Updated for 2025 — my journey has evolved since this blog began.

My Story: Finding Joy in Transition

Hi. I’m a mom who raised eight kids in a blended, beautifully chaotic family — now writing from the next chapter.

A legacy of big-family living, blended love, and the evolution of a Mother and a woman.

I’m no longer in the season of school lunches, holiday hosting, and full houses. I was when I started this blog in 2013. After posting here for a few months, life shifted. Work, family, and extracurricular activities took precedence.

I had no idea back then what kind of future this blog could have had if I’d stayed with it. It was after all 2013 the days that being a BLOGGER BOOMED!

The kids grew up.
We became grandparents.
We got divorced.
We learned how to co-parent.
I had my first solo summer — a full month without the kids.
I wrote poetry.
I traveled abroad alone.
I found love again.
The nest emptied.

And I became a woman who now lives out of a suitcase more often than a kitchen.

From Big Family Life to the Empty Nest: A Legacy of Honesty and Hope.

This blog now holds both the memories and the stories from the past. The wisdom and routines that kept us afloat, and the reflections that surfaced only after the noise quieted.  And the kids stepped into their own lives.

For deeper personal reflections and the writing that shaped my voice during that era, visit Writings of a Mrs, the blog where my thought pieces and poetry, past and present live. 

And for the chapter I’m living now — travel, pro-aging, grey hair, peri menopause, soul and reinvention — I write on Closer Lives. It is our Travel website. I also share on Closer Lives on life after transformation under A Broad Perspective and Embracing the Silver Lining

This blog, it’s motherhood from many angles and in many seasons — still full of heart, humour, and honesty — just written from wherever I am now in the world.

 2013 About Me, Updated for Relevance, left for Context:

Back in 2013, I created this blog as the “mommy blog” companion to Writings of a Mrs — my original home for poetry, thought pieces, and personal musings. Writings of a Mrs Mommy was always meant to be the practical side of that world: the recipes, the routines, the systems, the chaos, the laughter and the day-to-day life of raising eight children in a blended, beautifully busy home.

At the time, we had eight kids.
Adam was turning 6.
Nathan, the eldest, was almost 20 and had already moved out.
That left seven at home — four teenagers and three under ten — all in an eight-bedroom house buzzing with energy and noise.

I shared the parenting tricks that kept us sane, the bloopers and blunders that humbled us, the grocery bills that fed a small army, and the way we managed to travel, stay organized, renovate, and survive the madness with humor and love.

What I didn’t know then was that these two blogs — this one and Writings of a Mrs — would eventually become the foundation for Closer Lives. The platform where I now write about travel, pro-aging, gray hair, identity, and the woman I’ve grown into.

Those early years shaped me.
This chapter defines me.
And both belong here.