But first, go here and download a printable guide to creating your own life map: personal life map.
Hi Readers - all 150 of you beautiful people! I love that you’re here - I love that something you read of mine meant enough to you to land here and stay awhile.
It’s spring and the sun is shining (sometimes) and my vision is clearer and my work is flowing.
I wanted to write to you today in a more personal way than usual, with a re-introduction of sorts. Some of you have known me for decades. Some of you found my work only a few weeks ago. Even so, many of you may not know how I ended up where I am standing, right now.
(and you may also be wondering, where are you standing right now? Keep reading, you’ll find the answer to that too soon).
I was born in the early summer, in the middle of the afternoon, not too far away from the rocky mountains in Alberta, Canada. I wrote my first poem when I was around 9 years old.
i am me and me is me i am the person i choose to be
I grew up on a prairie acreage, surrounded by saskatoon bushes, chokecherries, and tall poplars. I often think about my childhood in a sort of soft focus way, where everything is green and beautiful and there are grass stains on my knees. My childhood had it’s ups and downs but what I remember the most is the smell of lilacs in summer, floating into my sunset-lit bedroom while I listened to my mom read Harry Potter out loud. I carried notebooks around, words turning into stories, journal entries, essays and poetry as soon as I was able to write things down.
I was homeschooled through childhood, which gifted me time to explore two passions - music and theatre. Basically, I spent my teen years playing the violin, reading C.S. Lewis and performing on the stage. Want me to sing you an Italian aria? I can do that. Want me to tell you the plo t line and metaphors from Lewis’ sci-fi trilogy? I can do that too.
All these experiences fostered a deep love for the performing arts, and I studied speech and drama professionally as soon as I could. In my early 20’s I worked with children and youth, teaching them performance and speaking skills, even directing children’s theatre programs. I dove deep into studying poetry, spoken word and expressive arts therapy - I even started performing my own work. Although as busy as things were, I had this itch to get out of my home town and explore new worlds.
I found this cool sounding internship at The Family School - in London, UK. I flew across the world and landed in this most incredible “alternative to school” school. It was free-form and emergent. No set curriculum, just passionate educators supporting the unfolding of the students in the school. I met the most incredible people and learned so much from my time there - and now, 22 year old Raine was determined to come home and start a school!
I came home - and started teaching Speech and Drama again. I got a certificate in Early Learning and Childcare and debated for months the best way to start a school. I decided I needed to learn more about education and learning, so I spent two years travelling and visiting alternative schools. And when this wasn’t enough, I decided to go to grad school to study transformative learning.
I became deeply intrigued by the anti-cafe movement and the work of Humberto Maturana (the idea of self-sustaining communities like anti-cafe’s just meshed so beautifully with Maturana’s view of language as a mechanism for co-creating reality - what do we do in community spaces? We talk! We co-create our reality and perpetuate our culture through conversation over coffee). Now, all I could dream of was building a community hub for informal education and conversation.
But life never proceeds as we expect, especially when plans are incompletely formed. I lacked a lot of confidence in my own ideas and skills. I thought I needed someone else to help me build my dreams.
And then I met my soon to be husband, fell in love and moved to the city for new adventures. New adventures meant new bills and I needed more work than my previous part time ventures. I quickly found a job at a charity that focused on environmental education. I spent 5 years travelling around the southern and central part of the province teaching children, youth and adults about environmental issues.
Somewhere in those five years, I started writing poetry again. I had just become a brand new mother and I was struggling with postpartum anxiety and depression. I found that writing somehow helped me walk through the weird, anxious and exhausted days of new motherhood.
As I found a way back to myself, I became fascinated with maternal mental health and wellness. I started studying Ayurvedic nutrition, and perinatal psychology when I wasn’t busy being a mom. I added this in on top of grad school, finishing my thesis on the role of wonder in learning when my son was about 2 years old.
I became a mother again. My husband spiralled into depression and addiction. I put my feet down and tried to hold the family together with sheer force of will. I was convinced that my will was enough to make everything okay again.
Of course, the world always arrives to teach us new lessons and the pandemic hit shortly after my daughter was born. There was a lot to process in both my own world and the world at large. Poetry continued to be the thing that helped me reveal the hidden and the beautiful.
there are tiny beautiful things in the middle of long days and dark nights, tiny stellaria blossoms opening like miniature stars in the almost green grass. dandelions turning up to the sun, little explosions of yellow lighting up corners and deep ditches and if i hold on to the tiny beautiful things i can imagine that one day everything will be ok.
I became pregnant for a third time, and then my marriage absolutely blew up. There was no way forward for us as a couple anymore, and so in a split-second kind of moment I moved back to the town I had grown up in to try and figure out what to do next as a newly single mother. My ex and I worked on building a co-parenting relationship so the kids could feel like they had two parents that loved them (and it really almost worked until it didn’t, but that’s another story).
It was around then that I started writing consistently here on Substack, feeling a pull to get my words out of my heart and into the air. I found a part time job as an administrator for a day home agency and I thought - okay, I can do this. I can be a single mom who works part time. And maybe one day I’ll work full time, when the littlest was a bit older and we’ll all be okay and the bills will get paid.
There was always this tiny little voice inside that kept saying - this isn’t your path ma’am. A little voice that told me not to get too comfortable, told me not to settle anymore for a life that wasn’t mine. A little voice that said, your heart aches to be home with your kids and to homeschool too (remember that expedition through grad school? I studied human learning across the lifespan, and as great as schools can be, I knew that I wanted my kids to have access to different, expansive and wonder-filled learning experiences).
I thought if I could just get through the next few years I could maybe go back to building foundations for my dreams when my kids were older. When things felt more stable. (But I’ve never been able to sit still for too long, and so I thought - why not certify as a breath work coach while I’m here?)
But life changes so rapidly sometimes. I thought I just had to get through being a single mom, that my biggest challenge would be figuring out how to mother and provide. And then my sister passed away and the great descent into the wilderness of grief began. It was this moment where I turned to poetry and writing like they were a direct lifeline to God.
My kids dad lost himself, again, and then I lost my job, and suddenly there was no choice but to do two things - trust in the divine, unseen world of God, and start taking daily action to build a foundation for my family that would enable us to thrive one day. There was no one coming to rescue me, I had to rescue myself.
Have you ever seen violets growing in the cracks of the sidewalk? Little purple flowers finding the sunlight and growing in spite of the hard concrete. In the midst of what has felt like chaos, I found a way to plant roots. To cultivate resilience and maybe even bloom. I feel like a violet growing through concrete. Somehow still here, somehow still flowering.
In 2023 I wrote a book of poetry and published it, all about the ordinary sweet things in life. I found that the more I looked for the sweet things, the more of them I found. In the long nights of grieving, in the wild and unsteady days of trying to pay bills and clinging to dreams of homeschooling, I found the ordinary magic around every single corner. It was always there, glimmers of light that were just waiting to be discovered even on the darkest days.
I started work at a beautiful natural health foods store and kept putting one foot in front of the other. Friends and family lent their ears and hands and hearts and kept me going. I kept writing on Substack and rebranded as The Luminarium. I started doing spoken word again, and found that the more I created, the stronger I felt (even when life was literally crumbling around me).
I registered The Luminarium as a business last year, with the vision of bringing what I’ve learned about ordinary magic and creative resilience to as many people as I can. I work from home and part time at the store, I blend heart-nourishing teas and curate art kits that help people put one foot, creatively, in front of the other. I’ve taken everything I’ve experienced and learned about wonder, the nervous system, grief, love, mental health and woven it into simple offerings that I hope will be an anchor for others lost in the seas of change.
So here I am, writing, creating, mothering. My writing here underpins my entire business, supporting it in very real ways. Every beautiful dollar earned here, goes right back into my business(and into raising my children). Subscribers, you made The Luminarium possible. You helped me do research and source ingredients and buy inventory and labels. You help me keep going through uncertainty and anxiety.
I now have only three sections on this publication - if you want to receive emails from each section, please hit reply and let me know. I’ll add you to them!
If you’re not interested, you’ll stay on the main list and the only emails you receive will be the little essays and poetry from “The Luminarium”. You can still read the other sections, you’ll just need to visit the website and click on the section you want to read(only paid subscribers will be able to access all of the pieces published in each section).
In the section titled “Field Notes” you’ll find letters from me, to you. About my work, about mothering, about God, about trying to run a business as a single mom, about homeschooling. Personal, short, behind the scenes.
In the section titled “Tea Talks” you’ll continue to find audio reflections and spoken word pieces. Little things you can put on the speaker while you make a cup of tea, all with the intention to accompany you through a quiet moment of reflection.
At the core of my work (writing, tea, art) I’m here to support you in growing through what you go through. Thank you for walking through this reflection on my journey here. Thank you for being here with me. I hope that whatever you are going through, you are able to find the resilience you need.
Deep inside, I think we’re all violets, ready to burst through the cracks in the concrete, and I believe we all have the capacity to thrive.
And if you’re curious about said tea and art, you can check out the rest of my work here: The Luminarium Shop
This reminds me of one of my favourite sayings, “Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans.” It’s a line in John Lennon’s “Beautiful Boy”.
You can hear the song and read the lyrics here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lt3IOdDE5iA. There is also a short wikipedia article about the song: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beautiful_Boy_(Darling_Boy), and also this: https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/story-behind-john-lennon-beautiful-boy-darling-boy/.
By the way, the photos in this article are wonderful.