About

Hello and welcome to www.timandolive.com!

If life is a journey, this blog is hopefully a scenic point; a place for you to pause in the midst of your day to stop, read, think, reflect, and appreciate the life that you are living. Our desire is that here you’ll gain some refreshment, encouragement and perhaps new perspective on marriage, parenting, and life.

“The unexamined life is not worth living,” said Socrates. Perhaps that statement is too strong, but the sentiment reflects what we believe to be true in life. We believe in the value of taking time to think, to savour the good, and acknowledge the difficult.

We have written two books. The first is, “Fight With Me: How We Learned to be Married,” which you can get as a FREE gift for subscribing to our newsletter. Our second book is “Then Came The Baby: The Wonder, Mayhem and Hilarity of Our First Year As Parents.” Both books are available as Kindle ebooks and as hard copies on Amazon.

Tim Keller in his brilliant book The Meaning of Marriage writes, “Singles must see how hard and how glorious marriage is, not just how satisfying it is. The only way that happens is if married couples share their lives with singles so they can understand what marriage is really like.” That’s what we hope to do in this blog, to write honestly about how hard and glorious marriage and parenting is.

About Tim:
Tim is a cheerful pessimist and always thinking. His life began in Yellowknife with stops in Calgary, Hong Kong, and Vancouver along the way. He proposed to Olive with a goat (and no diamond ring). There is a soft spot in his heart for mangos, mentoring, the Vancouver Canucks, and anyone who washes the dishes at his place. Tim especially enjoys being a husband to Olive and father to Alena and Kayla.

Tim has been a contributor to The Good Men Project, Converge Magazine, Hello Vancity, and Dad’s Round Table. He has also been an on-air guest for Huffpost Live and Fairchild TV. Tim is a business coach and consultant with Coracle Coaching and Consulting (formerly Coracle Marketing) and hosts the Thriving Is the Goal podcast.

About Olive:
Olive is a friendly introvert and recovering perfectionist. In an ideal day, she would paint, eat chocolate croissants and take lots of naps. But she’s primarily occupied these days with her two lovely young ladies, Alena and Kayla and making sure her husband, Tim, does not have to eat McDonald’s too often. Writing, puzzling, and knitting are her soul therapy. She aspires to be a practitioner of grace, an advocate for rest, and a conduit of beauty in this hurried and chaotic world. She shares the story of how that came to be, here.

Olive has been a contributor to Converge Magazine, SheLoves Magazine, and Hello VanCity. Olive works as an artist who paints meaningful acrylic landscapes featuring skies and light. You can find her work at OliveChanArt.com.

Land Acknowledgement

Tim and Olive acknowledge that they live, work, and play on the traditional, ancestral and unceded territory of the kʷikʷəƛ̓əm (Kwikwetlem),  sq̓əc̓iy̓aɁɬ təməxʷ (Katzie),  S’ólh Téméxw (Stó:lō), and Coast Salish Peoples. We thank these First Peoples who continue to live on these lands and care for them, and whose relationship to these lands existed long before the founding of Canada or British Columbia.

Don’t know where to start? Here are a few of our most popular posts:

By Tim:
Thoughts as a Depressed Husband (How My Wife Helped Me Face Depression)
How to Get Married (my 5-step plan in finding a wife)
Stop Trying to Cheer Up Your Wife
Dear Hypothetically Gay Child
My Wife is Mad at me and I Don’t Know Why

By Olive:
Dear Extroverts (An Honest Letter from an Introvert)
How to Know You’ve Found the Right Person to Marry
The Pros and Cons of Being an Only Child
Why I Refused a Diamond Ring

Published Articles:
You’re Looking for the Wrong Person to Marry [Converge Magazine]

Guest Posts:
Befriending My Depression [The Good Men Project] The Ups and Downs of Long-Distance Dating [Converge Magazine] 5 Practical Tips on Learning to Cook [Hello VanCity] These Eyes of Mine: A Fresh Perspective [She Loves Magazine] 9 Ways to Cheer Up Your Wife [Dad’s Round Table] Taking a Sabbatical to Focus your Career and Calling [Salt + Light]