Your Mindful Messes

Hi! Welcome to our site.

We are Holly and Niki, two friends who met in yoga teacher training in 2012 in Austin, Texas. Since then we've supported each other as we try to live compassionately and peacefully in our crazy culture and day-to-day rigamorale.  The idea for this blog originated when we both attempted a 28-day vegan diet at the same time. It was new, fun, and exciting, but holy hell was it also frustrating AS F*CK. All of the online recipes and Instagram accounts we used for inspiration seemed to be stay-at-home food bloggers with unlimited budgets, which...was.not.us. We work outside the home and have many varied interests and hobbies. We do not have unlimited hours to spend in the kitchen, and although we can enjoy cooking, we do not love it with the passion of a thousand suns. We wanted to eat healthily and compassionately, but spending seemingly all day on Sundays prepping food for the week really kind of sucked. So we did what we've always done, with relationships, yoga, weight gain/loss, etc. - we encouraged the other not to get down on herself and to do the best she can.

Guys, that is SO HARD when everyone online seems to be doing it PERFECTLY, with rainbows and unicorns to accessorize - and this goes for everything, not just eating no animal products. But of course, NO ONE is actually doing it perfectly. All of us post an edited life. And our blog motto says: screw that.  This is a space where we share what we did that felt "successful" and what we did that we feel like we "failed." But we really don't like those judgmental words. We just did things one way one day, and a different way the next. It's all about accepting ourselves as we are, and being ok with whatever we did that day. And knowing that we are not alone. We're all struggling with similar feelings, just manifested in different ways. 

So yes, we try to eat a plant-based diet, we try to yoga and meditate, we try to be healthy and exercise, we try to keep our cool, but also...sometimes we don't. Sometimes we eat cheese or meat, sometimes we drink 42 margaritas at happy hour instead of going to the gym, sometimes we sleep in and curse out that jackass who pulled out in front of us. We invite you along on our journey and hope you'll share yours with us as well.

With (mostly) loving kindness,

Holly and Niki