Meara (00:00.834)
Welcome to the House of Noor. Have you ever looked at the way your family is living and thought, this cannot be the only way to do this? Because that's exactly where I've ended up. I'm Mira. I've worked in healthcare for 24 years and I've been a nurse for 13. I'm raising a family, homeschooling my girls, learning to work our little homestead, and build the house of Noor from the ground up. But none of this happened because I had some perfect plan. Over time I began questioning things like
The way we're eating, the way our kids are being educated, and how dependent we've become on convenience, and just how disconnected I felt from that kind of home that I actually wanted, and even some of the things I was seeing through my work in healthcare. And once you start noticing those things, you cannot unsee them. So for this first episode, I want to tell you how we got here. Because the House of Noor did not begin with the thought of a business, a homestead, or a podcast. It came for me realizing I wanted something different.
My life definitely didn't always look like this. I was married before, we had two children together, and when that marriage ended, we were fortunate to divorce amicably and co-parent really well. But I've always had this feeling that I was supposed to do more with my life, be more, build something meaningful. I couldn't have told you exactly what that meant back then, and honestly, I'm still figuring it out now. But I just know that I'm not done growing. So life's moved on.
I had another child, and eventually I met the man who's now my husband. He is from Bahrain. He's left his family, his career, and everything he knew to come here. And our relationship was definitely not easy at first. We came from completely different cultures, we're blending families, learning each other all over again, and then we had three babies back to back. So for the longest time we felt more like roommates than
husband and wife. Actually just recently did we start feeling like husband and wife. But somewhere in all of that, he's my best friend and we've built this amazing life together. And it's not perfect by any means, but it's ours. And so for a long time we were doing what I think a lot of families do. We were busy, constantly ordering food out. The girls were in Montessori. I was working 52 hours a week.
Meara (02:22.744)
And we were just constantly moving. We started in a two-bedroom with five people and we've moved three times since he's been here. You know, we're getting we're getting through life. But eventually I had to ask myself whether we were actually building the life we wanted. Because there was always this part of me that wanted something different. I wanted to bake the bread. I wanted to grow things. I wanted to learn more about herbs and cook more and just be healthy and make home feel more like home.
And a lot of that probably came from the way I grew up. So my mom, she's always really been into herbs, supplements, and taking care of her body. So I grew up pretty conscious of health and what we put into ourselves. But knowing something that actually, you know, and actually changing the way you live are two totally different things. So one of the biggest turning points for me was school. We had already moved my older girls from traditional school into online school. And this year our five-year-old started.
And I sat there with her for six hours. And I remember thinking, what are we doing? Why does this feel like a full workday for a five year old? Why does this learning have to be this heavy already? And so I was really nervous about pulling her because as a parent, you immediately start questioning yourself, can I actually do this? Like, am I qualified enough? What if I mess this up? You know, should I just leave things alone and trust that
System is gonna support me and this is how it's supposed to be. So very cautiously I pulled her at first and then I took a harder look at my older two. And the one has a learning disability. So that hit me different because I too have a learning disability growing up. And I know what it feels like to sit there while everybody else is under you know, understanding something that just wasn't clicking for me. And so I was watching what was happening to my own child being on an IEP, she was stupid.
Still being left behind. And eventually I thought, absolutely not. And then our other child, who's a year younger than the eldest, she is very intelligent. And they were keeping her stuck at the fourth grade level when she was just excelling, but she had to stay stuck. And so I thought, you know, I know my children and I can see this definitely isn't working. And if I'm already sitting there six hours a day, I'm just gonna pull them.
Meara (04:46.656)
So here we are, and we created the House of Knorr Academy. And honestly, it has been one of the one of the best changes that we've made because now I get to see how they actually learn. And if something's not clicking, we're able to slow down and go back and try another way. And if we need three days instead of one, we take three days. And instead of constantly feeling behind, I can put them in situations where they're actually experiencing success and I'm watching them thrive. And maybe school isn't your thing.
Maybe for you it's your job, your health, marriage, home, you know. But I think most of us have something in our lives where at some point we quietly think, This isn't working anymore. And what do you do when you finally admit that? For us, another huge piece fell into place when we finally got our little piece of land. We recently bought our homestead and suddenly so many things I imagined separately over the years were coming into one place. The kids can learn outside. We can grow food, trees, and learn from the land we live on.
And I'm learning right alongside them. And so I'm not coming to you as somebody who's been homesteading for 20 years because I just started, but I'm figuring this out as I go. I'm planting things, moving things, figuring out what thrives and what doesn't, learning our soil, property, herbs, how to make more things from our own home. And somewhere in the middle of all of this, the house of Noor took shape. So it didn't come out of this perfect business plan. It just came out of my life.
And I wanted to become more intentional about what we eat, what we use, what comes into our home and what we teach our children and how we spend our time because healthcare has been such a huge part of my life, wellness, and naturally became a part of that conversation too. So I've spent 24 years in the medical field, and you see a lot in that amount of time and you learn a lot, but you also begin asking questions. So I definitely have respect for the healthcare professionals, me being one. And I believe medicine absolutely has a
Place. But I also believe there should be room to talk about prevention, food, movement, sleep, stress, herbs, traditional practices, and actually understanding the choices we make for ourselves and for our families. For me, that curiosity followed me home. I began using essential oils in simple ways with my kids.
Meara (07:02.187)
I made little rollers for things like growing eggs and I love being able to make something for myself and know exactly what I'm putting into it and that made me curious. So I've been learning more. Botanical oils led me to herbs. Herbs let me led me to tazains, ingredients, traditional practices, and all these things I realized I genuinely loved learning about. And so eventually I thought, what if building what if I build something out of this? Something that actually feels like us.
And that's how it became the House of Noor. But I don't want the House of Noor to only be about the things I make. And I definitely don't want this podcast to be me see sitting here pretending that I have everything figured out because I do not. I want to sit down with people who know things I don't know, people who grow food, if you work with herbs or if you homeschool, raise families, building a business, make things with your hands, or just simply lived enough life to say, here's what I've learned.
I want the conversations where somebody can say, this worked for me, this absolutely did not, this is what I wish somebody had told me 10 years ago, and this is the part I'm still trying to figure out because that's useful and it's real. And you may never want a homestead, you may never want to homeschool your children or have acres of land or you know, even three pots sitting outside of your door. And this really isn't the point. The bigger question is, how much of your life have you actually chosen? And how much of it are you doing because
That's what you were told life was supposed to look like. I've had to ask myself that question, and I'm still asking it. Changing your life doesn't always mean making something, some huge dramatic move. Sometimes it's just noticing what isn't working, making one different choice, and building from there. That's what we're doing. I'm homeschooling my girls, learning my land, growing things, building the house of Noor, making tons of mistakes, constantly changing my mind, trying all over again, and just figuring out.
What I was called to do in this life. And if you're figuring some of that out as well, I hope this becomes a place where you, you know, we can do it together. And maybe the answer isn't doing more. Maybe it's starting over isn't about changing everything. Maybe it's just about returning to the simple things.