Project Home & Healing
This page of resources belongs to the Wife Mother Writer Resource Library.
In 2014 our family took on a huge project: we thru-hiked the Appalachian Trail together. The story of that hike is told in our video series and bits and pieces were shared here on the blog. It was a life changing family adventure but also very difficult for me on many levels. Our adventure came on the heels of a three year spell of international and inter-provincial moves, a switch to self-employment, and living in a different culture.
As a security-seeking, routine-loving homebody I ended our Appalachian Trail hike burnt out and drained from the physical, emotional and mental demands of our journey. This reality combined with a family history of anxiety and depression and personal experience with two bouts of mild depression necessitates a roadmap to recovery. That is what this project is.
- High Summer ~ The Return of Moxie - I feel the most grounded and secure; emotionally healthy and vital that I've been in five years, maybe longer.
- Searching for vision in my vocation - I didn't have a clear vision but maybe vision is overrated, and it was more important to just "do stuff", or maybe I would find one through bumbling around.
- Forty - I rediscovered who I really am, in a sense I returned to my roots, I re-found my identity in the wholeness of Jesus.
- October - I find my groove in our new home and community and return to my roots for a wedding celebration.
- Summer Stories ~ Fashion and Beauty - I've underestimated and undervalued the restorative, healing, and life-giving power of feeling beautiful.
- The summer I made sushi - Life's trials don't stop for summer but so much about this summer felt like healing to me.
- Mid-Summer and settling in to Montreal - I don't know if this is the breakthrough I've been seeking, or just a reprieve, but something's mending here.
- Facing my writing anxiety - For a while now writing has made me anxious, today I'm engaging that anxiety.
- Summer Check-In - It's just life, and life for me this summer, at least so far, doesn't involve a lot of writing.
- Blogging through a mid-life crisis - I may not know exactly who I am right now and what I want to do with my life but there's no reason to throw the baby out with the bathwater; i.e. make rash decisions about the blog.
- Hard Stuff - A week of new marital honesty and looking into dark corners I hadn't yet dared to go.
- Moving to Montreal - It's another adventure, but it's an adventure where security is as important as freedom.
- The Structure of Project Home & Healing - The outline and structure for my year long project.
- Middle March: rewriting the script - This winter proved to me that "I struggle through winter" does not need to be the only reality or option for me moving forward.
- 10 more weeks of winter (a Project Home & Healing update) - A Project Home & Healing outline and early winter update.
- Project Home & Healing: The Kitchen Table - The Kitchen Table is an email group I'm leading in conjunction with Project Home & Healing.
- Year of the Fallowed Field - My two life themes for 2015 are to heal and lie fallow.
- My heart lives here - When I came home from our hike all battered and bruised inside, questioning my worth, I looked at these children as a remembrance of what I have accomplished and what I value.
- Redecorating the tree - There is a return this season, winter of all seasons, to loving me.
- How the light gets in - A breaking allows the light to illuminate the truth of the matter.
- Checking in - I need to write my way to understanding and discovery. I need to write my way to healing.
- Already laid bare - After a season of steadily moving moving north, and before that a hyperdrive season of getting ourselves south, this fall and winter I am staying put and slowing down.
- For Thanksgiving - Returning to my roots - to music, relationships and family history - is part of my post-hike wellness strategy.
- The beach at high tide - Enjoying the beauty of nature and being with my kids in the amazing outdoors.
- An unraveling of sorts - I am doing what comes naturally to me, what I am strong at, and feel confident in: creating a structure to help me solve a problem.
- Where I'm at - A post-hike breakdown precipitates the need for a healing journey.
