HMN Blog - Holistic Moms Network

HMN Member Jessica

April 14, 2021April 14, 2021 Andria Somers

Tell us about your family: My husband and I have 3 children, my stepdaughter who is 14, my son who is two and a half, and my daughter who is 9 months. How long have you been a co-leader of HMN? I have been a co-leader of the MN-St. Cloud HMN Community for only a little while but look to getting more involved. What brought you to HMN? Wanting to connect with the local community and like-minded families My holistic passions are… Supporting local, community connectedness, and making informed choices I’m a chapter co-leader because… I want to help those in the community get connected and supported Get to know Kari: “Fear of the unknown. They are afraid of new […]

HMN Member Kari Johnson

April 14, 2021April 14, 2021 Holistic Moms

Tell us about your family: I have been married to my husband for 4.5 years. We have a 2.5 year old daughter and a 7 month old daughter. How long have you been a co-leader of HMN? I was originally a member of the St. Cloud chapter, but recently moved closer to the cities and became a co-leader for the Twin Cities chapter. What brought you to HMN? Since having children I have become very passionate about living a more holistic lifestyle. It can feel isolating at times not having a support system that understands questioning and not choosing to do everything the “mainstream” way. I’m grateful to have found the HMN community where we can all nonjudgmentally […]

Enough of Enough

April 5, 2021April 5, 2021 Andria Somers

I was born a “not enough” person. I’m not sure where it all began but my parents would recount stories of my utter distress in kindergarten when I didn’t earn a gold star from the teacher. In high school, they repeatedly told me to fail something so that I could learn that my world would not end when I did. I was a born Type A – highly motivated, always striving, and never getting to enough.

Ground level view of vegetable and herb garden

The Life Garden

March 10, 2021March 13, 2021 Holistic Moms

“Hope is a seed.”

I found these words in one of my favorite gardening catalogues because gardening is the ultimate metaphor for life. Every seed embodies the very essence of hope. Hope for the first sign of those little green seedlings poking through the dark soil. Hope for the budding on growing plants reaching for the sun. Hope for a beautiful, healthy harvest of color and richness.

HMN Member Gabriela Monge

January 13, 2021January 13, 2021 Holistic Moms

Tell us about your family: We are a family of 5. I have 3 girls aged 11, 6, and 19 months. My husband and I are high school sweethearts rekindled and have been married for 7.5 yrs. We have a greyhound lab mix named Roxy. I’ve been co-leading actively for about a year and change although I was searching for a colead for quite a while. How long have you been a co-leader of HMN? I have been a co-leader for the Atlanta, GA Chapter since February of 2018. What brought you to HMN? I came across HMN through doing Facebook searches for holistic-minded “crunchy mom” Facebook groups in the Atlanta area when I was living in Virginia planning to […]

A Holistic Approach to Community

September 17, 2020September 17, 2020 Holistic Moms

We wanted to share a timely and poignant message, and reminder, from HMN’s founder, Nancy Peplinsky:

The mayhem of 2020 has brought so many of us to breaking points. We swing from mood to mood, from one extreme to the other, fighting to find a middle ground and a small piece of sanity in the chaos. We stand with or against, in a very delineated world in a country where battle lines are drawn every day culturally, politically, economically, and emotionally.

Five Simple Self Care Areas of Focus

September 14, 2020September 17, 2020 Holistic Moms

We wanted to pass along some simple, doable ideas on how to incorporate care, support, and nurturing for ourselves into our already busy, and sometimes chaotic, lives. Although some of these are specific to mothers, most apply to anyone looking for some attainable self-nurturing. If you only do one thing today, take a minute to breathe deeply and sit still.

The Importance of Friendship (especially for moms)

July 23, 2020July 23, 2020 Holistic Moms

Everyone needs to feel accepted. Sometimes that’s hard when you’re not necessarily a “mainstream” kind of person. Maybe you are totally into homeopathic remedies and avoid traditional medicine. Or maybe you are a vegetarian, or vegan, or you just find yourself “outside the lines“ somewhere in your life. Finding your people becomes paramount to your feelings of being included, and to your well-being.

HMN Member Jennifer Letzer

July 8, 2020January 11, 2021 Holistic Moms Network

Jennifer Letzer is 36 years old and has 3 children, ages 8, 6 and 3. Her husband Devin is Irish, and their children’s names are Irish – Ruairi (pronounced Rory), Saoirse (Sor-sha) and Ciaran (Keer-an). When Saoirse started preschool, she was frustrated that people couldn’t pronounce her name, but Jennifer told her to give it time, and eventually it would work out. Jennifer was a newspaper reporter in California before becoming a mom. She is currently a labor and post-partum doula and Lactation Educator working towards certification through the Childbirth and Postpartum Professional Association (CAPPA). CAPPA is an international certification organization for Doulas, Childbirth Educators, and Lactation Educators. Her plan had been to go back to reporting, but, she said, […]

Get Outside: So Many Proven Benefits

July 3, 2020July 8, 2020 Holistic Moms

“The sun does not shine for a few trees and flowers, but for the wide world’s joy.” Henry Ward Beecher
Dr. Keith Tidball believes part of the reason that going outside is such a good fit for the current situation is because connection to nature fulfills a deep evolutionary need. “We spent thousands and thousands of years among the rest of nature, that’s how we were designed,” he says. “It’s only in the last couple hundred years that we’ve become separate from it. But we’re compelled to affiliate with nature, which comes to the fore with urgency in times of crisis, because we associate nature with the healing aspects of hope and optimism.”