JULIE: Can you speak about the effort that you made to get breastmilk and the community that you found available to you? I love that you were not afraid to ask for that needed.  

 HOLLY: I ended up feeding both girls for over a year on borrowed milk. In San Francisco, I had two or three donors that were really consistent and called me every week, but I didn't have that in L.A. I just had random [donors] from the Human Milk for Human Babies website, which I'm so grateful for. It's such a beautiful community. Nothing was more depressing than when my freezer was starting to get empty and I didn't know where my next supply was coming from. I wanted to feed breastmilk for a year just because I know it really reflects in the health and microbiome. I remember one woman was like, “I was going to throw it all out,” but she was ending her breastmilk journey and she had pumped the whole time and had something like 600 ounces. That is so amazing to a mom that just wants to give her baby the best. You know, [had it not been for the breast cancer] I think I would've otherwise been that mom, that breastfeeds for two years. Having that community was just so amazing. Sometimes women who are going through tough situations with breastmilk don't realize that this community exists and people are willing to help get you through until your supply comes back or whatever. There is help out there. I bottle-fed both my girls the donated breastmilk, holding them skin-to-skin and heart-to-heart in my Nesting Days carriers.

 JULIE: I think you know, one of my happiest, ever ‘jobs’ was as preschool teacher on Stanford’s campus, and it really shaped my parenting style with my two boys. I understand you started a preschool pod for your girls during COVID. 

 HOLLY: Yes, I hired a Waldorf teacher, so it's been pretty awesome since they're in the forest most of the time with a little bit in the classroom that I made here at my home. It’s going so well I plan to add a first grade pod next year for my oldest daughter so there will be two pods, two teachers, and two areas dedicated to schooling. 

 JULIE: You are restructuring an educational system that you understand is intuitively and spiritually right for you and your children. Say a little bit more about that. 

 HOLLY: I think the biggest thing is building a real community. Living in a city, you can lose that feeling. Even though we had lived here prior and coming back with a one-year-old, we realized we didn't have any community, so we really looked forward to starting preschool, and once we started then COVID happened just as we were building a community. So for me, I wanted to build that and create my own circle of like-minded friends.

 JULIE: What would you like other mothers to know?  

 HOLLY: I think my biggest message is – it sounds so cliché – to really live more in the moment. I see people just not really living their best life because they don't understand how fleeting time can be. Keep curating that ideal life because every day is a new opportunity to keep curating and making your life exactly what you would manifest it to be. I think that is really powerful – to really have the most enjoyment from exactly where you are in that moment. All those little eyes are always watching you. That’s even more of a reason to be the captain of the ship that has a very peaceful disposition and strong leadership, because they're always watching, they're always listening, and they're always learning. I take that responsibility greatly because I want to give them the best opportunity to find ultimate happiness too, without having to go through a painful situation.

 JULIE:  When I created Nesting Days’ I wanted to create a little human nest for newborns. The acronym, N. E. S. T. and Nurture, Educate, Support, and Transform, is what I try to do for the parents who come to my website and embrace using the Nesting Days newborn carrier in the first, incredibly important months of their newborns life…and their life too. To close our interview, could you please comment on what each of these words means to you?  

 HOLLY:  

 N. - NURTURE: I would say selflessness and realizing that your primary focus is to allow the child the space to grow and develop as best as they can. Nurture, as basic as it sounds is, mostly dependent on a lot of love: using love to deal with most things. Even with a tantrum or when they're having a hard time, I find that's my go-to. I don't reprimand or say ‘you need to be quiet,’ nothing like that. I see all of these as opportunities to offer more love and support, and that's how they can get through that struggle. That's probably what most of us needed a little more of as children. That's my nurturing language is just to offer love – even in those really hard moments where they're really upset with you or mad at their sister or making a scene in a restaurant – give the love that they're needing. 

 E. - EDUCATE: I definitely sought out a lot of information to try to be a very intentional parent because you are your child’s first teacher. There are so many things that you can read and learn when it comes to parenting and everybody has their own ideas, but finding what resonates with you and following your intuition is so important. You don’t have to it all figured out at once, but stay curious, always seek information, and continue to educate yourself so you can be a better educator for them. 

 S. - SUPPORT: With community, find people that truly get you. Community is everything. With the pandemic, [community] was kind of ripped away from everyone, and now that we're picking up the pieces, now more than ever, so many of us are really leaning into developing an even better, tighter community. We've missed that and the babies have missed that. Now, when we get together and do play dates, I see this strong reaction from the pandemic. I was at the beach with Wilhelmina's best friend and their family. The two of them were standing there and they had their arms around each other, they’re best buds. At one point, her little friend turned and kissed her on the cheek and said, “I love you friend!” That was just such a moment for me. 

 T. TRANSFORM: I think it's about constantly translating those experiences and curating that specific life that is feeling so supportive of your values and ethics. If you would have told me in 2019 that I was going to start a school, nearly, I would've thought “What, why would I do that?” But now, here we are, and I’m proud of myself and happy for the hardships that came. I am grateful for all of the transformative experiences, the most powerful being the births of my children. As I grew up without a mother, I had to really dig pretty deep. I did a lot of work around birth to find that support within myself because I didn't have a mother coming to my bedside to tell me I was going to be okay or welcome me into this process. My father had just passed away the same year I got pregnant with my first. And so the only parent I had was now missing. Birth became this ultra-transformative experience into motherhood.