March 28, 2019 – the day we moved in!

Break out the bubbly and let’s celebrate! The ProckyFam has been on the coast for one whole year today! And what a year it’s been. I don’t think when we bought this home we expected to be self-isolating in it from a global pandemic while pregnant with our third child, but here we are. I know a lot of people are curious so I want to talk about how this move from the city to a smaller town has been for us, plus how we’re finding living in the community of Gibsons itself. Here’s what you need to know!

Our Family 

The hardest thing for me has been the lack of walkability in our neighbourhood. For the last decade I’ve had the luxury of living only a block from coffee shops, grocery stores, bars, and parks, and it has been a bit of an adjustment for me to give up that #strollerlife I was used to. It’s worth mentioning though that I still haven’t gotten my license so that could be contributing to some feelings of being housebound (oops! I was going to start lessons this spring but now I have to wait until the pandemic has passed). I have always preferred to walk to stores than drive though, so not being able to that is a bummer for me whether I have my license or not. We still walk up to the shops from time to time as there’s a trail that takes us to our local bars, bank, hardware stores, and grocers, but it’s a solid 25 min trail walk to get there (while pushing a double stroller) so I can’t say I do it daily.

That said, moving from a 722 sq ft condo with three small windows and no direct sunlight to our big rancher with massive south-facing windows has had a positive affect on my personal mental health that outweighs living in a walkable neighbourhood, at least for me. Having two young children in a small, dark space was deeply impacting my happiness and contributing to anxiety when we were living in our small condo. I got out of the house as often as I could and we lived only a block from a large, walkable riverfront park, but you just can’t beat having access to outdoor space at home. My life as a stay-at-home-mom has drastically improved with the added space in our home and our yard. I feel like I finally have room to be a separate person from my kids now that we’re not living on top of each other and the kids aren’t waking each other up with their cries at night (they used to share a wall and Wells was in our bedroom). I’ve had far less anxiety attacks in the last year than any years previous. I distinctly remember the way I felt for the first couple weeks and months of living on the coast last Spring. I had space, my kids had space, we no longer had to fight for parking spaces… it just felt like I could breathe easier. That feeling has become the norm for me now, to the point where when we drive back to the Lower Mainland again to visit I can feel my body physically tensing from the stress of busyness and traffic.

Our House and Neighbourhood

Despite the grief it has given us in the first year we LOVE the house we bought! Being homeowners of an actual house feels totally different to us from being homeowners of a condo with a strata, fees, and strict rules. The responsibility and learning curve has of course been massive and various things went “tits up” over the course of our first year (you can scroll through a bunch of our adventures on Instagram here, if you’re curious!). Despite all of the crazy shit we’ve had to deal with so far we’re so glad to be masters of our own domain. We love the layout of our home, the open floor plan, the massive kitchen, the deck area, and the spacious yard. We love having a guest room with an ensuite so we can host family and friends for extended stays! We love that it’s a rancher and we love that none of the bedrooms border each other so no crying babies ever wake up sleeping babies; this is a big win for parents who are about to have 3 kids under the age of 4!

When it comes to neighbours we hit the absolute jackpot. The family across the street has two girls close to our kid’s ages who are always happy to come over and play (plus their yard has slides, a swing, a trampoline, a sand pit, and a zipline, plus a fully stocked beer fridge so…). We’ve known our neighbours for less than a year but they’ve happily leant us tools, trucks, and lawnmowers. When Tom totalled our only vehicle last summer after hitting a deer the family across the street gave us their SUV for two weeks while we looked for a new one (we have since bought a truck and were able to repay the favour for a few months when one of their vehicles died!). When we first moved in people stopped by with planters full of local beer and batches of fresh cookies still warm from the oven. A few months ago we found a pristine booster seat on the doorstep and still don’t know who left it there. These are the kinds of neighbours that come by with fresh produce when their garden is overproducing butter lettuce, who come over with hot dogs and beer when we’re around the fire, and who bring their tool belt over when Tom’s out of town and I’m stuck on a DIY, the kind of neighbourhood where we order pizzas to the front yard in the summertime and eat them while the kids ride their bikes in the street. The kind of neighbourhood where my friend across the street had a way more excited reaction than Tom when I told her I was pregnant, haha. When we first moved in I thought we had gotten particularly lucky but I’ve since met so many people on the coast who have said the same thing about their own neighbourhood that I’m starting to think it’s just how coast neighbourhoods are.

The Coast Community

The cons first. There is good food here but anyone who has come from the city would undoubtedly miss the diversity of culinary options there. I miss middle eastern food sooo bad. In Gibsons we have fantastic Mexican food, sushi, pizza, pubs and breweries, a Greek place, a bomb Italian place, coffee shops, donuts, and some hole-in-the-wall diners, but I would definitely sponsor someone to come open up a Lebanese restaurant (Nuba, anyone?). Another con is that if you’re moving here from the lower mainland the parks on the coast are going to seem absolutely pitiful to you. There are some great ones but nothing that comes close to comparing to something like Queens Park in New West (and since there are water bans in effect here for the hotter summer months, the one water park is turned off when it gets hot anyway).

That doesn’t mean there’s a shortage of things for your kids to do, though; there are many beaches on the coast and in Gibsons any of them are only a few minutes drive away. Parents here take their kids to the local trails, the mountain bike park, the beaches, library drop-ins, Strong Start programs and other drop-in programs, some of which even provide excellent free meals for parents and kids (most I’ve seen are free or $2 if you want to sneak off and leave your kids for a little bit to do a workout).

A supposed con that turned out to be not an issue is the postal system. I was told when we moved here that Amazon deliveries to the coast would take about 11 days to arrive and that they would never come to our door, but most Amazon deliveries we’ve ordered have come in 3-4 days and come straight to our door every time (only one Amazon delivery went to the post office in the last year because it was super oversized). It’s not the same day delivery we enjoyed when we lived in the same city as the Amazon warehouse but we don’t mind at all; instant gratification probably isn’t good for people anyway (and before anyone roasts us about using Amazon, please note that we try to support small, local businesses whenever we’re able, but sometimes availability and price on the coast necessitate buying stuff from a large corporation).

When it comes to the Coast community though, by far what has made us the most sure that this move was the right choice has been the people and the welcoming nature of the community itself (though of course the rugged coastline views don’t hurt either!). We lived in a condo for a year and never met any of our neighbours. The community in Gibsons looks out for one another in a way I know we would never see in a larger city setting. It’s very easy to meet people because you see the same people are town at the beach, at preschool drop-off, at the coffee shop, and especially at events like the summer night market which brings out pretty much everyone. While it’s easy to meet people, we’ve found it a bit tougher to really make friends, but we have only been here a year and know good friendships take time to form (not to mention we’ve been so busy with our house this past year it hasn’t left much time for anything else!). The winters can be a little isolating socially, as with any community, but invitations to deck hangs, beach hangs, boat trips, and BBQs abound in the spring and summertime. It’s been really fun getting to know a ton of new people.

Another amazing thing we’ve found about the coast is the sheer willingness to help others. I’ve seen the community jump at the chance to help a stranger move, lend their truck, drop off firewood to a family who is running low, donate supplies to a new mom, run to the pharmacy for someone who is housebound, or deliver soup to someone who is sick (last week I posted on Instagram about having a craving for cinnamon buns but no yeast and there was a cinnamon bun on my doorstep the next day). We have a community FB page dedicated solely to delivering groceries to those in quarantine right now on the coast. Local businesses and breweries are delivering groceries and supplies free of charge right now and it feels like anyone who asks for help will receive it. It’s amazing to see the community really pull together through this global crisis but honestly, people here have been helping others since long before the pandemic started.

We have truly enjoyed our first year here and are so hopeful about our family’s future in Gibsons! The Coast is proving to be a wonderful place to raise a family.

I’ve long considered myself to be a #mindfulmama but so far I haven’t spoken much on here about what that means or how it translates into daily life with my kids. The concept of mindfulness is simple even if the practice is less easy to implement; to be mindful is just to be present without judgement. This can feel counter-intuitive for us for two reasons: most of us suck at being present and suck at not judging, particularly when it comes to ourselves. These same two points that make mindfulness so difficult for most of us also make them important lessons for us to learn.

With constant access to technology literally at hand, being present just isn’t something that most of our generation excels at. Personally, I have often struggled to curb my penchant for always looking forward to the “next best thing” and just be in the moment. It’s hard not to think “when I meet the right person…” or “when I get a new job…” or “when I lose this weight…” or “when my baby is older…” or ” when my kids are in school full time…” or “when we have a little more money…” but this line of thinking pulls us right out of the joy that exists where we are right now (for anyone currently struggling with this, consider starting a gratitude journal and jotting down a few things you’re grateful for at the end of each day, it has helped me so much!).

The second reason that mindfulness can be hard for us is because is trains us to see without judgment when judgment has become so ingrained in our psyches. From a young age we tend to judge and compare, from schoolyard bullying to online trolls to seemingly harmless stuff like the “Who Wore It Best?” articles in magazines. We have a tendency to want to conform to the norm rather than celebrate our differences, but for many of us the harshest judgment is self-imposed. When mindful practices ask us to be present without judgment, the goal is to really see what’s happening and to refrain from criticizing or even categorizing what we see.

So what does this look like? It’ll be difference for all of us but for me, practicing mindfulness in my day has a lot to do with my inner dialogue. On my most anxious days I might spiral quickly, thinking, “I’m having a hard day with the kids. Their misbehaving means that I’m failing as a mother because I can’t keep them happy. I don’t know why I ever thought I could do this. Tom should leave me for someone more capable.” (I know, what?). If I’m able to be mindful instead and withhold judgment of myself I can be gracious with myself and keep my thoughts from escalating. I might think, “I’m having a hard day with the kids. They’re at difficult ages right now and I’ve been exposed to a lot of overwhelming news stories lately. I feel anxious and impatient.” This simply gives voice to where I’m at and provides clarity without trying to problem solve. If you know you need to make a change like turning off the news, putting away your phone, or going outside, of course you can, and that’s a great idea. But being mindful doesn’t necessitate solutions, it’s more about noticing where you are in the moment and just being okay with it. Which I think we could all use a little more of these days!

For me mindfulness practice is especially important during the time of Corona because ruminating about the future is anxiety-inducing at the moment. Normally I revel in thinking ahead and making plans but there’s just so much uncertainty right now that it’s easier to focus on enjoying the present moment instead. I have definitely had many (many!) moments of exasperation but all in all I’m grateful to be home with my two oblivious children. The blissful, unconcerned way they continue to play and fight and demand snacks has been a refreshing dose of normalcy for me and has kept me grounded in an unexpected way, reminding me that what’s truly important during this frankly weird time is hanging out with the people I love most.

“Mindfulness means paying attention in a particular way: on purpose, in the present moment, and non-judgmentally. This kind of attention nurtures greater awareness, clarity, and acceptance of the present-moment reality. It wakes u up to the fact that our lives unfold only in moments If we are not fully present for many of those moments, we may not only miss what is most valuable in our lives but also fail to realize the richness and the depth of our possibilities for growth and transformation.” – Jon Kabat Zinn

I need to tell you something that makes me feel embarrassed so I’m gonna rip the bandaid off right away and then I can freely dig into the ‘why’. Here it is: I want to grow my Instagram following and blog.

I know, maybe not what you were expecting. The reason it feels embarrassing to me is because I don’t want people to think I’m over here “trying to be an influencer”. I’m not interested in buying followers (yes, that’s a thing you can do!) or trading likes for likes so that I can sell you shit. I’m not interested in making money by perpetuating a false image of motherhood and posting only picture-perfect poses of my children. What I am interested in is building connection and community and here’s why.

The first time I really started using this space to try and foster connection was when I was in the throes of colic and medical drama with Hennie. My first experience of motherhood had me baffled; I had truly never experienced a feeling of isolation quite like during that time. I felt so resentful toward the internet and all of the perfectly staged sleeping babies I had seen throughout my pregnancy. Why was no one was being honest about how hard the postpartum phase could be? We couldn’t get our baby to stop screaming, let alone fall asleep for one of those sleeping-baby photos and I felt completely alone in my experience. The moms I knew in my real life were having a hard time adjusting to their new lives postpartum too, but they weren’t traumatized. Slowly I stopped seeing friends and family, stopped going out of the house. When Hurricane Hennie (what we called her colic phase) had fully passed almost a year later I finally posted about how bad the colic had been and immediately received comments from women who said they had struggled with colic, too. Why wasn’t anybody posting about this, I wondered. I hadn’t been able to find many moms on the internet who were portraying an authentic view of motherhood so I decided to become one for the next round of new moms who would end up searching the colic hashtag on Instagram at four in the morning, not having slept yet, searching for just one person who understood their distress and guilt at being unable to calm their own baby. “I survived!” I would be able to tell them, “and you will too. I promise.” Then I would send them the list of 42 things we had tried for Hennie’s colic that hadn’t worked and probably wouldn’t work for their babies, either (you gotta try though, just to feel like you’re doing something).

You know that quote that says “be who you needed when you were younger”? Well North West Jess became my attempt at being who I needed in that first year of motherhood, colic and all.

Of course, trying to portray an authentic view of motherhood doesn’t mean that I’m constantly complaining or that I’m ungrateful for my lot in life (as a coupla judgey DMs accused me of back in the day). There’s a lot to celebrate in my life and I’m always doing my best to choose gratitude over grumbling. But when we omit those inevitable dark, ugly, angry, or messy times from the conversation (and our feeds!) we run the risk of sending the message to new mamas that those times don’t exist  at all and that it’s wrong if you’re experiencing them. In meditation you’re encouraged to quiet your mind not by ignoring intrusive thoughts but acknowledging them and letting them pass through you without holding onto them. This has been my aim in my portrayal of motherhood as well – not to dwell on or ignore the hardships that come along with having kids but to acknowledge them and let them pass without holding them until they make me bitter. There is more in parenthood that unites than divides us and our acknowledgement of and reaction to hardship can be something that contributes to our ability to find connection, community, and common ground.

Through my blog posts about colic, Noonan Syndrome, and all of the more common ailments and milestones of motherhood from teething to sleep regressions to pelvic floor dysfunction I’m able to connect with other moms and say to them “I hear you. I understand you. I’ve been there and it gets easier” and sometimes that’s all we need to hear in order to feel less isolated in our experience.

So there it is: my hopes and dreams for this space. A group of parents who feel supported and encouraged, who can speak freely about their troubles and joys without feeling the need to filter their experiences before presenting them to the world. I promise I will always portray my own truth just as it is, answer your questions honestly, cheer you on through the easy parts and help you carry the weight of the harder ones. I hope you’ll stick around.

I’ve been having a really difficult time lately trying to decide where I want to put my energy and how I want to grow this next year. I’ve been reading some great self-help books that have helped me hone in on the “how” of goal-setting, the only problem is that I can’t figure out which goals to set! Today I realized that I’m trying to harness all of my hopeful, positive January energy into looking ahead before I’ve done the work of looking back to see what I learned last year.

Why Is This Important? I love goal-setting and I really, really love planning ahead. In fact, I’ve learned that planning makes me feel grounded and stable and when something happens that I cannot plan for I feel untethered and anxious. But when we go ‘full speed ahead’ with planning and don’t stop to make sure we’re still going in the direction we wanna go we can end up wildly off course. Without looking back to see if we met the last goals we set – or if they’re even still relevant to our long term vision! – we lose the ability to make sure we’re still on the right track.

How To Do This? Easy. Make a list of the big moments and analyze what worked and didn’t work for you. The most important part: reflect on WHY they worked (or didn’t!) and the lessons you can learn from the outcome. Why do you think that one business venture failed? What did you learn from that failure? Why was something else such a success? Did you learn from that outcome too, or just celebrate it? This is the time to dive deep and do the work so you can set smarter goals for the next season of your business / mental health / family finances / fitness / whatever it is you want to work on or make slight changes to. To jog your memory you can look back over journal entries, blog entries, Instagram posts, your day timer… wherever you chronicle important information or share successes and failures. You could ask your therapist to work through it with you or talk it through with a partner or close friend. For me writing is therapy, so I re-read my journals from the last year. This didn’t take long since I started the year with a five month old who had just learned to crawl, but a few key things still stuck out. Since emotions and reactions are the chaos I need to learn to harness in my life I’ve decided to look at the emotions behind some of the biggest milestones in my year and see how I dealt with them. Hopefully in that way I can learn from my successes and use my failures to shine a light on potential new goals.

A Big Move (aka Big Stress) We started the year by moving into my dad’s house so we could start the process of selling our condo. This became a huge stressor for me from January through to late March when we got possession of our new place. We moved out so we could properly stage and show our condo and in the meantime we found our dream home on the coast and put an offer in subject to sale. We quickly sold our condo but it fell through at the last minute due to the buyer’s financing. A week later we sold it again but it fell through again. The third time was the charm, thankfully, and both our sale and our purchase were finalized. Sounds quick and easy when I tell it like that but spending a few months not knowing where we’d end up was overwhelming for me. What I learned about myself: I tend to get emotionally invested in things extremely quickly and don’t fare well when I can’t plan for something specific so I lost a ton of sleep during this time. During the wee hours one night I downloaded a 30 day trial of the Calm app and, happily, it automatically took my annual payment before I could cancel. That app and the sleep stories and meditations it has provided me this year have saved my sanity so many times. I learned how well my mind responds to meditation and how necessary it is that I make time for a few moments (or half an hour) of focus in order to achieve a calmer, less anxious headspace for the whole day. I had always suspected that meditation would be worth it for me but had never looked into it so I’m grateful for that stressful phase at the beginning of the year for forcing me to find a coping mechanism that worked for me.

Adjusting to Two Kids (aka Big Burnout) the “fourth trimester” is generally considered to be the toughest time with a new baby but for our family the entire first year is generally pretty tumultuous. Living out of someone else’s house, even when it’s a family member, and then navigating a massive move with two needy children was tough. Many days were super fun and full of hope for our new home and community but it was also isolating and full of unknowns as well.  What I learned about myself: I thrive when I operate within a predictable routine and I have difficulty during times of transition. If I had known this earlier I could have prepared for the emotional upheaval that I would have known would be imminent as we entered our first year with two kids while planning a massive move to a completely new community that we had never been to. In general I handled things pretty well but in 2020 I know I can do a better job to adjust my expectations for big transitional times (like back-to-school) and prepare more to help myself deal.

Our Trip to the UK (aka Big Anxiety) by far the toughest part of the year for me emotionally was our trip to the UK in June. I’ve actually been meaning to write about it since, well, June, but seven months later the thought of that trip still makes my heart palpitate (not because of England by the way, which I’ve visited 8 times now, or my in-laws, who are absolutely wonderful). I know that this may sound utterly ridiculous to many of you seasoned travellers (I was an enthusiastic and flexible traveller before I had kids, by the way!) but it’s just my truth. Our kids are not Kids Who Travel Well, it would seem, and while the stress and anxiety of parenting our kids is easy for me to handle within the confines of an established routine and home environment it is very tough for me to manage so far outside of that space. I very much envy those “fly by the seat of their pants” type of people. What I learned about myself: I was completely overwhelmed, almost distraught most days and unfortunately my in-laws and my husband’s friends saw me at my absolute worst. To give a visual, let’s say that normally I wake up with my latent anxiety at a 1 or 2 out of 10. Through breath-work, meditations, and respecting my own boundaries I can keep it at that level which works for me as it’s hardly on my mind at all. On a bad day I might wake with it around a 3-5 and need to do more serious work to expel my anxious thoughts or feelings, like getting away from the kids and going for a nice long run. By contrast, every day that we were in the UK dealing with jetlag and illness I woke with my anxiety already at a 9 or 10. I guess what I’ve learned the most from it has been the massive failure of my inability to cope. While I’ve spent a lot of time working on tools for handling my anxiety these past few years I’m clearly not equipped to handle it at that level, nor do I have a single clue where to start. Perhaps this offers a good insight into where my emotional focus for the new year should be.

Settling In (aka Big Gratitude) looking at my inner mindset over the last year there was one big change that only I could feel, and that was gratitude (yay!). After months in survival mode after moving with a baby and a toddler it was quite a while before I felt like the smoke had cleared in our lives and we had settled in. I found myself feeling isolated, irritated, and annoyed so often that I didn’t have any energy left to notice that the joy outweighed it all. By forcing myself to document the best part of my day, every day, I trained my brain to start looking for the good stuff rather than the bad. Over the course of the year I felt a deep-rooted shift in my perspective but I know I can still do better.  What I learned about myself: Only I can make the changes I want to make and even small changes can yield massive results. This 10-second activity of writing down the best part of the day before I go to bed has saved me many times before. Our whole lives are our habits; if we’re always looking at the bad we won’t have time to see the good, but with work habits can be changed. My gratitude journal is definitely a practice I want to continue in the new year.

My biggest takeaway from doing this self-imposed introspective deep-dive is that whether I handled a difficult time well or terribly, I tried to learn from it. I have often felt this year that since I don’t have a “real job” I was just stagnating. I have had a lot of energy to burn this year but without a career to put that energy into I felt a bit lost. After reflecting on the emotional gains and lessons learned in 2019 I can see that in fact it was a big year of growth for me, just in my mind and heart rather than in my job. As a deeply emotional person I think it has been necessary growth for me but I’m beyond excited to channel some of my energy into writing and career opportunities in the coming year. I’m working on a separate post detailing how and why I hope to grow the NorthWestJess community so stay tuned!

We’re well into the holiday season and I’m surprised to be feeling so chill about things. I know it’s still early but I don’t feel stressed or spread-too-thin like I usually do by this time in December. It’s our first Christmas on the coast and there’s a lovely slower pace of life here to begin with, but the absolute madness that accompanies any holiday activity in a big city is absent here and it feels like it actually is the most wonderful time of the year (after summertime, of course). Here are a couple extra things I’ve been doing (or not doing!) that help get us through December without feeling like we’re starting the new year at a major energy deficit.

Mindfully Avoid Sources of Stress: this has helped me a lot. It’s tough to seek calm and avoid chaos if you don’t know which things trigger stress reactions for you. Spend a few minutes thinking about the activities, events, or people that usually make you feel overwhelmed or overstretched during the holidays – this will look different for each of us, of course! Keep in mind that there’s good chaos and bad chaos; some things are inconvenient but unavoidable (busy parking lots, holiday traffic, crowded malls) and some things might make us feel the kind of negative, out-of-control stressed that is harder to recover from. Once you’ve identified the key things that set off your stress/anxiety during the season you can decide if you should try to manage them or if it’s best to avoid them completely. Life is too short to do tons of stuff you don’t feel like doing so if you hate Santa photos, don’t have the energy for Elf on the Shelf, don’t worry about it. If parking at a busy mall gives you a panic attack before you even get inside, shop online. If you have a shitty friend or a toxic family situation, consider staying home to create your own meaningful traditions. Craft the perfect holiday season based on exactly what your family needs in order to make lasting memories.

Focus on the Magic and Forget the Rest: what makes the season special for your family? Is it Santa? Jesus? Giving back to others? Long overdue family time? Sometimes we get hung up on the small stuff during the holidays and don’t even give ourselves the time to step back and realize it’s not as important as we thought. Many of us are probably guilty of stressing over cooking a big meal when the most important aspect of the night is spending time with those we’re cooking for, or finding the “perfect” gift for someone when the season isn’t actually about the gifts. Putting some of our priorities into perspective can shift the vibe and help us chill out about those little things, like the kids refusing to wear their matching sweaters or the stuffing getting a little too crispy. When in doubt, make like Elsa or Anna or whatever (I haven’t seen Frozen yet) and let it gooooo… nobody’s gonna remember that stuff, anyway!

Keep Expectations for Kids Super Low: some kids do pretty well attending an onslaught of social functions and fun activities over the course of December but even the most extrovert kids I know need to recharge at home between all of the festivities. Lights, crowds, and a full day of sugary treats make even adults feel a little nuts and our kiddos get even more overstimulated (and then we feel frustrated with them when they have an epic meltdown; “they don’t normally do this!” …well you don’t normally skip their nap, give them a hot chocolate and then expect them to sit on a weird stranger’s lap either, Susan. Use your brain). Of course it’s okay for them to have a late bedtime once in a while so they can catch the magic of the Santa Parade or go carolling but often I find that framing the fun stuff around established nap times and routines helps my kids to enjoy those activities more fully because they have more energy (not to mention every time our family scrimps on sleep we all get sick!). But like I said, you know your kids best. Mine are very young and get overtired pretty quickly so keeping big events short and sweet (and then slinking off early to watch a Christmas movie on the couch in our jammies) works well for us! Other families I know try to keep just one big activity or family visit per day in their schedule so they aren’t driving around to multiple cities to cram too much in. Do what works for you!

A Word about Consent: just a friendly reminder that there are a lot of ways for your kids to say hello/goodbye to their relatives or thank them for a gift that don’t involve physical touch. Some children are naturally affectionate but some (like mine!) have a large bubble of ‘personal space’. If your child doesn’t want to hug or kiss their relatives you have a perfect opportunity to teach them about consent and show them that you respect their boundaries. There are a ton of articles online discussing this point if you’re interested in reading more but I find it helpful to consider this during the holidays.

Mindful Seasonal Traditions You Can Start: picking out a Christmas tree, decorating the tree, making cookies for family or neighbours, making a meal for the local shelter, choosing toys and coats to donate (both new and used), DIYing a garland from yard clippings (go ‘foraging’ first to find pinecones, berries, etc), making Christmas playdough (try using peppermint extract or pumpkin spices!), advent calendars (so many ideas on Pinterest), stamping kraft paper to use to wrap gifts (did you know that wrapping paper isn’t recyclable?), having a bonfire (don’t forget hot chocolate!), writing a Christmas story together, cooking something new for dinner, salt dough ornaments, Christmas colouring sheets, letting the kids pick out small gifts for their siblings, bundling up and going to the beach…there’s so much you can do during the day with kids in the winter! What would you add?