Hello!

Hi there. My name is Emily, and I'd like to document the journey that our family has begun, toward a healthier, happier, simpler life. A life that is lovely and comfortable not because of the money we spend to make it that way, but because of the work we do, the time we take and the love we share.

For some years I worked feverishly, convinced that earning more money would somehow free me. Not because I was obsessed with money, but because I thought that a lot of money would free me to go the places I wanted and do the things I wanted. It would give my children experiences, and make my home beautiful, it would put delicious food on our plates and amazing photographs in our family albums. I thought that a great life just wasn't cheap, and I was prepared to work to earn the money to create that great life for our family.

I saw it as a healthy pursuit.

But as years passed and I found my tears pooling on my desk almost nightly, I finally realized that none of this was working. I was tired, I was overwhelmed and I was missing out on the joy that life can hold.

When my son turned 9 years old I flippantly said, "Well, I'm halfway done." And the sound of those words shocked me. I'M HALFWAY DONE. Halfway done raising my only son.

Those words pushed me toward a change. I knew that pushing myself to the farthest reaches of my own capabilities wasn't working. I knew that my idea of my priorities, and my actual priorities were not aligning. It's easy to say that family is number one, it's another thing to realize that your business (and clients, and meetings, and deliveries) are really number one.

Of course there are many more layers to our story, and I look forward to sharing all of them, as time passes. The journey that began as an idea, when my son turned 9, is now my daily pursuit. A daily pursuit that I work toward in positive directions sometimes, and I leap far away from, other times.

Today that 9 year old boy is an 11 year old young man, his sister is 9-going-on-10, and the great downsizing of our life has truly come to fruition. No really. It has. Folks, this past weekend, I started a COMPOST bin.

But welcome, to a little place where I hope to share the little things I've learned since I moved on from a life as an overworked mom, to a life where I have the time and energy to pursue simple abundances every day.