MY STORY: A seed gets planted

Hi, I'm Sara. I'm 57 years young and getting to this place in my life has been a long and winding road, some of it paved with pain. But I am grateful for every single messy detour along the way because they have forced me to grow in ways I could not have foreseen and have ultimately led me to discover what feels like my true purpose: creating The Wildflower School of Life. 

I believe that behind every not-for-profit organization is a deeply personal story of hardship that has been turned into purpose. This is mine.

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life goes off the rails

I was born and raised in Toronto and have been fortunate to live and work in Australia, the United Kingdom, and Thailand before eventually settling in Guelph from 2002 to 2021, where I raised my family. Along the way I've worked as a photographer, graphic designer, furniture maker, and, most recently, a glampground proprietor or — as I jokingly refer to it — a professional putterer. In July 2026 I sold that business and now I am looking for a piece of land to start a flower farm that will employ participants of The Wildflower School of Life.

But the role that has shaped me most is being a mother.

I have three wonderful children, all now in their twenties. Two are what Dr. Thomas Boyce (author of The Orchid and the Dandelion: Why Some Children Struggle and How All Can Thrive) describes as "dandelions" — resilient and able to thrive despite life's challenges. My oldest, Sam, is an "orchid" child: deeply sensitive, wonderfully unique, and someone who has struggled to find his place in a world that often feels overwhelming to him.

While my younger children have followed what I refer to as the “Middle-Class Master Plan” with relatively few bumps along the way, Sam has always found ordinary expectations of him extraordinarily difficult.

How do I accurately and succinctly sum up the emotional turmoil of the past 26 years? It’s impossible, and although Sam himself is an open book (one of the lovely things about being neurodivergent), parts of his story are not mine to share, and protecting his privacy is always a delicate balancing act.

What I can share is how his journey has changed mine. Sam's challenges — and the choices that followed — have dragged me on to a path that I call "The Heroic Parent Journey," where ordinary parenting concerns were replaced by crises I never imagined I would have to face. Families like ours find themselves navigating a world of extra difficult trials and tribulations such as school rejection, social isolation, addiction, mental illness, hospitalizations, encounters with the justice system, teenage pregnancy, homelessness and all kinds of other super fun stuff.

I will add that this fork in the road has had a profound effect on me, and navigating some of these life experiences has been traumatic at times and have profoundly impacted my life in ways that are hard to articulate, even for myself. The hardest part though is feeling the judgement of others, and navigating my own self doubt and guilt. However, I am learning how to manage what is known as ambiguous grief  — mourning the life his is living and the death of my ordinary, everyday dreams that I have for him, while simultaneously trying to hold on to hope.

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what I will share

People often ask me what Sam’s diagnosis is. The truth is, there have been many over the years. Rather than listing labels, I simply call it “Sam Syndrome.” To me, it describes a young man whose extraordinary sensitivity has made navigating the world far more difficult than it should be.

When Sam was 16-18 he spent a year and eight months at Pine River Institute, a treatment program that is more like a therapeutic boarding school for kids struggling with a severe failure to thrive. Pine River was a Godsend, and a successful intervention while he was there because he thrived with the routine and safe container that the program created for our whole family. Unfortunately though, without this safety net he fell back into old habits after he graduated from Pine River, as did we. 

Since then, we've travelled down some incredibly difficult roads including two brutal winters of homelessness and watching Sam gradually withdraw from the world. While I believe we're through the darkest chapters, recovery isn't a straight line. Currently, Sam hasn't attended school or held a job for several years and he needs a lot of support with everyday, ordinary life stuff. It feels like he's stuck — not because he lacks intelligence or potential, but because he has lost confidence in himself after years of setbacks.

I've seen Sam when he has a sparkle in his eyes, and it's been a long time since I've seen life in them. The eyes are definitely the gateway to the soul, and sometimes his look completely dead.​​​​​​ As a mother this is heartbreaking to bear witness to. A few months ago a caregiver I hired to help Sam told me "it's heartbreaking to see someone so young care so little about his life." Yeah, it is.

I know the amazing young man he can be because I've seen him when he feels safe, connected, and hopeful. I've seen his curiosity, his humour, and the light that returns to his eyes when he's in the right environment, like he was at Pine River. I still occasionally get glimpses of the old Sam, and those moments remind me that nothing is broken beyond repair. They give me slivers of hope to cling to.

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what we've tried

Like so many families, we've spent years searching for the right support only to have Sam reject it.

We've explored long-term residential treatment programs, including therapeutic farms in Ontario and British Columbia that are incredible opportunities to get one's life back on track. In the fall of 2021 I even convinced Sam to get on a plane with me to go to an outstanding (and exceptionally affordable) treatment program in Surrey, BC called The John Volken Academy, but Sam refused to go choosing homelessness instead (you can read about this chapter of my life in a blog on my Heroic Parent website here). Honestly though, I can kind of understand why. Many of these programs are highly structured, requiring participants to be engaged from the crack of dawn until bedtime, seven days a week, for two years. For someone who is deeply introverted and easily overwhelmed, that's a lot to ask. I'm not sure I could do it either.

I tried holding him close by having him live with me, but my own mental health would suffer as a consequence and it never ended well, it felt like he would self-sabotage the opportunity.

We've tried "letting go" under the assumption that Sam is capable of more than he's demonstrating. Instead, it led to long periods of homelessness — not the romanticized version of couch surfing while figuring life out ending in hard won triumph, but the heartbreaking reality of finding him living under a bridge on the Gardiner Expressway without any shoes on.

Ironically, Sam seemed less distressed by those experiences than we were. Without expectations or responsibilities, he found a strange kind of freedom living on the streets that actually improved his mental health overall. But his father and I found it intolerable.

In order to make it more bearable for myself though I reframed those periods as Sam's version of a gap year because it was easier than confronting how frightening it really was. I told myself that I also found myself in some pretty dodgy situations when I spent a year backpacking around the world after university in the 90's, and my parents didn't have a clue where I was (or sometimes even what continent I was on) until I did my monthly phone call home. But the reality is that Sam's "gap years" on the street were much more derelict with no end date in sight. Sometimes months would go by without us hearing from him and my catastrophic thinking would go haywire. I would end up calling hospitals and morgues asking them if they had a John Doe of his description because I knew that he'd lost his phone, money, bank cards, and ID, so it was possible.

Yes, of course we've tried to get him to take medication and attend therapy, but he is non-compliant on both fronts so the mere suggestion from well meaning folk sometimes makes me want to scream or resort to sarcasm in reply — Medication? Therapy? Never heard of it, tell me more... (Dear Reader, if this upsets you there's no offence intended, I know people are just trying to help any way they can when they make these suggestions, but... like... really? )

I have investigated every woo-woo alternative that there is, and haven't ruled out any of them. But like many parents of adult children, I've reached the point where I understand a difficult truth: once someone has the legal right to make their own decisions, love alone cannot make them accept help. It's also hard when someone has little insight into how unwell they really are.

I have finally accepted that Sam has a developmental delay and other mental health challenges that he is self-medicating with weed for. Amazingly he's never gotten onto hard drugs. When I asked him why once, he said that was the next level of giving up, which gives me a little bit of comfort. For now, we've embraced a harm reduction approach and surrounded Sam with whatever supports are available so that he can live as independently as possible. Even so, he isn't thriving. Far from it.

Finding stable housing and meaningful opportunities for someone with his combination of challenges remains incredibly difficult. For the past year, he's been living in motels near Collingwood, supported financially by his father and ODSP. It's a temporary solution, but it isn't a sustainable future. I would describe the current situation as stable but stagnant, and honestly, the way he lives is incredibly depressing.

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what comes next?

As Oscar Hammerstein famously wrote, "You gotta have a dream. If you don’t have a dream, how you gonna make a dream come true?"

Whenever I ask Sam what he wants from life, his answer is always the same:

"I want to live in a tiny house and work on a farm."

Every time he says it, I think, That sounds possible. Not easy — but possible.

However, I also know he won’t be successful without a supportive farming environment that understands how to motivate and empower kids like Sam. After so many disappointments, he needs more than an opportunity to work on a farm, he needs a compassionate community where it feels safe to make mistakes.

That’s how the idea for The Wildflower School of Life began to take root.

The challenge isn’t the dream itself. The challenge is creating the support that will allow him to succeed. After years of setbacks, Sam has lost belief in himself — but I’m not ready to give up on him (yet).

So I keep asking myself the same questions: If Sam won’t go to a traditional residential treatment program, how can some sort of less intensive treatment program come to him and meet him where he’s at? What might that look like? What if it could rebuild his confidence one small success at a time? If I build it, will he come?

The honest truth to the last question is this: I don’t know if Sam will come.

But I do know this: if I never try, I’ll always wonder what might have been — not just for him, but for the many other young adults who are quietly struggling to find their place in the world.

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turning pain into purpose

Over the years, I've come to believe something deeply: Our super-feelers don't need fixing —

They need understanding.

They need belonging.

They need opportunities to discover their strengths instead of constantly being reminded of their struggles.

Most of all, they need environments where they can succeed.

That's the vision behind The Wildflower School of Life.

The program brings together the best ideas I've encountered over years of research — from therapeutic communities like Pine River Institute, Bridewell Gardens, Gould Farm, Caritas, and John Volken Academy, to the WWOOF (World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms) model —combined with my own experience as a mother walking the Heroic Parent Journey.

The result is a simple but ambitious idea: connect struggling young adults with therapeutic Care Farms where meaningful work, supportive relationships, and the rhythms of nature create the conditions for healing. So, as of July 2026, I sold my glamping business near South River and I'm planning to move to the Collingwood area and start a flower farm that will employ Wildflower School of Life participants.

But that's going to take time to get started — years most likely — and the road ahead feels daunting, but there are a few things I know for certain:

1. I am good at bringing people together.

2. I know the importance of the power of community when it comes to recovery. 

3. I know there are many young adults like Sam who are waiting for someone to believe in them.

4. I know that when vulnerable people thrive, entire communities become stronger.

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it takes a village

The vision behind building The Wildflower Farm isn’t just for Sam, it’s for every young adult who has stopped believing in themselves. It’s for every family searching for hope after traditional systems have fallen short. It’s for every parent who refuses to give up on their child, even when the road ahead feels uncertain.

But I do know one final thing for sure: I cannot build this alone.

So if this vision speaks to you, I hope you’ll join me. Together, we can cultivate hope, create belonging, and build a future where every wilting Wildflower has the chance to grow and thrive.