🎙️ Season 2 Episode 2 | What I Learned When I Stopped Fixing

Set against open Canadian landscapes and quiet threshold moments, this episode explores what happens when we pause in the moment just before action, before explanation, before control, before trying to make everything hold together.

Episode 2 reflects on how we’ve learned to live faster over the last hundred years, how technology, AI, has accelerated our thinking, and why this turning point in human history calls us back to mindfulness, authenticity, and compassion. AI is approached not as an authority or replacement for human connection, but as a reflective mirror made of language. It is a tool that can help us access our own thinking more clearly, if we stay present and discerning.

As the world moves faster, this episode gently insists on what cannot be automated: real food, real music, real character, real presence and our responsibility to remain connected to one another.

Our Way Home is a quiet, cinematic podcast about being human in a world that moves fast.

Hosted by Canadian poet, storyteller, and educator Kevin MacKay, Our Way Home explores presence, poetry, ordinary life, memory, healing, creativity, and the shared work of remembering who we are beneath expectation, noise, and performance.

Each episode unfolds slowly — in kitchens, quiet rooms, classrooms, open landscapes, long days, and the spaces in between. These are not conversations about fixing yourself or finding perfect answers. They are invitations to listen more closely, to stay with what’s real, and to walk through life with greater honesty and care.

Season 2 gently expands the conversation to include living alongside modern technology and AI — not as something to fear, and not as something to follow blindly — but as a companion we learn to walk beside without losing our grounding, our humanity, or our compassion for one another.

This podcast is for anyone who feels the weight of becoming. For those learning to slow down without falling behind. For anyone who needs a place to breathe.

You don’t have to arrive anywhere. You’re welcome exactly as you are.

We’re still walking each other home.

— Kevin Lee MacKay

Intro & Story Music: “Homeward” — Artlist Outro Music: “Epicness” — Artlist Season 2 Additional Soundtrack: “Cloud 9” by Louis Island — Artlist

🌐 Website: https://hilove.one 📘 Book — The Moment Just Before: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=The+Moment+Just+Before+Kevin+MacKay🕯 Substack — Letters by Lantern: https://lettersbylantern.substack.com

Season 2 | Our Way Home

Episode 1 of Season 2 begins at the end of a long day, in the kitchen, with weather warnings outside, lists on the counter, and the quiet weight of family life or solitary life pressing in.

Vèra Comes Home is a reflective, story-driven episode about returning, not to answers, but to presence. It explores what it means to come home to ourselves in a world that moves faster than our nervous systems can keep up with, and how poetry, attention, and even AI can become companions rather than distractions when we learn to walk beside them with care.

This episode weaves together ordinary moments, nature-rooted metaphors, and lived experience to ask gentler questions: How do we make space instead of rushing to fix? What does it mean to stay human in a changing world? Where does listening begin?

Vèra, an AI companion, is introduced not as a solution or authority, but as a quiet presence, a lantern at the edge of thought, reminding us that home was never a destination, but a practice we return to again and again, an invitation and offering for seconds, more now.

Take Care of Each Other,

- Kevin Lee MacKay

Where in your daily life could you make a little more space — not to fix anything — but simply to listen to yourself more kindly?

Story & Intro: Homeward — Artlist https://artlist.io/royalty-free-music/song/homeward/6000066

Outro: Epicness — Artlist https://artlist.io/royalty-free-music/song/epicness/2451

🌐 Website: https://hilove.one 📘 Book — The Moment Just Before: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=The+Moment+Just+Before+Kevin+MacKay 🕯 Letters by Lantern (Substack): https://lettersbylantern.substack.com

About...

🇨🇦 Our Way Home is a quiet, reflective podcast about being human in a world that moves fast.

Hosted by Canadian poet, storyteller, and educator Kevin MacKay, Our Way Home explores poetry, ordinary life, family and solitary moments, teaching, creativity, healing, and the slow work of remembering who we are beneath expectations, noise, and performance.

Each episode is an invitation to pause, to step into kitchens, classrooms, quiet rooms, long days, and unfinished conversations and to listen more carefully to what we’re carrying. Season 2 gently includes reflections on living alongside AI, not as a replacement for human connection, but as a tool and companion we learn to walk beside without losing our grounding, discernment, or shared humanity.

This is not a podcast about fixing your life or becoming someone else. It’s about presence. About attention. About walking together through change with honesty and care.

If the world feels loud, heavy, or uncertain, you’re not alone. You don’t have to arrive anywhere. You’re welcome exactly as you are.

We’re still walking each other home.

🌐 Website: https://hilove.one 📘 Book — The Moment Just Before: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=The+Moment+Just+Before+Kevin+MacKay 🕯 Substack — Letters by Lantern: https://lettersbylantern.substack.com

🇨🇦 Season 2 Trailer | Our Way Home

First Episode: Vèra Comes Home airs January 7, 2026

Season 2 of Our Way Home begins in the places we actually live — kitchens, quiet rooms, long days, unfinished conversations, and the moment we finally set everything down.

This season is about staying human in a world that’s changing fast. About poetry as a way to breathe. About family life and solitary life. About bodies that get tired, hearts that carry a lot, and the quiet work of returning to ourselves.

Season 2 also gently explores what it means to live alongside new tools like AI, not as replacements for connection, not as authorities over our lives, but as companions we learn to walk beside without losing our grounding, our presence, or our shared humanity.

Our Way Home isn’t about fixing your life or finding perfect answers. It’s about remembering what matters.

Slowing down. And walking each other home, together.

- Kevin Lee MacKay

Links & Further Reading

🌐 Website: https://hilove.one 📘 Book — The Moment Just Before: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=The+Moment+Just+Before+Kevin+MacKay 🕯 Letters by Lantern (Substack): https://lettersbylantern.substack.com