2023 Recap, Life Updates & New Beginnings

Protect you & your loved ones from the dangers of Electromagnetic Frequencies (such as your phone, bluetooth devices, cell towers & wi-fi zones) with EMF shielding products.

From hats, clothing, belly bands, blankets and bedroom protection, my favourite range can be found here.

Plus, if you use code BABY, you'll receive a special discount price.

Presents are unwrapped, Christmas feast (and leftovers) have been devoured and the year is coming to an end.

It’s that strange time between Christmas and New Year where you lose track of what day it is and you're given a chance to take a breather, before the new year approaches.  

I find it a nice time to look back on the year, reflect on the highs and lows- to gain clarity on what didn't serve me & manifest more of what I do want to feel and experience in the new year. 

If you haven't already done this, I'd highly recommend whipping out your journal and releasing your thoughts. 

2023 Recap…

The year began and we were in full swing with our farm house renos. I often forget what chaos it was here, until I take a scroll through my photo reel and realise just how much we achieved in such a short time.  

Although we still have rooms to complete, after living in a caravan while stripping a house, we were so ready to move in properly once the bamboo flooring went down. The camp style kitchen was a luxury at first (after having a camp style kitchen outside), but by the time the kitchen arrived for us to install ourselves, we were sooo ready for a functioning kitchen. It sure makes me appreciate the small things after getting back to basic living. 

It's funny, almost 12 months on, we still have chipboard on our kitchen island benchtop as we’ve just had other priorities and to be honest, it’s still luxury compared to what we had before. So it’ll be a treat in 2024 to get the hardwood kitchen bench I’ve patiently been waiting for. 

That and we’ll be tackling our main bathroom and completing the ensuite (which is half done). But now that Tom’s in high demand with his engineering work, our DIY’s reno’s are a slow and steady after-hours project. 

Speaking of Tom’s work, once the main part of our reno’s were done, it was onto his big shed build so he could get started on his engineering work. It took the team (Tom included) a couple of months from start to finish, including the concreating and the shed doors that Tom made, went on just as the turn in the autumn weather arrived at Easter. 

Tom’s projects have been mainly custom truck rebuilds, which he was proud to win a best Mack Truck award at the Casino Truck show for one of his jobs, earlier in the year.  As you can imagine, the trucks are now lined up here on the farm waiting for him to begin their revamps. If it interest you (or perhaps your man), you can check out his work here.

Time Out 

We also had some big family milestones this year- our Elke girl turned one, Amelia turned five and we took off on a fam holiday to Far North Queensland, to enjoy some fun in the sun. 

I booked a winter getaway trip for a few reasons- a forced break for Tom (he had been working non-stop), a longer getaway before we got animals (and the greater responsibilities they bring) on the farm, to see a dear friend Diana Krisanski, who worked on the recipes in Thriving Bubba, and to meet other besties that came across from Darwin, for long awaited catch ups. 

This was a much-needed break after our full on renos, shed building and very full work schedule for the start of the year, was a warm break from the chilly winter down south and was so precious seeing our friends.

Needless to say, when we returned we were freezing in our farm house with no heating, so it gave Tom the push to install a combustion heater in the (very inefficient) existing open fireplace. One more tick of the farm house reno list. ✔️

Back To The Paddock

My work on the other hand is much more balanced, and I had the privilege of embracing my creative side, by starting our ‘Back To The Paddock’ you tube channel. 

Across there you can see snippets of our life on the farm, through Reno’s, shed build, a day in my life before animals, what we planted first, our first (surprising) farm produce & our journey to get our first animals- the chickens. You can catch up here & add your comments below the episodes. I love seeing them!

Farm Life 

Today on the farm, the girls are loving collecting the eggs and have a little business where they sell eggs to visitors to the farm. A lot of work goes into moving them daily, keeping the water up to them, changing their hay in the nests, filling up their feeders & delivering our food scraps. So it’s nice to see them get a little pocket money for the care they put into their chickens. You read more about how we keep our chickens healthy, for nourishing eggs here. 

We did however recently have a fox visit on the one night Amelia’s fav Lu Lu  chicken was left out. This was devastating to wake up to, as she had such a special bond with her- she rode with her in Amelia's bike basket, cuddled up to her and pecked behind her around the farm. As sad as it was, it has been an opportunity to teach her about the food chain and how the fox also had a family to feed. 

We’re really looking forward to getting the fencing complete in the new year so we can finally get those cows and grow yet another food from farm to our plates. That’s living my dream.  

My Work Projects

I really felt like I hit the right balance this year with taking on only very limited amount of one-on-one consults each week, cutting back the podcast episodes to every 2-4 weeks and having my supportive hormone health, preconception, pregnancy and baby health digital products on offer for those who couldn’t get in for my consultation support. This allowed my to mostly be Mum.

But an exciting new offering was released this year, through the collaboration with yoga teacher & Health Coach, Steph Bartlett.  We had so much fun stepping the women through our 30 Day Spring Kickstarter program, inspiring them to make healthier choices as we shifted from winter energy into the new beginnings of spring. I particularly enjoyed putting together the meal plan for this one as I’d not shared many savoury recipes on the blog before and the feedback was really positive, even for the fussy eaters in the group.

 The Challenging Moments

It’s not been all rainbows and butterflies however. I am still ‘feeding on demand’ my almost two year old, and with that comes more broken sleep and demanding moments…anytime throughout the day she chooses. 🤪

I know from how things panned out with my first that the full nights sleep will come after night weaning, so for now I’m immersing myself in the gratitude for being able to nourish her this long and that soon, she’ll be a little girl and I’ll miss her baby toddler days. Gratitude always helps shift my mindset. It's such a powerful practise.

The other challenge, has been more of a lingering stress around Amelia’s schooling decision. I had been going back and forth from homeschooling, Steiner education or a tiny community school option. Each have their benefits and also parts that are challenging for us, so it was a toughie to make the final choice.

I've been a full time stay-at-home Mum for five and a half years. We've also homeschooled for kindy. Aside from the occasional help from family, I've managed to continue my Naturopath support around Mum life - by working in toddler naps, at night & early mornings. It's been taxing.

Being a Mum is and always will be my number one priority and the most impactful role I will ever have. Buuuut the work I do does light me up, give me purpose and I know from the messages I receive, helps change lives.

I know that may sound crazy to you, but it was such a big decision for us (me particularly) as I really don’t have faith in the schooling system and I actually don’t agree with much of the content and methods used for teaching (in conventional schools).  

My heart was in Steiner schooling, but the Waldorf school that was most aligned for us (they are all different by the way), was too far away. I’m not prepared to be driving 30+ mins one way for school each day (2 hours in total), especially with a toddler in tow & I wasn’t comfortable with the bus at such a young age. 

We have strong family values that are not aligned with many conventional schools... but we've also not wanted to be travelling so far daily to a more aligned option. That just didn’t make sense to us. 

Homeschooling was becoming more attractive to me, especially after interviewing guests like Jo Whitton & meeting more friends who had chosen the road less travelled. The way in which kids learn through the unschooling approach (mixed in with some formal English and Maths), appeals to me. I know they learn through their curiosity and passions, not what they’re told to learn… and how long for. 

We've wanted to preserve our daughters' free spirits, imagination and allow them to learn through (mostly outdoors) play and life skills and homeschooling seemed like the way to make this their reality.  

I’d started sharing that this was the option we had chosen, we’d attended some homeschool meet ups (and like I said, we were already homeschooling for kindy), but there was one thing that was niggling me. 

Being away from family, how was I actually going to do it all? 

I also couldn't ignore that being a part of (and contributing to) our local community, is also high on our values list... all while living our farm life dream.

There were days I’d have Amelia happily frolicking around the garden as Elke had her day nap and I was able to sneak off to prepare for a consult, or write up treatment notes. I was like, yeah I can defintley homeschool and keep on with my work projects. This is going to work no worries.

Then the reality hit me of days where Amelia was begging me to read to her (or just do something with her one on one while elke slept). I felt massive Mum guilt if I didn’t spend time with her, or I’d be distracted with work tasks if I did play with her. Asking her to give me a few minutes to finish something but would not play out the way I would like. It just lead to frustration for both of us.  

So I found myself questioning... in OUR situation is it possible to be a present homeschooling Mumma, but not lose hours of sleep by working late nights/ early mornings?

Or to refrain from loosing my patience when the girls want me while I sneak in daytime work... while I really should be in Mum mode? 🤷🏼‍♀️

What I realised is that we (our family that is), actually cant have it all 100% of the time (for now) and it was creating stress for our fam of four to think that we could. Homeschooling is a huge commitment.

As Tom is our main financial provider for our fam, to keep our farm life dream alive, he has to focus on his work & I can’t expect to rely on him as support for homeschooling the girls (and taking mental health breaks for as I needed). 

We don’t have fam close by now that we’ve moved to the country so having a day a week as grandparents day (as many homeschooling fams have), wasn’t an option for us. So, I would have been doing it all, along with trying to fit in work at night while the girls slept.

So long story short, we haven’t chosen homeschooling just yet. We also haven’t ruled it out as things may change. But for now, the decision we’ve made truely is the best for our family. 

I decided to actually go to visit some schools and the one we’ve decided on (for now) has strong community values, is tiny in size and has been very accomodating with a long list of ‘concerns’ I had. Plus, we won’t be sending her full time. For now anyway.  

I’ll have her equipped with our fav radiation shielding products and homework will consist of running free on the farm. With plenty of barefoot grounding time. 

Exhale. It feels good to have made a decision together as a fam. We’ll continue to reaccess and make changes as needed. Homeschooling is our back up plan. 

I actually booked an energy healing session with Hailey Adams to help guide me on this decision but by the time I saw her we’d actually made the choice already (which she didn’t know). She thought she’d have to be the bearer of bad news, as my guides had already been telling her that Amelia is actually going to go to, spread her wings and thrive at school. Thank you guides and the incredible work of Hailey, yet again.  

But something that did come up for me in this reading, was supressed emotions within my body. They were telling her, despite all the things I do, this was the missing piece- I needed to work on releasing these stuck emotions, particularly through my liver. 

So I’ve been on a bit of a journey of late, experimenting with different modalities and exercises to help. I’ve chucked out ‘the plan’ and asking myself daily what is it I need today and doing it (within the short space I get for self care).

I’m looking forward to sharing more on this next year and I know further support I offer will incorporate my learnings. I just love being open to new experiences and healing through this. 

What To Expect From Me in 2024…

Let me get the tissues. This is the final episode for 2023, but also the final ‘Glowing Mumma Thriving Bubba’ episode 🥹

I feel like it is time to energetically close this chapter, as over the past 101 epsiodes, I’ve covered most topics to empower you through the stages of becoming mum. Just take a scroll back and you’ll see.

The top  podcast ep's for 2023 are:

• The Homesteading Way ~ with Mary-anne Mickan from Korinya FarmGate 🐄
• Parasites, Candida & Cleansing ~ with Kirsty Wirth  🐛
• Personal Growth & Parenthood ~ with Pete Evans 👨🏼‍🍳
• How The GAPS Diet Heals ~ with Integrative Nutritionist & GAPS Practitioner Elyse Comerford 🍲
• A Gut Healing & Homeschooling Journey ~ with Jo Whitton 🌟

I would love to explore more controversial topics, however I know that would risk me losing this platform altogether so just know I’m here for one-on-one consult support if you are seeking further information for your Mums n Bubs journey. 

The exciting news is that I will be returning in the new year, with a fresh new look. You’ll have to keep your eyes peeled across on my @kaseywillson.naturopath socials to see the new name & episodes when they drop. 

Yes, it’ll still be health inspo, but just not focused solely on Mums n Bubs topics. 

I’m actually also working on bringing my own range of products to life, some key foundational support (that I recommend for most patients), for optimising your hormone health. It’s a little way away yet, but watch this space!

I also thoroughly enjoyed my collab with Steph Bartlett and we will be coming together once again to bring you something new. From what we’ve seen from women over the years, we know this new program is going to be so beneficial to many. I cant say much more yet, but you’ll start hearing more about this around March next year.

And as I mentioned, I desire to go deep into areas that I’ve personally been working on in the areas of liver health, supressed emotions and the impacts this has on your healing journey. 

For now, thank you thank you for tuning into the Glowing Mumma Thriving bubba podcast, I have LOVED bringing the content to your ears and learning myself along the way.

Wishing you a New Year filled with love, health, healing and plenty of belly laughs along the way.