and then proceeded to do them every year. Sometimes the maps were more complicated than other years and some years are more fruitful than other years, but I never skip year.

This sounds like something many of us do when we set New Year’s intentions. Can you explain why the Aries new moon (March 26, 2009) is the best possible time to create Treasure Maps?
It is a lot like New Year’s intentions but as one who has done both, let me tell you, a Treasure Map is much more intense and much more productive. The reason why we do these maps on Aries new moon is because in Astrological terms, Aries is the first sign of the zodiac and the beginning of the real new year. I know when you look at the calendar January 1st looks the beginning of the new year but really Aries is the beginning. The sign Aries is associated with eyesight and there is something about needing to see something to make it so which is why we make Treasure Maps. With Aries you are riding the wave like a surfer. If you get on a surf board and paddle way off shore you can get on a wave and ride it all the way to shore. Maybe even miles. But if you get on a surfboard and go about ten feet from shore and try to get on the wave you will get thrown to the sand and crash into shore. The same can be said for Treasure Maps. If you build the Map on Aries new moon you get the whole astrological year to manifest your dreams and wishes. If you build your map in January or February you are sort of wasting your time. You are near the end of the wave and will be crashing on shore soon. So, that does not make a whole lot of sense. Ever since The Secret I have been seeing a lot of Vision Boards discussed on Television and cyberally and I don’t doubt they can be fruitful but my guess is that a lot don’t manifest much for the simple reason they are created at the wrong time of the year.

Do you have any favorite Treasure Map manifestation stories that you’d be willing to share with us?
Well, I think the very first map I made was one of my favorites. I have discussed this often when talking about Treasure Maps. The first map I made I made with my two other friends. We all gathered together and walked up the street to the newspaper stand, there we bought about a hundred dollars worth of magazines, marched back to my friend’s house and plowed through the magazines yelling out all kinds of things to one another.

“Hey, I found a diamond watch does anyone want it?” or “Oh, a BMW would be nice, anyone see one?” Of course, we also yelled out things about the celebrities that were in many of the magazines and I am pretty sure I bitched about everyone’s hideous Botox injections. But somewhere in the mix I found a great image of a guy on a sailboat. It was from a Ralph Loren Ad and there was something about the guy that I liked. Naturally, he was cute after all it was Ralph Loren ad but there was something more about his energy that I just picked up on. It was a confidence and a playfulness. (Gosh, now thinking about it, I am sure that the photographer had to work hard to get that impression because there were white caps behind the boat which means that the sea was a bit choppy and who can look confident in that?)

But anyway, the point of this long story is that the deal with Treasure Maps is that when you start a Treasure Map on Aries New Moon you will start to see results by Cancer New Moon (June/July). Well, at the end of May I met a guy on a job and by June we were traveling together for work and by July we started dating. That guy later became my husband. And my husband was then and now a sailor. His family is a member of a yacht club. He was just like my guy from my Treasure Map.

My friend who also built her map on that New Moon, put a huge diamond wedding ring on her map and a fabulous crown. She met the man who would be her husband within a month and he turned out to be a baron. Once they married she became a baroness. We of course all thought about her diamond crown on her first map!

Do you recommend making a Treasure Map with children? And if so do you have any tips on the process?
In terms of children I think it really depends on the mom. I mean I start my Treasure Maps with my girlfriends but I never finish them with them. It takes too much time and frankly I need all three days to get my map done. But somewhere along the line I encourage my son to make his own map. Usually, when I am still working on mine. I usually get some magazines and have him pick out images. I do help him a bit by telling him to draw something that he would do for fun at school or ask him to put down a place he would like to vacation. My husband makes his own map on his own time. Usually our house looks like an arts and crafts studio for about a week.

What’s the best way for people to be in touch with you and follow along with your work?
People can follow the rules to Treasure Maps by going to Margaret Wendt’s website where I post my new moon articles. About a week before March 26, I will put up the Aries Treasure Map article. Additionally, I am going to have a link to Treasure Maps on my own astrology blog.

Anything else you’d like to share with exhale. return to center. readers?
If for some reason your readers stumble upon Treasure Maps after March 26 but before Taurus New Moon, they should still make their maps. I like to have my map done within the first 3.5 days of New Moon but I know there are some people who need the whole waxing moon (first half of the lunar cycle) or some need the whole lunar phase (28 days). I encourage your readers to make their map if they are still in the window.

upcoming events :: treasure-mapping funshop!

March 4, 2009 in community, dream big, events, nurturing creativity by eringoodman | 3 comments

Here’s what I’m looking forward to this month…

 Treasure-Mapping funshop

with writer, artist, yoga teacher & RI Birth Network founder,

Erin Barrette Goodman

Thursday, March 26
6:30-8:30 p.m.
Clark Memorial Library, Richmond, RI

 What is a Treasure Map?

Created on the Aries New Moon, a Treasure Map is a collage of images and words all about you and the things, people, and experiences you would like to attract into your life. Come to this fun and relaxing evening funshop with and open mind and a creative spirit and start mapping out the treasure-filled life of your dreams!

Pre-registration required (call 364-6100).

Materials Fee: $5

PS…And don’t worry if you are not local, I have something for you too!

On Friday, I will share my interview with writer, mother, astrologer, and all-around inspiring woman, Tracy Cook, who has been leading people through the powerful Treasure-Mapping process online for over 10 years! 

 

guest blogs :: hillary boucher

February 13, 2009 in dream big by eringoodman | 1 comment

I first met Hillary through an online natural parenting discussion forum, where we connected over several common interests, especially our study of the law of attraction and desire to manifest the lives of our dreams. Over the years our friendship has grown as we have supported each other as mothers, writers, and gentle birth advocates, and it was such a great joy to finally connect with Hillary and her beautiful boys in person last fall at a mutual friend’s gathering.

 

I am so honored to share this space (for the first time ever!) with a woman who is a great inspiration to me, my wonderful friend, Hillary Boucher.

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Believing in Dreams :: by Hillary Boucher

We’ve always lived “outside the box.” Since meeting in high school, my husband and I have dreamed of a life free of jobs that were routine, dull or dissatisfying. People would tell us, “It only gets worse from here!” which horrified us in our youthful excitement about life and its possibilities. We wanted to live out our dreams on our own terms.

We were married in 2003 and immediately went to live on an organic medicinal herb farm, hoping to find our alternative lifestyle there. We learned a lot about ourselves and met many great friends and inspirational teachers. But it didn’t quite fit.

We returned to our hometown afterwards, a bit lost as to where and how we were going to find our niche, we started to question our dreams. Life was starting to seem a bit more like “the hard work” we had been lectured about in our school years. We didn’t want to “get ahead” or “climb the ladder” so to speak. We wanted to live within the rhythm of Nature; celebrating the change of seasons and staying aware of the cycles of the moon. We wanted to wake up and decide how our days would be, not be strapped to a paycheck, debt and a boss. But we had tried and it didn’t work. So we rented a regular house, in a regular town, and got regular jobs.

We had fun hosting full-moon potlucks and drumming by the fireside in our backyard, and we enjoyed living near our families who celebrated the arrival of our two boys. On the surface it was wonderful, but we both knew there was something else for us. We knew we could be better fulfilled. I had turned into a disgruntled stay-at-home mother, burnt out from endless care-giving and no intellectual outlet. He had turned proud business owner, giving his customers what they wanted: 60 hours a week, complaining about taxes and how little he saw his family. We rubbed our eyes and looked at each other: Is this really how our life turned out?

We asked ourselves hard questions and offered honest answers as we assessed our life. Did we even have a choice in the matter? Did life create us or did we create our life? We felt a bit lost and even stuck in our present situation, and yet there was something that kept us pressing on. There was that seed we had planted when we had met at age 17, when the world had seemed full of magic and possibility. Returning to those feelings – that anything was possible – kept us plugging along, reaching for better.

The more we talked about those early years, and the dreams we shared, the more the world seemed to smile on us. People started mentioning opportunities to us and books fell into our hands that inspired us. Without much effort we came across a town that sounded too good to be true, and after camping and exploring the area we found it to be a perfect match for us.

The more we followed this hopeful, feel-good path, the more the world smiled. And like magic, the steps continued to unfold effortlessly in front of us. We bought our first home in this new town with ease and almost instantly made more money on our purchase than we had ever had. Upon arrival my husband was easily able to support us by working fewer hours and doing more of the craft he loved. We sold our car because we could walk everywhere and soon our bodies became lean and strong. Our walks led us to wooded paths, hidden fruit trees and fairy gardens. We gifted each other instruments and started learning to play music together. We met friends in our neighborhood to share dinners and childcare, and we started buying and eating our food fresh from local farmers, supporting our local economy and our family’s health. Too good to be true? Or exactly the way we wanted!

This month marks our one year anniversary of our leap of faith into a new town, a new home and a new community, and we find ourselves continuing to fulfill our dreams. The craft my husband shares with our community works best in summer so he is home for the winter and I now have time for my interests. He is blossoming as a stay-at-home father and I am blissfully enjoying the space to explore my passions outside of mothering. We will switch back in the Spring, finding balance amongst family and personal interest, and continuing to dream big. Here I am: living a dream and fully awake.

Hillary is busy co-creating with her family and is about to launch a family blog documenting their exciting adventures as urban homesteaders, do-it-yourself-ers, paradigm shifters and infinite learners. Bookmark them or subscribe at www.infinitelearners.com and watch the story unfold.

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