Slow Living | My journey to living a slow and simple life

Where it all started....

February 2020. Working in a small and intimate mastermind sitting at a table with 7 other women I shared my long desire and hopes for a simple life. In fact, that was my word for the year. Simplicity.

Who would have ever imagined that in only a few weeks' time, life as we knew it would change forever. The world is literally closed down and we are forced to stop.

But really, in all honesty, this deep desire for a ‘slow and simple life’ was planted and had started to sprout close to a decade earlier.

Around 2012, a few years after building and moving into our dream home, living what seemed like a dream life, the underlying and deep desire to live more simply began to emerge and grow. It would start with intimate conversations with my husband once the kids were in bed, whispers between us, ‘we need a more simple life’, ‘we need to go back to our roots, back to living on the land, surrounded by trees and animals, not houses and shops’.

These conversations would go on and on for many years. It’s hard to walk away from a life you have built, a life that at the time seemed like the right decision. We would move between wanting to move far away, out of the city to a rural property with endless space, to our other dream of packing up everything, homeschooling the kids, and traveling our favourite parts of Australia.

Our thoughts went around in circles for years until one day something changed. Perhaps it wasn't as sudden as it seemed. We had put in many offers on properties and even had a contract on one that fell through, but nothing seemed to be working in our favour. Each time we’d find another property, I knew in my heart that this one was ours, but sure enough, something would happen and the idea would fall away once again.

Looking back now I can see that buying a property didn't work out because the universe had other plans for us. In 2017 my husband went away for a short trip with some mates. It was just the kids and me home for a long weekend and something inside me changed. That desire for change, for something new, moved from being just a small flame to a wildfire. It burned through my body and wasn't about to burn out anytime soon.

On my husband's return, while he was showering I walked into the ensuite and announced that this was it. We were selling or renting our home, pressing pause on our businesses, homeschooling the kids, and buying a caravan to travel for a year or more. And that was it.

And so began our journey of doing what we could to live a more simple and slower life. I'm not going to go into all the details about our travels (will save that for another story) but on our return to South Australia, approx 12 months later we did eventually buy a property, and right now as I write this we are 6-8 months away from moving into the new dream home that we are currently building together. 

To say it's been an easy journey would be a huge understatement and a downright lie.

It's been huge amounts of hard work. Sometimes I even wonder if it really is a slower more simple life.

Moving, building and starting up our businesses once again was definitely not slow or simple. It was the complete opposite really, but eventually, I know we will get there.

Despite the huge amounts of hard work that it takes to make big changes in your life, it's these daily practices that keep me grounded, sane, and on this journey -

1. Mindfulness.
2. Movement.
3. Meditation.
4. SLOW food + Cooking.
5. Rest + Sleep.
6. Regular digital detoxes.
7. Travel.
   
8. Home organisation.
9. Connection with people, animals + the Earth.

If living a slower more simple life is your calling too, I invite you to connect with me on my socials for bite-sized pieces of information that you can easily begin to implement into your life too.

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