Thriving in Nanaimo: How Local Businesses Are Redefining Success
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Becoming An Island Observer: Two Years In Nanaimo
For two years now, Vancouver Island has been quietly re‑educating me. I arrived with city reflexes still intact — the habit of comparing, of measuring places against more polished versions of themselves. Victoria, with its flowerbeds and façades, its carefully tended charm, is often held up as the Island’s thriving heart. Nanaimo, by contrast, is
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The Art of Making Sacred Space at Home
A home is more than shelter. It is a mirror of the inner world, a canvas for ritual, a stage for intention. Yet many of us move through life with homes that are cluttered, chaotic, or simply functional — spaces that give nothing back. Creating sacred space is an art, a practice, and a daily
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Quietly Thriving: Nanaimo as a Model for Sustainable Living
When people talk about sustainability, they often picture cutting‑edge cities with futuristic infrastructure, public transit innovations, or sweeping corporate commitments. Nanaimo offers something quieter — a grassroots model of sustainability rooted in community involvement, connection to nature, mindful growth, and everyday choices that ripple outward. In this city on the Salish Sea, balancing environmental
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The Rise of Nanaimo: Spas, Yoga, and Holistic Living
Nanaimo is quietly redefining what it means to live well. Far from the hustle of larger cities, this mid-sized coastal city is emerging as a hub for wellness, holistic living, and mindful lifestyle choices — and it’s doing so without fanfare. Walking through downtown or along the harbourfront, it’s impossible not to notice the
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Nanaimo Isn’t Trying to Be the Next Vancouver — and That’s Exactly Why It’s Thriving
Vancouver has spent decades asking how to be more livable. We debate density models, redesign streets, and search for the elusive balance between growth, ambition, and well-being. But just across the water, a different answer has been quietly unfolding — without fanfare, without branding, and without trying to be anything other than itself. Nanaimo
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Nanaimo Is Thriving — Not Because It’s Changing, but Because It Knows What Matters
Nanaimo Is Thriving — Not Because It’s Changing, but Because It Knows What Matters For years, Nanaimo has been described as a city in transition. A ferry town. A former resource hub. A place people pass through on the way to somewhere else. Too often, it’s framed by what it used to be, or what
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Returning to Roots: Evensong at Westminster Cathedral
I hadn’t expected to strike up a conversation that evening, yet it began the moment I sat down in the pew. The man beside me, George, in his 80s, had a presence that drew attention without effort. Throughout the service, staff and volunteers came up quietly, greeting him warmly, expressing delight at seeing him
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We Talk About Mental Health Constantly — But We Still Build Lives That Make It Worse
Mental health awareness has never been higher. We speak openly about anxiety, burnout, and depression. We encourage self-care. We normalise struggle. Campaigns remind us to check in on one another. Celebrities share their stories. Companies roll out meditation apps and mental health days. And yet, the environments we design — socially, economically, geographically — often
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The Wallflower Movement: Quiet Strengths
In a world that celebrates boldness, visibility, and noise, the quiet ones are often overlooked. The observers, the listeners, the introverts, the women whose power is subtle, unseen, and yet profoundly influential. This is the essence of the Wallflower Movement — an advocacy for women who operate in quiet ways, including those with
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Why Ritual Is Returning — And Why It Has Nothing to Do With Spirituality
Ritual has a branding problem. For years, the word has been folded into belief systems, spiritual identities, or wellness trends that feel either inaccessible or faintly performative. It conjures images of incense, affirmations, or rigid routines designed to “optimize” a life already stretched thin. As a result, ritual has been quietly dismissed as something
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The Rise of Quiet Travel: Why More of Us Are Choosing to Go Nowhere
For decades, travel has been measured by distance. The further we went, the more expansive the experience was meant to be. New stamps, new climates, new versions of ourselves. Movement became proof of vitality — of curiosity, ambition, freedom. To travel was not only to leave, but to become. Lately, something has shifted. More
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Up Close with Giants: Whale Watching with My Godson on the Salish Sea
“Are we going to see whales today, Auntie Mel?” my godson asked, bouncing on the balls of his feet as we stepped onto the dock. “I hope so,” I said, smiling at him. “But remember, these are wild animals. They show up when they want to. We have to be patient and respectful.” His mom
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The Quiet Work of Belonging: What a Small Island Taught Me About Community
I moved to an island expecting solitude. Not the romantic kind sold in travel brochures — but the practical version: fewer people, fewer invitations, fewer places to hide. I had imagined forests, shoreline, silence. What I hadn’t anticipated was how quickly silence becomes a mirror. On Vancouver Island, community isn’t announced. It doesn’t arrive
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Ammonite Falls: Water as Story & Symbol
There are places where water feels alive. Not merely moving, not merely reflecting the sky, but alive in the sense that it speaks, it teaches, it remembers. Ammonite Falls, one of Vancouver Island’s hidden gems, is such a place. Tucked in the lush forests near Port Alberni, the falls are named for the fossilized ammonites
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Soulcraft: Transforming Loss into Meaning
There are moments in life when the world splits into a Before and an After.Moments when grief rearranges us quietly but permanently, like tides shaping the edge of a shoreline. Loss changes a woman.It can narrow her life or expand it.It can harden her or soften her.It can silence her or deepen her voice. This
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A Day at Buckingham Palace: Receiving My Father’s CMG
I had never imagined I would walk through the gates of Buckingham Palace. Not for tea, not for a tour, not even on a whim. Yet there I was, hand in hand with my father, stepping into history to witness a ceremony that felt at once surreal, intimate, and impossibly formal. My father had
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Thresholds: When Life Calls You Forward
Moonstone Sanctuary — A Blog by Melissa HorrellSet on Vancouver Island There comes a moment in every woman’s life when the ground beneath her shifts — quietly at first, like a low tide pulling away from shore. A whisper, a nudge, a sensation that what once fit no longer does. These are the thresholds of
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Morning Rituals for the Quiet Leader
The quietest leaders often hold the deepest power. They do not demand attention with grand gestures or booming voices, but their presence resonates in subtle ways — a pause in conversation, a listening ear, a thoughtful act that ripples further than anyone can see. And like any leader, their strength needs nourishment. Not the
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The Whisper of Cathedral Grove
There is a forest on Vancouver Island where time seems to pause. Cathedral Grove, tucked within MacMillan Provincial Park, is not just a collection of ancient Douglas firs and red cedars; it is a living cathedral, its vaulted branches reaching skyward, holding stories older than most of us can imagine. Stepping into this grove
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The Island Teaches Courage
Vancouver Island is more than home; it is a living teacher. Its forests, rivers, and ocean cliffs hold lessons too complex for language, yet unmistakable to the heart. Spend even a few days here, and you begin to sense it: this land is alive with wisdom. Not loud wisdom — not the kind that demands
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Reiki, Stones, and Sacred Symbols: The Quiet Magic That Guides Us
There are places in the world where the unseen feels close. Vancouver Island is one of them — a land where mist moves like breath across the treetops, where moss glows electric-green after rain, and where ancient forests hold stories older than memory. It’s why so many seekers, healers, and intuitive women feel called here.
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Gentle Leadership in a Noisy World
For the quiet women, the intuitive leaders, and the ones who guide through presence rather than volume. There is a particular kind of woman I meet again and again on our Vancouver Island retreats and within Spa Sisterhood:A woman who leads quietly.A woman whose strength is subtle.A woman whose wisdom is felt, not announced. She
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Restoring Rituals: The Slow Art of Coming Home to Yourself
There comes a moment in every woman’s life when the speed of the world becomes too loud to bear. The hustle. The noise. The expectations. The endless striving. We don’t always recognize it as burnout; sometimes it arrives as a whisper — a tightness in the chest, a sudden need to cry in the car,
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The Power of Gathering: Stories from Sisterhood
There is a subtle kind of magic in gathering. Not the flash of spectacle or the hum of applause, but the quiet pulse of connection — a circle of women, each carrying her own story, her own courage, her own shadows. When we come together in fellowship, something remarkable happens: the ordinary becomes sacred,
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The Island Philosophy: How The Little Book of Stoic Wisdom Inspires Slow Living, Kindness, and Eudaimonia on Vancouver Island
On Vancouver Island, the pace of life moves to the rhythm of the tides. There’s a humility to the landscape — an unspoken reminder that we are part of something greater, not separate from it. The sea ebbs and flows, the cedars stand patient through every season, and the mountains remind us that endurance and
Modern-Day Pioneers: The Spirit of Resilience on Vancouver Island
When Adam Shoalts closed A History of Canada in Ten Maps with the explorers’ first glimpses of the Pacific, it felt like a revelation — the great western frontier shimmering at the edge of the known world.The journey had been perilous, the outcome uncertain, yet those early explorers were united by a quiet faith
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Mapping the Inner Landscape: Leadership Lessons from A History of Canada in Ten Maps
When I finished reading Adam Shoalts’ A History of Canada in Ten Maps, I couldn’t stop thinking about how much those early explorers and map-makers had in common with leaders today.They faced uncertainty, discomfort, risk, and sometimes failure — yet they kept moving forward, trusting something larger than themselves. Leadership, I’ve learned, is not
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Mapping a Nation: A Journey Through A History of Canada in Ten Maps
“Every map tells a story. And every map has a purpose—it invites us to go somewhere we’ve never been.” — Adam Shoalts If you’ve ever stood on a quiet Vancouver Island shore, the wind threading through cedar and salt air, you’ll understand the feeling of discovery that pulses through A History of Canada in
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Stillness in Motion: Reflections from a Morning at Kind Yoga Society – Death & Rebirth
This morning, I rolled out my mat at Kind Yoga Society, a gentle sanctuary tucked into a quiet corner of Nanaimo. The room was softly lit, infused with the faint scent of sandalwood and stillness. Outside, November leaves tumbled in slow spirals, surrendering to the wind. There was something sacred about the simplicity of
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