16/10/2026
Today's early morning musings...
I hear and see a lot of people stuck. Stuck existing and surviving but not really living. Staying on the expected paths, unhappy, often sick and too worn out and overwhelmed to even think about how to get off the treadmill to change their lives.
And I understand that. Change is hard. Change to step outside of societies norms is even harder. The unknown is scary. Responsibilities, mortgages, debt. All of it. There are always big heavy reasons why to keep the status quo and trudge on...but i believe change is a state of mind. And we can change and train our minds to affect change. We can be catalysts and we can choose pivotal moments in our lives to catalyse change.
I've followed my own path my whole life, often making big decisions. One of the best was deciding to homeschool my own son. I'd watched a curious, clever, enthusiastic little boy become insular, bored and depressed with the first 18 months of school. I remember him coming home from school one day soooo excited because they were going to be doing 'science with magnets' the next day. I collected him all ready to hear about the day. He got into the car and sighed "I got to hold a magnet and fill in a worksheet"...and that right there changed our lives!
I rang a friend that night (who had a teaching background, as did I, yep I taught art and photography Whangarei Girls High for 12 years) and vented how awful school was for my boy, how his light was being dimmed, like a weight was crushing him. She said "why don't you guys wag school on Thursday and come to our homeschool session. We have a real scientist and funnily enough the sesh is all about magnetism". So we did. Was a 3 hour hands-on workshop of inspiration with 25 other kids of all ages and my son was alive. Remember saying, 'so how did you find that?". There was a long pause, then he said " that...was...AMAZING. Can i go to that school please" And right then and there I knew that was what we had to do.
Made him stay at school another 3 months while I deep researched homeschooling as I knew NOTHING about it. I prepared detailed 'schooling' stuff to submit to the Ministry of Education for an exemption and worked out how on earth i was going to earn money while homeschooling as i was a solo mum. It was all huge, but i knew at my very core that it was the right thing to do. The Principal of his school had us in his office to say goodbye and told Connor he was a very lucky boy!
We homeschooled for the next 6 years, a learning adventure for us both. I had to unlearn a lot of my own 'teaching' stuff as it was counterproductive to homeschooling and together we embraced an unschooling style of 'school and life'.
Today my lad is a happy, clever 22 year old who has just finished his horticultural apprenticeship (working a 40 hour week in Hort amenities and studying for 3 years at the same time), has paid for half his own tiny home...this week he's working on Nelson's hanging baskets with the general public volunteers, chatting away and helping them create the colourful creative baskets that line our streets in Summer..
When homeschooling, my lad was 7 and we embarked on a 6 month journey in our Nissan Serena, bed in the back/storage underneath to film families with businesses where people made a living but didn't wreck the planet in the process. Everything from multi-million dollar ventures to businesses working from home. We travelled both islands of New Zealand. I'd pre-planned extensively, we stayed with many of the families we filmed and my lad made friends all over the country.
"Our Green Roadie" showcased the diversity of happenings in NZ but more importantly for me was the fascination with all these people who leapt out of bed in the mornings, excited with their lives. Many had given up corporate jobs, had epiphanies, had had enough of doing the norm and changed their lives.
That mentality inspired me to come home, dig up our lawns and start Heke Homemade Herbals back in 2014.
I never knew how homeschooling would work out but knew we needed to change what wasn't working.
I never knew if our film trip would work out or be a success but we gave it a go.
I never knew our tea business would work either.
But each and every decision from going to art school at 18 (and studying naturopathy by correspondence while there), starting a papier mache business age 21, heading overseas for many years...all of it has been a leap of faith, following my own path.
Wouldn't change any of it. Even the really dire parts...and yes, there were those too.
