Summary: One of my dear friends Tracy Holland caught up with me today on the podcast. Tracy is a stay at home mom to two boys and married to Alex for almost 6 years. Alex is a farmer. Yes, he’s a real farmer! She talks about this and about the lack of control they have on the weather and the crops and a crazy incident of hail in Arizona that nearly wiped them out! Tracy has been by my side every step of my journey through Mason’s diagnosis. She talks a lot about her both her sons issues with reflux and how it impacted their family and her perspective. We both learned that we have to advocate for our kids. We often know our kids better than anyone, including the doctors. She shares about a specific incident where a perspective shift was helpful in a really hard moment in her hard season. Tracy talks and shares a lot about living intentionally and simply in this current season. She shares the big rocks in her life – her faith and her family. Tracy talks about slowing down and making family time so important. She shares a few ways to gracefully say no, as she has simplified her week and saves the sanity of her family. She says, “I am not going to sacrifice my family’s happiness to just say yes to all the stuff.” On the Sunday drive to church, she uses that time with her entire family to have a weekly meeting. They talk through the week to plan and schedule the big things and do the meal plan. She puts in the big rocks first in the calendar and then she knows the other spaces in her week for opportunities she can say yes. She looks for the fringe hours in her week to make it productive and helpful time spent for her family. Tracy and Alex are a great example of keeping their marriage a priority. She talks about how they made weekly date nights a priority from a New Year’s resolution. Even on a budget! She talks about how it has been such a game changer for their marriage. She also shares about a date night swap – the families swap kiddos once a month so that the couple can do a longer (free) date night. Another thing that she’s loving this season is that she knows her neighbors. I LOVE her example within her neighborhood and she shares how she got the conversation started, by knocking on the door and introducing herself. Tracy has super simple ideas of ways they’ve connected with the people that live in their neighborhood. She’s a natural connector and hostess, but the neighborhood has benefited from events and weekly rhythms as they’ve built the community. She realized that a lot of her neighbors wanted to know each other, someone just had to go first. Her hospitality and generosity have had an awesome ripple effect within her neighborhood. I can’t wait to try a few things with my own neighbors. Tracy is the one I usually go to when I need a hack. She has a way that she looks at things and makes it more productive and make you feel so much better about tackling the big things and little things. SO we have a mom hack marathon – she shares four different mom hacks that are AMAZING. She talks about Emily Ley’s book, Simplified Life. Connect with Tracy on Instagram.
