A little bit about myself and my journey through life that brought me here today:

Autobiography

I debated writing this “Autobiography of Lyrae Willis” piece because I don’t want to be associated with my past. Instead, I want to be respected for what I do now. However, I have also always believed in being honest in everything I do. I believe that honesty about one’s self is the most important thing we can do for ourselves. It is also important to be honest for others in hopes that they may find some inspiration in what we have overcome and try to better themselves. So here is a concise autobiography to give you an idea of who I am, where I came from, and what I overcame to find my love of native plants, alternative health, my family, and teaching children to be self-sufficient and aware of the world around them.

Lyrae’s Early Years

As a young child, my parents owned a piece of land in a small town on the coast of BC, Canada. They converted an old chicken coop into a house by putting interior walls and a floor in it. My earliest memory was when I was four years old and my entire family of 6 shared the only bedroom.

Before I was born my parents had a duck named “Lyrae” from my mom’s favorite novel “Starfire” about an astronaut who goes to outer space and meets a beautiful red-headed alien named Lyrae whom he falls in love with. So when my parents had a girl after three boys they named me Lyrae. So yes, I am named after an alien, and a duck.

Life was tough as a child. I was expected to do ‘the men’s work’ because my parents didn’t want to ‘raise a sissy girl’ so I split and stacked wood with the boys, worked in the garden, and helped deal with the meat my dad hunted. However, I was also expected to do all the ‘women’s work’ that my brothers did not have to do. I had to do dishes, laundry, cooking, baking, making bread, canning, and freezing fruits and vegetables we grew or wild crafted. As a child, to be honest, I resented all the work I had to do, like most kids do. Now though, I am grateful for those lessons I had as a child.

However, my life as a child was far from some idealistic homesteader family life. In fact my childhood left me with PTSD for a number of reasons. My dad was an angry and violent alcoholic who felt that an unruly child should be ‘beaten into submission’ or that he needed to ‘break my spirit’ like I was a wild horse. He liked to achieve those goals with a backhand, a fist, or a leather strap. And unfortunately for me not only did I have the misfortune of being a child, but a girl child at that. I was told that women were supposed to stay at home, obey their husbands, and have babies to care for. I was told that my dream of going to school and getting an education was a waste of time. Also unfortunately for me, I was the most defiant and rebellious of the four kids, so I think my dad disliked me the most. I first had thoughts of suicide at the age of 5, I frequently suffered from night terrors and my only emotions seemed to be hopeless desperation or anger. I knew in my heart that I had rights as a child that were not being respected. I also believed that I had rights as the woman I was going to become to choose my own path in life.

Lyrae’s Teen Years

My troubled childhood with my father ended in a particularly nasty fight when I was 14 that ended with me crawling out the front door. Then my mother held me in her arms for a while before I limped away from home and never looked back. I turned to drugs and for a short while I even lived on the streets of Vancouver doing anything and everything it took to survive.

Luckily I tired of that life fairly quickly and went back to my hometown bouncing around and getting high for several more months. Then I found myself in Narcotics Anonymous at the age of 15 where I met my ex-husband. I moved in with him before my 16th birthday and was married to him before my 19th birthday. I thought he loved me and wanted to take care of me. I thought that was what I was ‘supposed to do’. But he was an angry and jealous man who kept returning to his addictions. Sadly I would sometimes adopt the “can’t beat him join him” mentality that left me with two serious drug overdoses and permanent memory loss.

Lyrae’s First Marriage

My life was so stressful back then. My previous marriage only compounded the PTSD I suffered from my childhood. I think that was how I ended up with severe Ulcerative Colitis at the age of 20. My disease was labeled non-responsive because none of the doctor’s medications ever worked on me. I just got sicker to the point they recommended me for a colostomy around the age of 23 that I refused. Removing my body’s organs made about as much sense to me as suppressing my immune system with steroids in some attempt to heal me, without an immune system.

Through it all, I still achieved my BSc., Honors, in Environmental Sciences, against my ex-husband’s and my family’s wishes. I found solace during that time in raising my first two kids the best I could under our dysfunctional circumstances. I also found comfort in systematically studying and documenting native plants and their distribution. During that time I even made the internet’s first website in British Columbia dedicated to identifying plants, lichens, mushrooms, and more and called it “BC Biodiversity”. This was long before the days of eflora and other great websites like those. I also taught classes on making your own all-natural body care products, herbal salves and tinctures, and my favorite: wild crafting.

During that journey, I even found a way to successfully treat my illness naturally with diet and herbs, much to the doctor’s astonishment. Yet through all that, my first marriage was still highly dysfunctional and seemed to get worse rather than better. When I finally realized I was doing more harm than good to my children by staying, I left my ex-husband and my hometown and got clean for good.

Getting Clean and Starting Over Again

In my early thirties I moved to the middle of nowhere in the Kootenays of BC to a tiny town of 200 people with no cell service. I decided I was done with my whole life as it was before. I was ready to live a life alone with my child in the mountains. But it was in that tiny town that I met my current husband and the love of my life. I also gained his three children that I now proudly also call my own. It was also there that I gave birth to my 3rd and final child (yes, now a total of six), and there that I also rediscovered the parts of myself that I loved: my love of native plants, alternative healing, and homesteading. We eat very healthily without any meat, dairy, or processed foods. We live simple lives and reuse or recycle everything we can. We try to be conscientious consumers and make healthy buying choices for ourselves and the environment. My current husband is a reasonable, non-violent, mild-mannered man who respects my intelligence and desire for something more. Instead of trying to stand in my way, he encourages me to go as far as I choose to go in my life. Since then I have taken further courses and certifications in Botany, Wetland and Riparian Areas Assessments, Fisheries Surveys, and Ecological Restoration. I have always enjoyed working in the field and was able to achieve those goals and dreams.

Recent Years Traveling

I have more recently started traveling throughout North America with my husband and our youngest son. I have been learning about all the different plant families outside of British Columbia. We have so many amazing and unique rare and endemic plants in North America, and some amazing common native plants as well. I feel like a child in a candy store in each new area I visit. I stare wide-eyed in awe at all the different plants. I reach out to touch them and feel them, smell them, occasionally even taste them. Then I take pictures and record what I have found. Native plants are the one true passion that has been with me since childhood, I just did not recognize it then. How I used to love the salmon berries in the spring, eating the green peeled new stems, and the berries when they came ripe. Later I enjoyed the huckleberries, blueberries, and blackberries. I realized later that not only did I love them because they tasted delicious, but I also remember how I used to stare at the flowers and berries, or the striations and prickles on the stems. I still do the same thing, but now I photograph them and document what I see to eventually publish a series of books on the plant families of North America.

Homeschooling My Autistic Son

Since we started traveling we also took our youngest son out of elementary school and started my other passion, homeschooling. My youngest son was diagnosed with autism when he was around 4. He was non-verbal until he was 5 ½ and we waited an extra year to start him in kindergarten because we did not feel he was ready. When he finally did go the following year he absolutely loved it. He stayed in public school from Kindergarten to Grade 2. That time was an amazing social experience for him. It helped him open up and learn to communicate with other people. However, by Grade 3 he still was not yet reading or writing yet he would repeat science facts well beyond his age level that he had learned from watching videos. So we decided to start homeschooling him to see what we could do to help him with a more custom-tailored education plan.

Today he is technically in Grade 5 but reads at a Grade 7 level, does Grade 7 Math, and has been doing high school science for the past two years. The only area he lags in a bit still is his writing. He still resists having to write at every turn. So instead he learned to type. He can type 120 characters per minute and just recently also started learning computer programming. We don’t let his unique challenges be barriers to his learning. Any hurdle we come across we find a way past it, even if it is not ‘the normal way’. Children do not fit in neat tidy little boxes so we think outside the box when teaching him, and he is excelling beyond our expectations.

I have always tried to teach my children everything about the world, the environment, plants, organisms, proper food choices, and being a conscientious consumer. Now with homeschooling my youngest son, I have incorporated these things into his weekly Learning Plans. In addition to his regular curriculum, he learns plant identification, alternative remedies, how to stay safe and administer first aid. He learns about the environment, pollution, climate change, the problems with industrial farming, industrial livestock, and fishing the oceans on an industrial scale. I have been truly grateful for our decision to home school him. It has given me the the opportunity to start teaching him all of the things I find still lacking in the public school system.

So we are continuing our homeschooling journey with our son, who has already informed us that he will never go back to school because they do “baby science” there. We will see when he gets to high school. I have told him to keep an open mind and if he wants to go to high school I can support him in that as well. His happiness is what is most important. For now, however, we continue to home school our son and I take advantage of every moment of it to spend time teaching him all the lessons he will need in life. His big sister thinks that one day maybe her little brother can make a difference in this world. If he chooses to, at least I know he will be prepared for it.

My Life Now

While homeschooling my son I have been working on my healing journey once again, since the last few years were rough for me health-wise. But I know that these are just setbacks, not permanent life directions. Our body has innate programming to be healthy. When it becomes unhealthy we just need to help guide it back in the direction of health. So I have been focusing on healing meditations, eating very healthy, and prioritizing my time in the healthiest ways possible.

I have also let go of all addictions, including being a workaholic which is the addiction that was the last to go. I now take the time for myself to do the little things that I enjoy. I have also left behind old regrets and resentments from my past and try to focus only on the here and now. Now I love my family and my life. While life may not always be a perfect ‘white picket fence’ life, I am truly grateful for all I have and appreciate every moment of it. Even in tough times, I try to see positive learning experiences instead of focusing on their negative aspects. I also allow myself to dream of the future, but not be driven by those dreams anymore at the expense of the present. Now I dream of future possibilities but know that sometimes life has other plans for us, and that is okay too.

The most recent piece of my healing journey was my decision to once again take up my passion for writing and sharing my information as I once did many years ago on the internet. I loved that part of my life before, even though in many ways back then it was an unhealthy workaholic response to a stressful situation. Yet, I still felt most at peace in life when I was working on those projects. I have always believed that knowledge is power, but knowledge not shared is wasted. So I started this blog to share my knowledge of the environment, plants, alternative healing, and homeschooling our children. And now when I pursue my dream of sharing knowledge, I get to pursue it from a state of balance, true health, and happiness and the potential is limitless.

If you would like more information please feel free to Contact Me.