This Is Our Story

Welcome to Breathe Easy Momma! A retreat for you, the overworked, overstimulated, heart full of love for your kids, but also needs a break from them to recharge type of mom……and to do it with other moms who feel the same.

Come as you are!…. In your track pants and sweatshirts or dresses and cardigans or hell come in your pyjamas!! We love all types.

We are Sakina and Tiffany, both health care professionals, moms and both in desperate need of a break from the children we have created.

Every where you look people are telling you it takes a village to raise your child but what no one tells you is that the village doesn’t exist….you have to build it.

SO…..”if you build it they will come”.

Here we are trying to help other moms just like ourselves build the village they’ve always needed.

A space to get away and recharge so that your ‘snap switch’ is a little harder to hit when the kids get going crazy…which they probably got from their dads. A space to relax, vent and enjoy someone else taking care of you…..if only for a couple of days.

Join in all of the activities we have planned or sleep all day, whatever you need we are here for you.

Hopefully you will walk away renewed, refreshed and with some new ‘mom friend’ connections.

A small step to a new village.

About

Tiffany Koniecki

Hello my name is Tiffany. I am a paramedic, athlete, avid traveller and single mom by choice to a 3 year old. Born in Toronto, raised in Mississauga. The ‘whole package’ of marriage, house, career and kids just wasn’t in the stars for me, so I decide to do it on my own. I started a second career, at 35, as a Paramedic and relocated 3 hours away from my friends, family and entire support system for work. Shortly after moving I decided to have a child on my own but didn’t really have any ‘village’ in the new city I was calling home. Luckily I managed to find a village of one in my dear friend Sakina, a friendship that required no social battery, no judgement, similar parenting styles, someone to lean on when times are tough…….and they are always tough!I finally found out what it was like to have that ‘village’, if only in one friend.

After visiting an amazing moms retreat in USA, we thought there should be one for our local Canadian moms …… and Breathe Easy Momma was created. First as a dream over wine in sweat pants, then in reality, over more wine….and in track pants. More and more moms we came in contact with expressed the need for something like this retreat. 4 days away to rest, relax and share the difficulties of motherhood. Im sure like every other mother out there, I have those moments where I love but also want to strangle my kid every day. Navigating all the ‘do’s and don’t’s” for raising a ‘healthy kid’ that are thrown at you from social media and "experts" makes me want cry. All this being said, I wouldn’t trade motherhood for anything in the world.

Hopefully we get to meet some great moms and build a real village.

About

Sakina Warren

Hello, my name is Sakina. I was born in Scarborough, ON and raised in the GTA. I am a wife, mother of 2 (5 and 2 year old) and a Registered Nurse with a certificate in Psychiatry Nursing (B.Sc.N., R.N., Psych). In my very little free time I love playing soccer and baking. In all my efforts to move us back to the GTA, I ended up calling Windsor my home in 2016. I now love Windsor for those who ask. I was always trying to hid from my culture, but as I got older I embraced my African roots. I’m a first generation Canadian with roots from Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania, Africa. Navigating motherhood with so many cultural differences/expectations, while healing past traumas and in a new city was difficult to say the least. I was looking for the ‘village’ that helps while raising my kids and I was so far from home, I felt alone. Luckily, through my husbands job, I met my village in one person, Tiffany. With Tiffany, I knew I could show up in a potato sack and unannounced and she would feed me. Our friendship was complete- we understood each other. And then we got matching tattoos on our first Mother's retreat- my husband was clearly impressed lol.

Together we found a profound need to help build a village where we live and try and help, even just a little, other mothers seeking that all too promised, rarely seen village.