04/26/2026
Vulnerable Post Alert
I thought I would do something a little different and use my platform/business to help support my family and myself to demonstrate how Recreation Therapy and Fitness play a vital role in overall health and wellness. May is going to be a month of new for my family but in all honesty the last 8 months has been new and beyond challenging.
A little backstory:
I am a Mom of 2 very busy children, a Military Spouse, student and someone who has put her career on hold to support her spouse and family. In the last 8 years (since our daughter has been born), I lost all sense of identity outside of being a Mom ( I was running a Full Time Home Daycare to provide income and to be home with my children since Daycare was very limited there and there were no Recreation Therapy jobs in the area we were living in). In the last two years, in Petawawa, Ontario, I was starting to find who I was again through providing aquatic therapy with a local physiotherapy clinic, teaching aquafit classes both recreational and therapeutic and running my Private Recreation Therapy practice, on top of running the Home Daycare and being a student. I also had my horse 10 minutes away from us for the first time in 8 years (there is a story there too).
Since moving to Nova Scotia, I realized there was a lot throughout our schedule and way of life in Petawawa that we took for granted that we cannot find here. I had physical fitness worked into my everyday (including my family as well). I was in the pool 5 days a week providing 12 hours of aquatic therapy and 4 hours of aquafit weekly, I was walking 10km daily just for before and after school pick-ups/drop-offs, I was walking in the field to get my horse and working her for an hour each night (on the ground) and still getting work-outs in 4 days a week. My work schedule allowed me to have 4 hours a week while the kids were in school to have "me time" which allowed me to focus on tasks such as school, work-outs, house work, booking appointments or watching a TV show/reading my book I enjoyed without the anyone around or walking the dogs. Walking to the kids school each day, there were multiple trails I could take to connect me to nature with and without the kids which was grounding. We were close to playgrounds, multiple walking trails, the rink/community centre and more that we were walking to most locations or outside in the evenings (when we were not at the barn- which was 10 minutes from our house) allowing for an active lifestyle naturally.
Since moving here- we are not doing ANY of these things. I now have a sedentary job, kids are done school by 1:50 which makes working very hard (which is directly across the street), we are driving EVERY WHERE we go, sports are everyday of the week for the kids at inconvenient times or overlapping timings, new home owners, family and childhood friends around, and major financial losses on my end. Our children also have not been adjusting well making after school a complete mess- everyone has been miserable.
As a Military family, we are put in situations that are unexpected and not always ideal for the whole family. I want to take you through the journey of myself and my family starting to recover from the high intense stress and life altering demands life puts upon us especially for military families especially as parents. I am going to educate you on Recreation Therapy, Importance of fitness, recreation and leisure, and recovery in many different ways.
I am going to introduce myself, our struggles, journey, and recovery in the next month that is full of brand new changes on top of everything else we have been through. Through this journey, I want to connect the community to my services and the community I can serve.
