Leanne and the Origin of The Giving Place

let the light shine on those stories of hope we need

So my story is so incredible. It's ridiculous. I was a single mom with 4 kids. I was in the middle of a terrible divorce, and I unfortunately even had to file for bankruptcy. It wasn't me who was bad with money. It was that everything was in my name.

You see, I was working in the corporate world and I was pregnant with my 4th child. I was living the rat race. Just doing everything crazy all the time, rush, rush, rush. Doing reports late at night, getting up the next day, trying to get the kids, I don't know how I survived. It was ridiculous. 

I was living in a semi-detached house. I had to sell my home. And I just found out that I was 22 weeks pregnant. I found out that I had to get a cerclage. The baby was gonna come out, so I had to go on an early leave, and bed rest. I thought, 

“oh my gosh, this is like the worst timing. I'm bringing another child into this world. I already have 3. I'm in the middle of a nasty divorce. I've got little credit. I've got this incredible job, and what am I doing with my life?” 

Suddenly, I was just sitting there. I couldn't do anything. I had to just sit there, and my mind was so used to go, go, go, go, go, go all the time that I didn't even know what I was gonna do. I was thinking, what kind of world am I living in and I'm always trying to please everybody, and I'm trying to do everything, and how am I gonna survive and what kind of example am I? Then all of a sudden I had this epiphany: whenever I listened to my heart everything seemed to always work out for the best. When I became really heart-centred, the right people showed up, the right things showed up. I decided that day I was going to start living a heart-centred life. It didn't matter what anybody else said, as long as I wasn't hurting somebody else, I was going to work from my heart. So I decided I was going to do 3 things before I went back to work. One: I wanted to start a charity; I wanted to help others that were going through difficult times. Two: I wanted to write a book, and that was for my kids. Three: I wanted to figure out what direction I was going in my life. I really wanted to have a house again and a property, and I pictured all these: the flowers and a forest, and water. So, I hired a coach. I told her these are the 3 things I want to do. 

So I started a charity called Touch a Heart. The idea was that there are so many people that want to help. Everybody wants to do great things. But you never really know who it is that you're helping when you give money to a charity or they ask for too much time and you can't offer that because you've got 3 kids at home, but you really wanna give back. So I reached out to the Blue Door shelter and I said, “can you guys tell me what you need? Like what is it that you're lacking?” They told me, “well, the one problem that we have is when people leave the shelter they have first and last month's rent. We can give them a property, we can give them a new home. They can go to the food bank. They can only go once a month. Which is absolutely absurd, and they can get some clothes, but they have nothing. They have no couch, they have no band-aids, they have no toilet paper, no toothbrushes, clothes, furniture, beds, the, the biggest thing is beds. They have nothing in their house and they have no money left after they pay the first and last.” So, I said, “I can totally help with that.” I reached out to my friends, and this was before it was popular on Facebook, (it's quite popular to do this now, but at the time it was kind of new). I reached out to my friends and I said, “look, I have a list of families that are coming from Afghanistan or different places. Here's the first family. They have a 4 year old and a 3 year old, and they are coming on this date, and they have nothing. What, what do you have at home? Do you have a microwave? Does somebody have a toaster oven?” People started responding. One person had a bed. Another person had a dresser they never used. By the end of that month, we helped 5 families fully furnish their homes. You could actually see it making a big difference for them. 

While I was doing that, I was starting to write a book. The coach had told me about this lady named Peggy McColl who is a New York Times bestseller, and she lives in Ottawa. She has this mastermind group of people that get together and are writing books. They help each other with contacts and coaching and editing and all that kind of stuff. By this point, I'm doing Touch of Heart and I'm on bed rest (but I'm really not). I'm going around and helping these families and, and it was feeling absolutely incredible. It became this high of getting to see people helping people. It felt great. Even though people around me kept saying, “Leanne, you know, you're absolutely nuts. You've got too much on your plate already.” I didn't care. I didn't listen. I just did what felt right at the time. 

I went to Ottawa, and I sat beside this woman in this big mastermind group. There was just something like an energy about her, and you know how sometimes you just click with somebody? I just loved her energy. I'm thinking, I really wanna connect with her. I said, “what do you do? She said, “oh, I'm a publisher.” I was like, “oh my gosh, I'm looking for a publisher.” She said, “what do you do?” 

“Well, I just started this little charity.” 

She asks, “Oh, what's it called?” 

I said, “Touch a Heart.”

She said, “Oh yeah, I know it.” And I'm thinking, of course she doesn't know it. We're in Ottawa. Like she must be thinking of another charity or something. The long and short of it is that she lives in Mount Albert, and had been following my charity for 6 months by that time. She then said that she wanted to publish my book for free because of what I’ve been doing. We ended up becoming best friends, not because she was publishing my book, but because we were so aligned. 

Then I met somebody outside of my house who was a graphic designer and did covers for books. (It was like all the right people started showing up when I started living from my heart.) We created this group of women that got together every week. Instead of talking about the things that were going wrong in our life, we talked about how we could help each other achieve whatever it was we wanted, no matter how absurd it seemed. So we decided to do vision boards. 

On the vision board I put I want to help 100 families, have a bestselling book, and have a farm. I put pictures on the board because our minds think in pictures, our minds don't think in words. A lot of the time we write down goals, but we don't think about it, it's the vision that you see. I'm thinking like 5 years down the road. I'm not thinking anything more than that because it was unrealistic to think anything beyond 2 weeks. Within 2 weeks of doing that vision board, my book became an international bestseller! I helped over 100 people refurnish their home in York Region, and this property came up for sale. I called my friend who was a real estate agent and I said, “can I go see that property?” I didn't even know what was on the property. It just popped up in a feed that I was looking at and I said “can I just go see that?” She asked, “why?” I said, “I just want to know what it would feel like if I could afford it. I just want to go and know what it would feel like.” She kind of laughed and said, “Leanne honestly, first of all, you can't afford it. Second of all the place is already sold, but it's got a conditional offer that's closing next week. Third, I can't really call them and say, my friend wants to know what it would feel like if she could afford your property. So, no, I'm not getting you an appointment there.” And I was like, “oh, ok. Well, if something like that comes up, let me know because I'm on this roll of really living from my heart and following it.” And so she said, “Ok.” 

A month later, I am at my grandma's cottage 5 hours away. I get all these texts from her saying to call me, so I call her, “what's going on?” And she said, “Well, you know that property that you were looking at, we have an appointment tomorrow.” I said, “what do you mean I have an appointment tomorrow?” She said, “well, that other offer fell through and there is a new offer that's closing on Monday. This was Saturday. Your appointment is on Sunday. I told the lady your situation and apparently the owner had passed away and she's the executor, and she heard your story and she said you could come for a walk for an hour in the morning if you want.” So I'm thinking, ok. So I pack up my baby, leave the other kids there. I'm thinking this is absolutely nuts. I'm gonna drive 5 hours to walk around this property that I can't afford, but just something pulled me. You know how something tells you you're doing this, that you just need to go there and you're not sure why? So, I got out of my car, walked around this pond, and it's nothing but just grass and weeds and mess, but this is the kind of place I would love one day. 

So I definitely want to work towards something like this. It was honestly magical. I still remember it and I was there for maybe a half an hour. I went to walk to my car and I saw this woman, and she was up by the house, which was kind of like a cottage. I said, “are you the executor?” And she said, “yes.” I said, “I just wanna say thank you, like, thank you so much for just allowing me to be here. I know it is Sunday and you didn't have to, and you know my situation, and I, I just, it's absolutely beautiful and if a miracle were ever to happen, I would love a place like this.” And I left. 

An hour later I got a phone call and my agent said, “I don't know what you said to her, but she wants to know what you can afford.” 

I said, “What do you mean what I can afford?” 

“Because she wants to know what you can afford.”

I said, “Well, I don't know what I can afford. I can't afford that place.” 

She said, “Well, let's call a broker.”

So we called a broker. An hour after that, I got another phone call. She said,”the place is yours.”

I said, “the place is mine?” 

She said, “Yes. You were the first person to walk through the property and loved it just for what it was. And her best friend had passed away from cancer, and she promised him she would only sell it to somebody who made it beautiful again.”

That is why I call it the Giving Place because it has given me and my family so much. I could no longer do Touch a Heart anymore, because I now had this big property. That's why I started the Giving Garden, so that I could continue to give fresh food to families that are leaving shelters and people that just need something and can't go to a food bank because they've already gone there for the quota of the month. That's why I started the animal rescue, and that's why we've created this escape. 

Then I reached out to somebody who was growing lavender, and I said, can you teach me about lavender? I suddenly had all these plants to plant. I got a little tractor, I cleared the land and made this incredible space. People just started showing up. I said, does anybody want to come sit in the field and help plant lavender? And 2600 plants at that time was how it started. And that's my story.

It just shows that no matter what is going on in your life, if you're doing something right and it's aligning with everything around you, the right people show up, the right things happen, even when it seems absolutely impossible.

That's amazing, thank you so much for sharing that. I really appreciate it. It is wild. You still sound like you have so much energy.

Oh, I do. I love it and I love what this place has become. Now we're at roughly 100 volunteers. Some people come an hour a week, and some people come an hour a year: it's all built from people that want to be here and who want to make a difference. I have people coming every day cutting lavender, and just helping motivate: make bouquets, or a labyrinth or a small space on the property that grows something beautiful. How we survive and pay for it is by selling what we create.