Vanpacking - my newest business venture

'Ello, Loves! ♥

I don't know if you know yet that I have been leveraging our vanpacking adventures to find a way to empower families to live more self-directed lives, by growing a business that revolves around helping families live road bliss more - be that full-time, part-time, road trips, day trips, whatever. If folks want to live on the road, I want to help them spend more time on it :)

I have started making videos as both "how to"s and "how we"s + I am now offering road trip bliss mentorship. Also, I am working on some sort of self-paced e-book/e-course type product! Wahoo!!

It is incredibly exciting to be sharing more of our life with interested folks, and inspiring the next waves of families who want to live on the road, or even helping folks already on the road live more bliss (through helping them through the learning curves), which I have done for several mamas :))

I am still new at making videos, and I hope they will always feel cozy and easy - a reflection of our life on the road -, but I also look forward to learning more about how to make the videos and maybe invest in some video editing apps or software to make them more informative + professional-like :) Wahoo!!!!!! for new learning opportunities :)

I have been on quite a journey with our gypsy status so far this year, from preparing to launch my gypsy caravan subscription on New Year's to a couple days later having CPS telling us we HAD to live in a house due to my daughter's new-onset diabetes, and everything in-between since.

We have lived on my mom's farm with goats and dreamed big homestead dreams, and we have celebrated our 3-year Nomadiversary back in our van.

I had the suspicion that we could live very safely on the road with her new diagnosis, and I am so grateful to have found a diabetic specialist (an endocrinologist WITH type 1 diabetes) who affirmed that completely. People with type 1 diabetes do AMAZING + INCREDIBLE things everyday - this is not a life sentence to misery, but an opportunity to get more creative + care for our family in new and exciting ways.

My littlest LOVES our road life, and THAT is our barometer - not an outside source who doesn't know what they are talking about. 

Having said that, we are excited about the gyspy-homestead hybrid lifestyle we are leaning heavily toward right now. This was another reason I was questioning my gypsy status. Until I had an awakening that resonated YESSSSSS so deeply:

I will always be a gypsy, regardless of whether we have a hOMebase.

Because we will always be planning our next road life experience. We will always be free to move in the ways we feel called. Being a gypsy is about way more than whether we are in a house sometimes or not - we embody the depth + wholeness of the lifestyle and way of being. We are always open to change.

Not to mention, historically + globally, nomads/gypsies hunker down for the colder months and whenever their needs call them to. That doesn't make any of us less a gypsy.

As soon as I had that realization, the business ideas just started flowing through me.

So, this week, I shared videos about how we have made our van our hOMe - we shared videos about picking the right vehicle, our bed, privacy, storage, and personalization.

Next week I will be sharing videos about "stuff" - what we take with us, what's in our storage, what we got rid of, how that process worked for us, and how we keep it down to simplicity (aka organization + constant simplifying).

I have at least 7 more weeks full of ideas, and I welcome ideas for more videos/themes.

If you want to follow these videos, you can either subscribe to my YouTube channel, or if you are on Facebook, you can "like" + follow my Gypsy-Om page, where I post the videos each day, along with other gypsy-esque stuff :)

And it doesn't stop there.

Seeing how crystal-clear it is to grow a successful business from this Vanpacking stuff helps me see more clearly how I can finally grow a successful business from my other Life Design stuff that I want to offer. I realized (again) that that is what it all basically boils down to for me... Life Design. I am all about it. I am fierce about living it, and I am thrilled to help others do it.

The world needs more blissful people in this world. It creates the kind of magic that I want to live + live around.

Wow, I could seriously talk about that ALL DAY.

Anywaysies. SO.

I hope you enjoy the informational videos + ones like this:

 

All my love,

Our 3 Year Nomadiversary

Yes, Darlings. 3 years!!

Thanks to Timehop (an app that shows me all the pictures I took with my iphone + Facebook statuses/pictures I shared on that date every year in the past), I have been watching with anticipation as my own journey from a house onto the road unfolded.

I was able to see and semi-relive (or at least remember) some big parts of that journey.

Plus things that happened in other years around this time. This seems to be a special time of year where I feel drawn toward movement and making things happen. Mmmhmmmm.

I find it interesting that, currently, we are in a place in our life where we are so ready to transition back into a house and travel only part time.

I would see posts about my frustration about getting onto the road, and I feel solidarity with my past self in frustration trying to get into a house now.

This has been an incredible journey.

My baby has lived on the road longer than she has lived in a house - I love that fact :))

We have had QUITE a journey, full of adventures. We have done things I never thought we would do. We have experienced way more than I ever expected.

The road life has completely transformed us, as a family, as individuals.

We have met the most incredible people and seen the most beautiful landscapes.

We have lived a kind of simplicity + abundance that is unique to back-packing type travel.

I feel like a seasoned road-liver now. We can officially turn in our amateur status and get the cool badges :D

Even though we are looking for a house as a hOMebase, we will always be gypsies at heart. We will always be planning our next trip. We will always be road-dreaming. We will be finding excuses to take daytrips and roadtrips. I am not going to stop advocating for families to be able to fulfill their road dreams by considering vanpacking.

In fact, I am going to be getting more serious about this, by sharing videos about how we do it, to help families see it as a possibility, and to get through the learning curve a little easier.

I have been having some technical difficulties, so I am limited in pictures I can share with you to the last year, but here is a little collage that captures the gypsy om of this little bliss life.

 

Sending much bliss to you, Love!

Nova

on healing

Hello, Loves ♥

The last few weeks have been a special kind of magic.

It started off really hard. And there are times when I still get really angry about the injustice of it all.

But we returned to our old community, and the deep thorough healing began.

Healing begins with creating space for it.

And surrounding oneself with an environment that supports + facilitates healing.

And being in our old space did just that.

Seeing my kids in their old parks and other hangouts.

It's like we slid into an old familiar groove. A groove of a life we loved.

Like training wheels.

Bumpers on either side of balance, to keep us closer to center.

Bringing us back to our path, back to a place we can regrow from.

And it brought on the healing. The crying into the arms of loved ones, the peace and the feeling of safety, the ability to sink deeply into this bliss, the releasing, and the space to effortlessly maintain all of it. This is just what the Divine Mother ordered ♥

It brought us back from that *other* life we were stuck in. And reminded us of Who We Are and how we roll.

For the first week here, I could barely breathe for the fear and stress. I knew I needed instant healing, but I couldn't figure out how to get there. I felt stuck in loops that always took me *there*.

My kids and I ended up going to a family yoga class (which was AWESOME),

and the guided meditation at the end hit home. I sunk into the groundedness and alignment, finally felt true om, and then refused to allow myself to rise from that place for any call.

And that was when it hit me that it was anxiety that I was needing instant healing from. And now that I am sunk deeply in this space of deep knowing, far from the seduction of perpetuating anxiety, I have opened up, unfolded, into this space of being okay.

Like I said, I still have moments where I get upset. Usually it is triggered by a tough moment that rings of "not fair", and I am learning how to navigate that, too.

But now I am in a space where I can.

I find healing in reevaluating my beliefs and seeing if I still believe in them, and how.

I find healing in assimilating the new beliefs I have found through all of this. And I look forward to being able to share those things, in a blog post or an e-book, or who knows what.

My journey seems to have led me to an opportunity to learn how to navigate this:

And not just in this specific experience, but maybe in the macrocosm of my life.

I have learned that for true deep healing to happen, I need to leave some things in my mind alone, until a later date when I can explore and understand them better. And to just be here and now. To experience the fullness that comes in caring for my children in the amazing ways I do.

I took a sabbatical from thinking about the technical parts of all of this, and decided to just sink into my beautiful life.

And it IS a beautiful life.

In the beginning, I would have surreal moments where I would be blown away thinking, "How could ANYONE think this is not enough?"

I remember when the kids were gone and I was struggling with the case worker presenting our life to the judge in such a way that I was thinking, "My kids have had rich depth experiences that many adults don't get to experience, much less children of a single mother. How many children of single mom's in this community will get to see and do all that my children have? And how can they not see the value in that?"

And now we get to just live it. Without fear (mostly). Now, we get to just live by our own measures.

And I can bask in the moments of bliss and richness that are strung across our day like prayer flags.



Exploring tide pools



Reading about tide pools at the library, with a rock that we found on the shore of the tide pools

How can anyone think my children are not being educated, taken care of, or prepared for life is beyond me.

Thankfully, my job not to understand them. It gets to be to just to keep living it.

One so super-blessed mama,

p.s. - I have some awesome new products and services coming out - some that have grown from this messed up experience. Like a whole e-book on healing practices. Stay tuned for details ♥