Hiiiii, I'm Kierstin ✨

I know what it's like to love your kids and still count down to bedtime.

Because I've been there. Running on empty, feeling guilty about how I am doing it, and feeling like I am doing it all alone inside my Motherhood Journey.

My story

I gave everything to other people's kids. My family got the fumes.

For over 12 years I ran a 3 to 5 year old classroom in a daycare. Every day my own son was right there with me. I gave 100 percent all day to the little ones in my care and by the time I got home.... my son got what was left, and my husband got whatever came after that = which usually was NOTHING.

At home? We dealt with ALLLLL the common early childhood issues. I tried everything. I even feng shui'd his room.

"I'd get home and feel like I was watching my own life on a TV screen instead of living it. I learnt from my doctor that I was dissociating to just get through the stress of the days."

Kierstin and her young son smiling in the car

No big blow up led me to this point. Just a slow grind while most days I was running on empty, and the guilt of giving my best to everyone except the people I loved most.

March 2020

The world stopped. The daycare shut down. And so did I.

Myself & my husband were both at home together with our son for 2 full weeks while the Covid shutdown happened all around us.

That pause broke the fog. I knew I couldn't go back to living that way, and I knew so many other moms were stuck right where I'd been. That's when the idea of Calming Roots was born.

It took almost a full year to get myself back to a good place. I cut my hours back at work, I started meditating more and finding time for ME and to hang out with friends, and I started building
Calming Roots | Sleep & Parenting Consulting.

What I'd tell my exhausted self

Saving your battery isn't the same as charging it.

Back then I was like a phone swiping out of apps to save battery. Closing everything down to hang on to the little bit I had left. But I never actually plugged myself back in.

You can save your battery all day long. If you never plug in, you're still running on empty.

Kierstin smiling beside a bonfire in the forest — How I plug back in now: trees, a bonfire, and quiet

Kierstin smiling in the forest, sitting inside a big old tree

Why I built the Nest

You don't need more information. You need someone who gets it.

What I needed back then wasn't another book. It was a place to plug back in, with someone in my corner and other moms saying "me too." So I built that.