I've always blamed being a Libra for my inability to make a simple decision.

Give me two choices and I will consider three more.

Ask me how I feel about something and there is a very good chance I will tell you both sides of the story before I ever get around to telling you mine.

For years I thought this was indecision.

Lately, I've begun to wonder if it is something else.

Perhaps it is the ability to understand that two things can be true at the same time.

That sounds simple enough until you actually try to live it.

• You can love someone and still be disappointed in them.

• You can forgive someone and still remember what happened.

• You can be grateful for the life you've been given and still wonder about the life you might have lived.

• You can be strong and still need someone to sit beside you while you fall apart.

• You can miss someone terribly and know that you are better off without them.

• You can be happy for another person's happiness and, at the very same time, feel the little ache of wanting something you never had.

None of those things cancels the other. Maybe that is the paradox. We seem to want everything neatly sorted. Good or bad. Right or wrong. Yes or no. Stay or go. But life rarely gives us those clean lines.

The older I get, the more I realize that some of the most important truths I've learned have lived in the gray spaces. I was raised to believe that truth was something solid. Something you stood on. Something you knew. And I still believe in truth.

But I have learned that sometimes the truth has layers. There are things I believe with my whole heart that I have also questioned.

There are people I have loved who have hurt me.

There are people I have been angry with who I have also understood.

There are chapters of my life I would never want to repeat and yet would not erase.

And there are versions of myself I once judged rather harshly who, when I look back at them now, I mostly want to hug.

Maybe that is another truth we don't talk about enough. We are allowed to outgrow an old version of ourselves without hating her for getting us here.

Today is the closing of what many call the Lion's Gate portal, that little stretch of August that has become associated with reflection, manifestation, release and stepping into something new.

I'm not sure I need the universe to open a portal for me. I've spent enough years opening doors myself.

• Some of them I walked through.

• Some I slammed.

• Some I stood in the doorway of for entirely too long because, well...

Libra.

But I do like the idea of a threshold. A moment when we pause and ask ourselves what we are carrying forward and what we are finally willing to put down.

Perhaps what I want to carry forward is not certainty. Perhaps I want curiosity. The willingness to say, "I don't know yet."

The willingness to hold two truths in my hands without forcing one of them to disappear.

Maybe I can be both grateful and longing.

Both strong and tender.

Both certain and questioning.

Both finished with something and still mourning it.

Maybe I don't have to choose.

Maybe balance was never about standing perfectly in the middle. Maybe balance is learning how to stand honestly wherever you are.

There is a strange comfort in that.

The greenhouse has taught me something about this. Nothing grows because everything is controlled. Things grow because there is a balance between what they are given and what they are forced to endure.

Too much sun can burn. Too much water can drown.

Pruning can look like destruction until you see what comes afterward.

And sometimes what looks dead isn't dead at all. It's simply resting.

I think people are a little like that.

I know I am.

So on this little Lion's Gate day, I'm not asking for a new life. I'm not even asking for all the answers. I'm simply standing at the threshold with a few truths in my hands.

• Some beautiful.

• Some uncomfortable.

• Some unfinished.

And I'm letting them all stay.

Because perhaps that is what I've been trying to learn all along.

Not how to choose between opposites. But how to make room for both.

And maybe that is the real paradox.

Maybe becoming whole doesn't mean finally deciding who we are.

Maybe it means becoming comfortable with all the pieces that have always been there.

Even the contradictory ones.

Especially those.

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A little extra for your day:

What are the two truths you're holding right now?

Maybe you don't have to choose between them.

#NotesFromTheGreenhouse #Paradox #LionsGate #Libra #FindingBalance #LifeLessons #GrowingOlder #PersonalGrowth #Reflection #SecondChapters #WomenWhoGrow #WisdomWithAge #GraceAndGrowth #SmallTownGirl

It had been well over a year since the three of us had managed to sit down together.

Finally, Suzhannah made it.

After a long illness and an even longer period of extreme isolation, she ventured down to a local beach for lunch. There had been some strain between Suzhannah and Nanette recently, so I wasn't entirely sure how the afternoon would go.

It turned out to be wonderful.

Maybe that's because the three of us are so different. Perhaps that's also why we are such good friends.

We sat at the table, caught up on each other's lives, laughed, and eventually did what we have always done: we started talking about things that matter.

Politics came first.

I had been wondering for some time when people in the Upper Peninsula might begin looking at Donald Trump differently. I have my own opinions about him, of course, but what interests me is the voter. We had just finished our primary here in Michigan, and political talk was on our minds.

The conversation wandered through candidates and elections and eventually landed on Abdul El-Sayed.

And somewhere in that conversation, I had one of those little moments when I realized we might have been looking at something from the wrong angle.

The Upper Peninsula isn't exactly known for its diversity. Yet perhaps that wasn't the interesting part.

Trump was never a traditional political candidate.

Neither is El-Sayed.

Maybe sometimes people aren't simply voting Republican or Democrat. Maybe sometimes they're drawn to someone who doesn't look, sound, or behave like the candidates they've been accustomed to choosing.

It was an interesting conversation. But it didn't stay political for long. Suddenly, we were talking about religion.

And that's when I was reminded just how different the three of us really are.

Nanette is traditional in many ways. She was born and raised here in the U.P., has been married for 57 years, has four adult grandchildren, and has spent much of her life deeply involved in community volunteer work. Our husbands are good friends too.

She is also devoutly Christian.

Nanette doesn't apologize for her faith or try to soften it. She believes what she believes, and she lives it. She still occasionally tries to convince me to join her at church on Sunday mornings.

Suzhannah is different.

She's divorced, lives alone, and values her privacy above almost everything else. She has no children living close by. She still considers herself a Christian and believes in Jesus, but she doesn't attend church. Her relationship with her higher power is personal and daily.

And then there's me. I've been married several times. I'm not originally from the U.P., although I've called it home for the past sixteen years. I'm still a hippie at heart. I don't consider myself religious. I consider myself spiritual.

And somehow, the three of us have managed to become very good friends.

We talk about spirituality and religion all the time. At this stage of our lives, those questions are difficult to avoid. They are part of who we have become and, in many ways, part of what our lives have taught us.

We know where the others stand. We don't always agree. Suzhannah will sometimes have her phone out before I've even finished making a point, fact-checking whatever I've just said. She has absolutely no problem telling me I'm wrong.

Nanette disagrees with me too, but she does it in a more diplomatic fashion.

I actually love that about these two women.

• I don't need or want my friends to agree with me. I need them to be honest with me.

My own relationship with faith has taken a long and winding road.

I was raised Presbyterian. Later, I spent sixteen years attending a Southern Baptist church with my former husband, Dick. I’ve read the Bible cover to cover more than once. I learned a great deal during those years. Some of it strengthened my beliefs. Some of it challenged them, and some of it taught me what I didn't want my relationship with God to look like.

• I learned that I believe our works matter.

• How we treat other people matters.

• I also learned that I don't believe Scripture has one rigid interpretation that every human being must accept. I believe we have to read it, absorb it, wrestle with it, and ultimately decide what it personally means to us as individuals. 

My years in the church also taught me that sometimes people use religion to hide behind their own bad behaviors

I experienced that firsthand. I remember sitting in adult Sunday school when someone asked the teacher whether he would ever take a class at seminary from a woman. The future preacher said, “No, that there was nothing spiritual he could learn from a woman.”

I couldn't help myself. In my shock, I said, interupting,"I wonder what your wife would think about that." I clearly flustered the man. He couldn't backpedal fast enough.

The following week, a Deacon stopped me in the hallway and told me that “ if I ever opened my mouth in Sunday school again, he would hit me in the head with a two-by-four.”

I told him that if he ever spoke to me again or touched me, he would be shocked at how quickly I could take him down.

My former husband was also a deacon and the director of the Sunday school. Very few people understood the person he was outside the church.

Later, when we separated, I received a phone call from the preacher who told me that if I didn't immediately return to my husband, “ God would never bless me or my life again.”

That conversation ended my experience with organized religion.

But it didn't end my belief in a higher power.

Looking back, I don't think I ever truly belonged there. I had gone to make my then husband happy, and somewhere along the way I had hidden my own truth from myself inside a religion I never completely embraced.

What changed wasn't whether I believed. It was what I believed faith could be.

• I believe God is all-encompassing.

• I believe there are valuable lessons in many religions and belief systems.

• I believe we need to leave our lives open so that we might experience the extraordinary.

I rule very little out.Anything is possible. I've had too many experiences in my life to be comfortable saying otherwise.

When I was twenty-four, I had an experience that forever changed the way I look at life.

My son was about six months old. My grandparents had been visiting. I put the baby down for a nap and went to lie down myself.

Suddenly, I felt as though I was floating above my body. I could see myself laying on the bed. I floated into my baby's room and looked at him. Then I heard a voice say: "It's not your time yet. Nothing in your life is as it seems."

Then I woke up to EMTs performing chest compressions.

Before that experience, I had the intuition of a gnat. Afterward, it was as though someone had turned the volume all the way up. My intuition became intense. I began having predictive dreams. I don't expect anyone else to believe my experiences mean what I believe they mean. They are mine.

But they changed me.

They made me less interested in declaring something impossible, simply because I couldn't explain it.

And perhaps that's part of why I am comfortable sitting at a table with people whose beliefs are different from mine.

Nanette knows her faith. She walks the walk.

Suzhannah has her daily relationship with her higher power.

And I can understand the teachings of Jesus, draw spiritual lessons from nature, explore other belief systems, and still refuse to put a single label on the whole thing.

None of us has to win. None of us has to convert the others.

• We can simply talk.

• We can disagree.

• We can challenge each other.

• We can laugh.

• We can learn.

Somehow, after all these years, we keep discovering things about one another.

Maybe that's the remarkable part.

Not that three women with such different histories and beliefs became friends.

But that we've remained friends for 15 years, precisely because we don't require one another to be alike.

Our differences don't make the friendship harder. They make it easier.

We don't have to agree on everything. We don't even have to understand everything the same way. We just have to care enough about each other to listen.

Maybe that's something we've forgotten how to do. We live in a world that seems increasingly determined to sort people into categories.

• Christian or non-Christian.

• Conservative or liberal.

• Believer or nonbeliever.

• Us or them.

But three women can sit at the same table and prove that the lines aren't always that simple.

We can carry different beliefs, different histories, different experiences, and different answers, and still be friends.

• Still laugh.

• Still argue.

• Still learn.

• Still come back to the table.

Maybe that's enough. Maybe that's the whole point. Not that we agree.

But that we keep listening.

And that’s how it is here.. Somewhere between the forest and the lake.

Your Small Town Girl.

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Tory has always been beautiful.

But beauty has never been the most remarkable thing about my oldest granddaughter.

Tory has always been fiercely independent. She has had to be.Her young life was not an easy one.

When Tory was nine years old, her father took his own life. I am sure he loved her. But love doesn't make a child's grief any less complicated, and his death left both Tory and my daughter brokenhearted.

Some wounds don't disappear simply because the years keep moving. They change shape, perhaps, but they remain a part of us.

There were other difficult circumstances, too, including a step-parent who made those years harder than they should have been.

I knew Tory's sadness better than most people did because she almost spent every summer of her life with me.

Those summers were different.

Eventually, when Tory was fifteen, she asked if she could come live with me.

She was having a terrible time at school in Denver, and my husband and I had plenty of room at our farmhouse. So she came to our small town. Her mom, quickly made the decision to move here too, along with her brother's and sister. With her family now complete something began to change.

She made friends quickly. She graduated from high school. She went to work full time and quickly got her own apartment.

She was becoming her own woman. And she was a wonderful one.

Tory developed a quick wit and a sarcastic sense of humor that could catch you completely off guard. I admired that about her. She was smart, independent, and determined. She didn't need anyone to tell her how to live her life.

But there was something I rarely saw.

A smile.

Tory didn't smile much. And she almost never laughed. I never thought she was incomplete because of it. She wasn't. She had built a life for herself, and she was perfectly capable of carrying it. She had simply learned, somewhere along the way, to keep her guard up. That guard kept most potential boyfriends at an arms length.

Then she met Witt.

And I want to be very clear about something.

Witt did not complete Tory.

There was nothing missing in her that he came along to fill. Tory was already a whole, wonderful person.

What I think Witt gave her was something entirely different.

A place where she could put the armor down.

For perhaps the first time, she seemed to have found someone with whom she didn't have to be quite so fiercely independent. Someone she could trust enough to relax around. Someone with whom she could simply be Tory.

And apparently, there is quite a bit of laughter inside that girl.

We discovered that the other night.

It was our anniversary, and six of us were having dinner together. When we arrived, Tory and Witt were already there, along with my daughter Amber and her partner, Wes.

Tory walked towards me with a giant hug.

It was Tory.

She was laughing. Actually laughing.

When I walked through the door, she was smiling, and there was something about seeing that smile that stopped me for a moment.

Because I knew how rare it was.

• I knew the girl who had carried so much sadness.

• I knew the teenager who had come to stay with us.

• I knew the young woman who had learned to stand firmly on her own two feet.

And now I was watching her laugh.

The four of us noticed it. Her mom and I both stood in awe of her joy and playful nature.

Tory was happy.

• Not because someone had come along and rescued her.

• Not because she had finally found someone to make her whole.

She was happy because she had found someone she could be whole with.

There is a difference.

And maybe that is what love is supposed to be. Not filling the empty spaces in another person

But creating a safe enough place that two people can put down their defenses and simply enjoy being alive together.

And there is one other thing I find almost too perfect to ignore.

Witt runs and operates a greenhouse.

A man who spends his days growing things. That is not a coincidence, its synchronicity.

But I have spent enough time around greenhouses to know that growing things takes patience. You can't pull a plant open to make it bloom. You give it light. You give it room. You give it what it needs.

And then you wait.

I don't think Witt made Tory bloom. I know the bloom was always hers.

He may simply be someone who makes it safe for her to open.

And that night, sitting across the table from my granddaughter, I heard something I had waited a very long time to hear.

Her laughter.

And I realized how much I had missed it.

The smile was never about finding someone to complete her.

It was about finally seeing a part of her that had been there all along.

And God, it was beautiful.

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Sometimes life has a way of teaching us its biggest lessons in the most unexpected places.

This week, mine came nine miles offshore on Lake Michigan.

If you've ever had someone become your calm in the middle of life's storms, this story is for you. If you have ever had to pull yourself through a storm alone, this story is for you too.

Thank you for walking through the greenhouse with me each week.

— SMALL TOWN GIRL 🌿

I am not a fan of fishing.

There. I said it.

I am, however, a huge fan of lying on the front deck of the boat, taking a nap, listening to the water, sharing a picnic, and spending time with my old man. So when Jim asked if I'd like to go fishing, I happily agreed.

We headed out from Barque Point, about nine miles into Lake Michigan.

The lake was dead calm.

Not just calm... dead calm.

There wasn't a breath of wind. Not a ripple disturbed the surface. The water reflected the clouds so perfectly it was difficult to tell where the sky ended and the lake began.

Taken by me that night. So calm.

It was one of those evenings you wish you could bottle up forever.

Jim got the trolling motor running and carefully set all six fishing lines. I unpacked our picnic... or at least I tried to. First, I had to defend myself against an army of black flies that apparently thought I was dinner. After a healthy dose of bug spray, we settled in.

We laughed. We listened to Bob Seger.

We watched the evening unfold as we waited for the sunset and the fish to bite.

It was perfect.

Then Jim's phone buzzed. Even in the middle of the lake, in a small town, everyone still knows how to find you. His fishing buddy had sent a simple message.

"The calm is over. Strong north winds are coming."

Within moments, we could actually see the ripples moving across the lake toward us. The air turned cool. The water changed. Less than twenty minutes later, the waves began to build.

So did my fear.

The year before, we had been caught in an unexpected storm on Lake Michigan. Eight-foot waves. Driving rain. Hail. Lightning. It was one of those experiences you never completely forget.

Those memories came rushing back.

Only this time, something else had changed. Parkinson's has taken away much of my balance. As the boat pitched beneath me, I realized just how helpless I had become.

It is not a feeling I care for.

Jim never panicked. He helped me into the captain's chair and quietly said, "We'll be fine... but I have to bring these lines in."

As the waves rolled over the bow, he calmly worked his way around the boat, bringing in six fishing lines, securing the gear, and preparing us for the ride home.

Now let me tell you something about that old man of mine.

That man has incredible balance.

Maybe it came from all those years working aboard an icebreaker in Antarctica.

But I think it came from somewhere else, too.

You don't learn how to stand steady when the storm arrives. You learn it from every storm you've already survived.

Jim and I have been married for twenty-five years. Together we've weathered our share of heartbreak. Some storms we faced side by side. Others were so deeply personal that each of us had to find our own footing before we could find each other again.

There are people who don't have the luxury of meeting a storm with someone at their side.

They have buried loved ones, watched dreams unravel, faced illness, disappointment, financial hardship, and the thousand quiet losses no one else ever sees.

When the wind changes, they don't draw on confidence. They draw on memory.

They remember what fear feels like.

They remember they have stood in the middle of a storm before.

They remember that somehow...

they found their way through.

And perhaps that's what experience really gives us—not the promise that storms won't come again, but the quiet assurance that we already carry within us the need to face them.

Eventually Jim raised the trolling motor, walked over, and gently peeled my fingers away from the death grip I had on the wheel.

Nearly two hours later, we reached shore. We had taken quite a beating from those waves.

Sunday became a day of rest, sore muscles, and a renewed appreciation for dry land.

This small-town girl and her old man didn't catch a single fish. Not one. But somewhere between Bark Point and home, I realized something.

Life is a lot like Lake Michigan.

Sometimes everything is peaceful. The water is smooth, the sky is clear, and we quietly begin to believe that this moment will last forever.

Then the wind changes.

We don't always get to choose the waves. But we do get to choose who stands beside us when they come.

That night, nine miles offshore, I discovered that strength isn't always found in standing on your own.

Sometimes strength is found in trusting the steady hand beside you.

Sometimes love looks like an old sailor with sure footing, calm eyes, and a quiet voice saying...

"We'll be fine.”

Ahoy, Small Town Girl

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I have always believed in the greater good.

Perhaps that is why I became a teacher. For ten years, I stood in classrooms believing every child mattered and that part of my responsibility was to help them discover the gifts they already carried within them.

Later, my path led me into the nonprofit world. As a grant writer and fundraiser in Phoenix, I worked with organizations serving survivors of domestic violence and people experiencing homelessness. Together, we raised millions of dollars to provide safety, dignity, and hope.

It wasn't simply my profession. It was part of who I was.

When Jim and I moved, we carried those same values into our new community. We volunteered. We became involved. We believed that communities are strengthened when ordinary people decide to care for something larger than themselves.

A few weeks ago, in another Greenhouse essay, I wrote about the interconnectedness of all things. A concept I personally believe in.

A garden does not flourish because of one beautiful flower. It flourishes because someone tends the soil, protects the roots, removes what threatens its growth, and understands that every living thing is connected to the health of the whole.

That is the greater good.

But gardens also teach us something else.

Storms do arrive.

And it is during those storms that we discover whether we have been tending the garden—or merely admiring it.

That lesson came to me unexpectedly in 2004.

My brother-in-law Mike, a lifelong history teacher, led our family on a trip through Italy. Venice was our final stop. Before we left, he invited us on one last walk. None of us knew where we were going.

We entered a quiet courtyard surrounded by dark brick buildings. The space felt enclosed. Heavy. Almost sacred.

Then Mike told us the story of three people standing before a mountain.

Each person faced the same mountain.

One turned away and said “Im not helping out,” because the climb seemed impossible.

One chose to climb despite the difficulty, but tired and turned around.

The third understood that the climb was not only about themselves. They climbed because something greater than themselves depended upon it.

Then Mike asked us to walk over to the wall. He asked us to place our hands upon it and remain silent.

I did not know what I was touching.

As my hands moved across the bricks, I felt indentations worn by time. Before I knew the history, I felt something I still struggle to describe.

A profound sadness. A grief that seemed to live within those walls.

Then Mike told us where we were.

We were standing in the Jewish Ghetto of Venice, a place that bears witness to centuries of persecution and the suffering endured by Jewish families, including during the Holocaust.

History was no longer something I had read about. It had become something I could touch.

Then Mike asked a question that has followed me ever since.

"When hate starts knocking at your door, what kind of person are you?"

For more than twenty years, I have carried that question. Not because I believe I know the answer.

But because I know that none of us truly knows who we are until life places a mountain before us.

It is easy to look back through history and wonder why ordinary people remained silent. Right now many of us can recognize hate and intolerance when we see it in our politics, communities, our street and even within our families.

It is much harder to look into a mirror and ask:

• What would I do?

• Would I speak?

• Would I protect someone whose dignity was under attack?

• Would I climb the mountain?

Or would fear convince me to stay where it was safe?

This past April, that question returned.

I was visiting Jim's family cabin in Vermont with my grandson Liam. Mike was there.

As we talked about the challenges facing our country and our communities, I realized I had never shared the Venice story with 15 year old Liam.

So I asked Mike to tell it again.

Liam listened quietly. When Mike finished, Liam looked at him and simply said,

"I understand. We will all be called on to take a stand for something."

In that moment, I realized the story had traveled.

From a wall in Venice...

To a porch in Vermont...

From one generation to the next.

As I watched Liam listening to Mike, I realized something else.

My generation will not solve every problem. We may leave behind a world with divisions we failed to heal, injustices we struggled to correct, and mountains we never finished climbing.

I cannot change that by myself.

But I can help prepare my grandson for the climb.

That may be one of the greatest responsibilities of my generation—not to promise our children and grandchildren a world without storms, but to teach them how to walk with courage when the storms inevitably come.

I know Liam's generation will inherit mountains they did not create.

• I cannot remove every obstacle they will face.

• I cannot guarantee them a world without storms.

But perhaps that is not my calling. Perhaps my calling is to help prepare him to climb.

• That is what teachers do.

• That is what grandparents do.

• That is what gardeners do.

A gardener cannot stop the storm. But a wise gardener prepares the soil, strengthens the roots, and tends the young plants so that when the wind comes, they have a better chance of standing.

I have spent my life trying to plant seeds—in classrooms, in nonprofit organizations, in my community, and now in these pages.

Yet one truth humbles me above all others.

My past does not guarantee my future courage.

Like every generation before me, I will one day stand before this collective mountain.

And when that day comes, I hope I will remember the lesson from a quiet courtyard in Venice.

• Every generation inherits a garden.

• Every generation encounters a wall.

Every generation and individual must decide to if they are going to stand up and climb the mountain.

The questions have never changed.

“When hate starts knocking at your door, what kind of person are you?"

“Will I climb the mountain?”

“Will I remember the Greater Good

Thank you for reading. Content on this site will always remain free.

Your Small Town Girl.

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I used to think commitment meant staying.

Staying in a relationship. Staying through the hard times. Staying because that’s what committed people do.

Life has a way of teaching us that commitment is far more complicated than that.

By the time I was forty-five, I had been through four serious relationships. Two of them marriages. Each one ended in heartbreak. Looking back now, I realize I wasn’t choosing the wrong people. I was choosing a familiar feeling. All those relationships shared a common thread. Me. I was a mess.

I tried to deny that I was the common denominator, but sadly I had to suck it up and face it

I thought all I needed was for someone to love me.

What ended up happening was that I kept marrying my critical mother over and over again.

I don’t mean that literally. I mean I kept choosing relationships where love felt conditional, where I felt I had to earn acceptance, prove my worth, or become someone else to be enough. It was the only kind of love I understood.

The problem wasn’t simply the people I chose.

I had never chosen myself.

I didn’t know who I was outside of a relationship. From the time I was sixteen, I had always been someone’s girlfriend, someone’s wife, someone’s partner. I had never stopped long enough to ask the most important questions:

Who Am I? What Am I About?

What Do I Believe To Be True About Myself?

Then one day everything changed.

I was sitting at my kitchen table when a conversation unfolded that shattered the story I had been telling myself. In one instant, years of confusion suddenly made sense. Hundreds of moments I had ignored came rushing together into one undeniable truth.

I stood up, grabbed my keys, and headed for the door.

He asked where I was going.

I turned and quietly said, “Remember this day. This is the day I stopped loving you.” I didn't deserve this.” His response, “We just wanted to screw with you.”

The truth is, I hadn’t stopped loving him in that moment. That had happened years before.

What happened that day was that I finally stopped pretending.

Walking away wasn’t the end of my story.

It was the first real commitment I ever made—to myself.

Not long afterward, something unexpected happened.

A boy I had known in junior high school found my name on Classmates and sent me an email. We had never really been friends. We simply knew of each other.

I answered his email with some general information and then I asked him a question.

“Tell me something profound about yourself.”

He did. He didn’t try to impress me. He was honest. Raw. Vulnerable. We chatted using AOL for months, then on the phone, and eventually he came to visit. Six months later I moved to Phoenix. A year later we were married.

Next week, we’ll celebrate twenty-five years together.

People often ask what makes a marriage last.

I don’t think it’s because we found two perfect people.

It’s because we found freedom.

Jim was a catalyst. He propelled me forward, not by changing me, but by accepting me exactly as I was.

He never tried to remake me.

He gave me the freedom to paint, to write, to dream, to become whoever I was meant to become. And in return, I gave him that same freedom.

We called each other “perfectly flawed.” He is my tribe, my Anam Cara (soul friend).

We are opposites in so many ways. William is meticulous. I’m more of a free spirit. He’s careful with money. I’ve never met a penny I couldn’t spend. We’ve disagreed over parenting, weathered heartbreaking family challenges, celebrated careers, welcomed seven grandchildren, and built a life filled with both incredible joy and unimaginable pain.

Through it all, there was never anything about him I needed to change.

And there was never anything about me he expected me to become.

Looking back, I finally understand what commitment means.

It isn’t control.

Control is born from fear.

Commitment is born from trust.

When we don’t trust, we try to manage people. We criticize them. We shape them. We hold on so tightly that neither person has room to grow.

Real commitment does the opposite.

It says, “I trust you enough to become who you are meant to be, and I’ll keep choosing you as you grow.”

The greenhouse has taught me that you cannot make a plant grow by pulling on its leaves. You prepare the soil. You water it. You give it light. Then you trust the life already inside it.

People aren’t so different.

I spent years searching for someone to love me.

What I really needed was to choose myself first.

Only then could I recognize a love that never asked me to earn it.

Perhaps that’s what commitment has always been.

It is creating the freedom where both of you can continue becoming yourselves, by choosing each other every single day

May we all find our Anam Cara

Small Town Girl

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When my father looked at me and said, "I've come full circle,"

I don't think I truly understood what he meant at the tme but I do now.

His health was failing. I had spent the better part of a year taking care of him. He had been living alone in Henderson Nevada and I asked if he would consider moving back to Michigan. He agreed, but with one condition.

"I need my own place."

So we found him a apartment on the shoreline of Lake Michigan.

One afternoon, I wheeled him down the path to the waters edge. As he looked out over the water he had loved his entire life and quietly said,

"I'm ready to go. I've come full circle."

Less than a year later I realized those words were about much more than geography.

My father came from Bohemian immigrants and Scottish Episcopalian roots. He loved knowing where he came from. My grandmother often told us the story of our Bohemian ancestors whose journey didn't end where they expected. Instead of settling in Wisconsin, they came ashore on the shores of Michigan and built a community called North Unity, now part of Maple City. This is the place where i gathered the stones for my cairn.

Perhaps my father always carried that story with him. Because Lake Michigan was where he came alive.

His happiest days were spent sailing at Columbia Yacht Club in Chicago, surrounded by friends, laughter, and stories. He never met a stranger. He could talk to anyone. He was a gifted salesman, an unapologetic storyteller, and, by his own admission, a world-class bullshit artist.

He was amazing. Larger than life amazing and we rarely saw eye to eye on any subject.

We argued about politics more times than I can count. He was conservative. I wasn't.

Even though we both argued our point like trial lawyers, neither of us ever changed the other's minds. And through the myriad of subjects we argued over, we never ever stopped loving the other. I think my father helped to instill that fight in me. He knew I was going to draw on that ability my entire life.

Looking back, that may have been one of his greatest gifts.

He taught me that love is bigger than agreement.

He also taught me what commitment looks like.

His retirement dream was to spend his remaining years living on a sailboat and traveling the world. But life had other plans for him.

Instead, my dad spent more than fifteen years caring for my mother as Alzheimer's slowly stole pieces of the woman he loved. The same man who loved parties, sailing, and entertaining friends quietly showed up every single day for his wife.

That was who he was. A kind, generous, compassionate yet flawed human being, who loved his family.

Sitting in the greenhouse, putting this story together, I find myself remembering a special moment.

When my son was born, my father came to the hospital to meet him. He looked at that tiny little boy. Then he looked at me and said

• “Donna, This is the best thing you've ever done.”

I've carried those words with me ever since. He wasn't talking about achievement. He was talking about love.

And those important life l lessons he gave me, he also gave to my two children.

My father transitioned to the other side on July 28, 2020. However he is still finding ways to let me know he is present.

I am currently facing one of the hardest seasons of my life. My son and I have become estranged. He has barely spoken to me in six months. In addition my Parkinson’s is progressing.

One evening last week I found myself talking to my father.

Not because I expected an answer, but because he had always been the person who listened.

I begged him, if somehow he could, give me a sign that my son would find his way back to me. I wanted my son to know that my love would always leave the porch light on. That my love, like my father's love for me is unconditional.

But more than that, I needed a glimmer of hope, anything that could bring me a little peace.

Later that evening, my phone lit up with a text. It was my son. My heart was racing when I saw his name.

Attached was a photograph of Club Lago in Chicago, one of my parents' favorite restaurants. He had been in Chicago and decided to have dinner there. He had thought enough to send it too me after months of silence.

The picture he sent me.

I know not everyone will understand why that moment mattered to me.

Some will call it coincidence. Others may see something more.

I don't need to convince anyone. I only know how it felt.

It felt like my father had heard me. It felt like hope. And in that moment I felt pure gratitude. My dad had heard me, my son had heard his grandfather. In turn, I heard from my son. Another full circle.

Near the end of his life, when he was in the hospital, I searched for something familiar to bring him.

Every Saturday morning of my childhood, my brother and I woke up to the Michigan State Spartan Fight Song blasting through the house.

Seventy years later, I still know every word. I played it for him. I also played Frank Sinatra singing My Kind of Town (Chicago Is) because Chicago had always been part of who he was.

I don't know whether he heard those songs. I hope he did. Maybe somewhere deep inside, he recognized the sounds of home. Maybe I helped him to findsome comfort. My children were also at his side. My daughter holding his hand. My son, setting up Zoom so other family members could say their final goodbyes.

My father passed at the very hospital my children were born in. In a room overlooking the lake.

People often ask why I believe what I believe. How I understand that our passed loved ones can hear us and that they find a way of speaking to us. And all I can say is that I just know. I've always known. Its been part of my belief system since I was little and I dont question it.

The truth is, I don't spend much time trying to explain it. I simply know this.

In life, my father was always there when I needed him.

He celebrated my joys.

He carried me through my sorrows.

He loved me even when we disagreed.

He taught me that family matters, that commitment matters, and that love doesn't disappear just because life becomes complicated. He taught me unconditional love.

I don't believe that ended the day he died.

Maybe we all come full circle.

Maybe some of us recognize it when it arrives. My father did.

And when life becomes too heavy, when I don't know where else to turn, I still find myself talking to him.

Because if there is anyone who has always heard me...

It is my dad.

Thank you for reading! Small Town Girl

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l

"Whatever is currently happening to humanity, it is happening to all of us... We are one people." — Alice Walker

Alice Walker's words are more than a call for compassion. They are a statement of biological, ecological, and even cosmic reality.

We are not merely connected by shared ideals. We are connected because life itself is a web of relationships. Remove one strand, and the entire web changes.

Every breath we take is a gift from plants. Through photosynthesis, they transform sunlight into stored energy, absorbing the carbon dioxide we exhale and releasing the oxygen our bodies require to survive. Every cell in our bodies exists in a silent partnership with every leaf on Earth.

We do not simply live on the planet. We live through it.

The food that nourishes us begins in the soil. Tiny bacteria, fungi, insects, worms, and countless microorganisms create the conditions for plants to grow. Those ooplants feed animals and humans alike. Even after death, our bodies return their elements to the earth, becoming nourishment for future life.

Nothing is wasted.

Nothing stands alone.

The water flowing through our veins has traveled through glaciers, rivers, clouds, ancient forests, and oceans for billions of years. The calcium in our bones was forged in exploding stars long before Earth existed. Every atom within us has belonged to something else before becoming part of us.

We are not separate observers of nature. We are nature becoming conscious of itself.

Modern ecology confirms what many Indigenous cultures have understood for thousands of years: forests are communities. Trees communicate through vast underground fungal networks. Rivers nourish forests, forests call the rain, insects pollinate crops, predators maintain balance, and even the smallest organisms play indispensable roles in sustaining life.

It doesn't take much to tip the balance.

In nature, the disappearance of a single pollinator, the loss of a keystone predator, or the poisoning of a stream can send shockwaves through an entire ecosystem. The web of life is resilient, but it is not invincible.

Humanity is no different.

One person consumed by hatred can ignite violence that spreads across communities. The poor choice of a leader can reak havoc on a country. One reckless decision can contaminate a river, destroy a forest, or begin a war. Conversely, one courageous voice can awaken a movement, one act of compassion can restore hope, and one person choosing love over fear can alter countless lives.

We often underestimate the influence of a single thread, forgetting that every thread helps hold the tapestry together.

The universe is held together not by isolation, but by relationship. Every breath we take is borrowed from the trees. Every meal is a gift from the soil. Every heartbeat depends upon countless living systems working in harmony.

When we wound one part of that living whole, we inevitably wound ourselves. When we heal one part, we begin to heal the whole.

Perhaps this is what Alice Walker was reminding us.

What happens to humanity happens to all of us because we have never truly been separate.

We breathe together.

We rise together.

We fall together.

And together we hold the balance.

Thanks for reading. If you feel lead, please subscribe. Subscriptions shall always remain free.

SMALL TOWN GIRL

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This week has been a stressful one.

One of those weeks where my brain seems determined to hold onto every thought, every conversation, every unanswered question. The kind of thoughts that return when the house is quiet and sleep should come easily.

Stress is not my friend. With Parkinson's, I have learned that stress doesn't just live in my mind. My body feels it too. It reminds me that the two are connected, whether I want them to be or not.

Perhaps that is why I noticed the heat differently this week. The heatwave that settled over us was overwhelming. Temperatures over 100 degrees, wrapped in heavy humidity that seemed to cover everything between the forest and the lake.

The world around me changed. The deer that usually wander through the yard and eat out of my hand disappeared.

The wild turkeys with their chicks were nowhere to be found.

Even the rabbits, those little creatures who usually seem to have an endless schedule of nibbling and exploring, had gone quiet.

At first, I thought they had left, but they hadn't.

They were simply doing what every living thing instinctively knows to do when conditions become too much.

They found shade.

They rested beneath the trees and in the cool grass. They conserved their energy. They waited for the worst of the heat to pass.

They were not giving up. They were adapting.

The greenhouse was telling the same story.

When I opened the door, my largest tomato plant greeted me with drooping leaves. The basil had completely collapsed into its usual dramatic display of distress. Basil has always been honest with me—it does not quietly struggle. It announces its feelings immediately.

My first thought was, "Oh no."

Not because I was disappointed in the plants.

Because I understood. The conditions had been difficult. They had been trying to survive something they could not control. And yes, that last sentence fits me perfectly.

So I did what gardeners do. I cooled the roots with deep watering. I sprayed the leaves with cold water. I checked every corner of the greenhouse.

I didn't ask the tomato to be stronger. I simply gave it what it needed.

Standing there with the hose in my hand, I started thinking about how easily we offer compassion to the living things around us.

• We don't blame a plant for wilting in extreme heat.

• We don't tell the deer they should try harder when they seek shelter.

• We don't criticize the rabbits for slowing down.

We understand.

So why is it so difficult to offer that same understanding to ourselves?

When life becomes overwhelming, do we allow ourselves to seek shade?

• Do we give ourselves time to recover?

• Do we conserve our energy until the storm passes?

Or do we keep pushing, believing that slowing down means we are failing?

Nature teaches us something different. Every living thing responds to the stressors of its environment.

• The strongest tree bends in the wind.

• The healthiest garden pauses during a heatwave.

• The most resilient creatures know when to rest.

Maybe resilience isn't about standing strong every moment.

Maybe resilience is knowing when to protect what matters most.

And maybe the question we should ask is: Who cools our roots?

• Sometimes we do.

• Sometimes a friend notices we are struggling before we say a word.

• Sometimes someone offers us kindness when we didn't even realize how much we needed it.

• Sometimes a higher power sends a gentle rain just when we think we cannot endure one more day of heat.

The greenhouse recovered.

The deer returned.

The rabbits came back to the yard.

The plants lifted their leaves again.

Life knew exactly what to do.

Maybe we need to seek the shade when stress gets too hot.

Maybe it's time we remembered that we are living things, too.

A Final Thought

As I finished writing these thoughts, another environmental stressor arrived. Smoke from Canada’s wildfires drifted across our skies, turning the morning gray and the air unhealthy to breathe. Once again, the advice was the same: stay inside, conserve your energy, protect your lungs. Nature had repeated the lesson. Sometimes wisdom isn’t pushing through. Sometimes wisdom is responding to the conditions we’re given.

🌿

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Author's Note

History has always fascinated me. What began as a search through family records and Ancestry® became something much deeper—a journey into the lives of the people whose courage and perseverance made my own life possible.

This story is about my fifth great-grandparents, Alexander Crawford and Mary McPheeters Crawford, whose daughter Rebecca Crawford is my fourth great-grandmother. Their lives and deaths are part of my family's history.

What follows is drawn from documented historical sources, genealogical research, original family records, and DNA-supported lineage through AncestryDNA®. Where history ends, my reflections begin.

●●●●

There is a cairn in the corner of my greenhouse.

A cairn is simply a stack of stones. For centuries, people have built them to mark a trail, remember a place, or honor those who came before. Mine is made from stones gathered on the land at Good Harbor, a place where some of my ancestors, first set foot on Michigan soil. Each stone was picked up by hand and placed with intention.

• Every morning, as sunlight pours through the greenhouse glass, I pause beside it.

• Some mornings I remember my parents.

• Some mornings I remember my grandparents.

This morning, the stones carried me more than two hundred and sixty years into the past.

To another collection of stones.

Not a cairn... but the weathered remains of a chimney.

Near Buffalo Gap, Virginia, at the foot of Little North Mountain, my fifth great-grandparents, Alexander Crawford and Mary McPheeters Crawford, built a home overlooking the valley. Historian Joseph Waddell later described its setting as "beautiful for situation."

I imagine the first light spilling across their fields.

• Children beginning their chores.

• Smoke rising from the chimney.

• A family beginning another ordinary day.

Alexander and Mary raised eleven children there. Before history remembered how they died, they lived full and meaningful lives. They planted crops, welcomed neighbors, celebrated births, and worked to build a future for their children on Virginia's frontier.

But the frontier was changing.

Following the French and Indian War, violence spread across the backcountry settlements of Augusta County. During the Kerr's Creek raids of 1764, Native war parties attacked isolated homesteads throughout the region. In the language of the day, these tragedies became known as the Indian massacres of the Virginia frontier.

The Crawford family had temporarily sought safety at Big Spring, a fortified refuge used by neighboring families. Believing the danger had passed, Alexander and Mary returned home.

It was the last decision they would make together.

In October 1764, their homestead was attacked.

When neighbors arrived, the cabin had burned to the ground. Alexander's remains were found among the ashes. Mary was found outside the home, having apparently escaped the flames before she was overtaken.

• Their home was gone.

• Their possessions were gone.

• Their family records disappeared into the fire.

But their story survived, and so did all 11 children who stopped to pick berries on their way home.

For years afterward, the chimney stones remained where the cabin had once stood.

As I stand beside the cairn in my greenhouse, I think about those stones.

Mine came from Michigan.

Theirs remained on a hillside in Virginia.

Separated by hundreds of miles and more than two centuries, they remind me that stones remember.

History has fascinated me for most of my life. As I researched my family through Ancestry, I discovered that my line reaches back through Rebecca Crawford, my fourth great-grandmother, and the daughter of Alexander and Mary Crawford.

What began as names on a family tree slowly became something much more personal.

They were no longer strangers.

They were my family.

Legacy is not measured by wealth or fame. It is measured by the lives that continue because we once lived.

Alexander and Mary could never have imagined that one of their descendants would someday tend flowers in a greenhouse in Michigan.

They could never have imagined that I would pause beside a small cairn and whisper a quiet thank you.

Before leaving the greenhouse, I rested my hand on one of the stones.

Five generations separate me from Alexander and Mary Crawford. More than two and a half centuries separate our lives. Yet every morning, as sunlight fills this greenhouse, I am reminded that courage, hope, and love travel farther than time itself.

Some stories are written on paper.

Others are written in stone.

●●●●

This essay is based on documented historical sources, including Joseph A. Waddell's Annals of Augusta County, Virginia, genealogical research through Ancestry®, original family records, and DNA-supported lineage documented through AncestryDNA®. Historical events are presented alongside my personal reflections as a descendant of Alexander Crawford and Mary McPheeters Crawford.

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Author's Note

Sometimes we think purpose is found in the biggest accomplishments of our lives. I'm beginning to believe it's found in the quiet, ordinary moments when we choose to care for something outside ourselves. Thank you for walking through the greenhouse with me.

— Small Town Girl

♡♡♡

The greenhouse has a way of slowing me down.

It doesn't care how many things I have planned for the day. The tomatoes aren't impressed by my schedule, the basil couldn't care less about my to-do list, and the cucumbers seem convinced they should produce a week's worth of vegetables overnight.

Every morning, I open the door and instinctively shift gears.

• I walk a little slower. I find that funny considering my Parkinson’s

• I look a little closer.

• I listen.

One plant is thirsty. Another needs a gentle nudge back onto its trellis. A blossom that wasn't there yesterday quietly greets me as if to whisper, "Look what happened while you were sleeping."

Yesterday, while sitting in the greenhouse, I copied a quote into my journal.

"Life becomes more meaningful when you realize the simple fact that you'll never get the same moment twice."

I sat there for a while, looking around, and realized my greenhouse had been teaching me that lesson all along.

• Every blossom opens only once.

• The first tomato of the season is only the first... once.

• Even the morning light through the greenhouse glass is never quite the same.

The greenhouse asks only one thing of me.

Pay attention.

When my husband built this greenhouse, he wasn’t simply building a place to grow tomatoes and herbs. Looking back, I think he was building something for our future. A place where I could continue to create, to nurture, and to find joy, even as life asked me to do some things differently.

For a long time, I measured my days by what I could accomplish.

• How much I got done.

• How many hours I worked

• How much money I made

• How many things I crossed off my list.

Somewhere along the way, that changed.

Today, I measure my days by something entirely different.

• Did I create something?

• Did I encourage someone?

• Did I nurture something that needed my attention?

I’ve realized that my purpose was never tied to what my body could do. It has always been tied to what my heart could nurture.

Looking back, I suppose I’ve always been growing something.

• Businesses.

• Children.

• Friendships.

• Ideas.

• Artwork.

• Meals around the family table.

• Now... tomatoes, herbs, flowers, and stories.

When you think about it, they’re all acts of hope.

The greenhouse has also taught me that not every living thing needs the same care.

• Some need watering.

• Some need pruning.

• Some need more sunshine.

• And some simply need to be left alone for a while.

People aren’t all that different.

Perhaps that’s why I love this place so much. It reminds me that growth can’t be rushed, and neither can healing.

Now, don’t get the impression that life in the greenhouse is all deep thoughts and quiet reflection. The tomatoes seem determined to produce enough overnight to feed half the county. Every morning another one appears as if it’s saying, “Surprise!” I’m ’m beginning to think they’re plotting against me.

As I’ve grown older, my world has become a little smaller physically. Surprisingly, my life has become much larger in every other way.

I’ve discovered that creating isn’t limited to painting a picture or writing a story.

• Creation is preparing a meal for someone you love.

• It’s encouraging a friend.

• It’s tending a fragile seedling.

• It’s believing in an idea long before anyone else sees it.

• It’s choosing, every single day, to nurture life in whatever form it arrives.

And perhaps that’s the greatest lesson my little greenhouse has given me.

Nurturing is never a one-way gift.

Every seed I plant...

• Every blossom I admire...

• Every quiet morning spent among growing things...

• Gives something back.

I may be nurturing the greenhouse. But somewhere along the way, the greenhouse began nurturing my soul.

Tomorrow morning I’ll unlock that little door once again.

I’ll water what is thirsty. Celebrate what has grown. Laugh at another radish that appeared out of thin air, and I’ll spend a little while being part of something greater than myself.

I can’t imagine a better way to greet the day.

Thanks for reading.

Small Town Girl - somewhere between the forest and the lake.

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Author's Note: This is the first entry in a new series inspired by the little notebook that lives in my greenhouse. It's where I jot down thoughts while tending plants, watching the light change, or simply enjoying the quiet. I hope these journal entries feel like a visit with an old friend

☆☆☆

I keep this little notebook in my greenhouse.

It doesn’t have a system. No categories. No careful indexing. Just pages filled with fragments—thoughts that arrive while I’m watering, observations about light shifting across leaves, reminders I may not understand until much later.

It has become part of the space itself, like another object among the plants, the soil, and the things I’ve gathered there over time.

The greenhouse is not new to me in spirit. It is a return. My husband built it so I would have a place to garden again.

For five years, I wasn’t able to garden the way I once had. That absence stayed with me more than I realized at the time. Gardening has never been only about plants for me. It has always been about grounding—placing my hands in something living and real and remembering where I belong when everything else feels off balance.

When life becomes unsteady, I return to the earth. I always have.

That instinct started long before any greenhouse existed. It began when I was a child caring for my puppy, Penny. I didn’t have language for it then, but I understand it now as something constant: a need to nurture, to tend, to be responsible for something living.

Now that instinct has a place again.

The greenhouse designed by my husband

My greenhouse is filled with more than plants. It holds pieces of my life that speak in quieter ways.

There is a cairn made from stones gathered from the Michigan shoreline where my ancestors first arrived. I don’t think of it as decoration. It is a marker—something that reminds me where I come from, placed among what I am still growing into.

The Cairn, made from stones at Good Harbor Beach, Leland Michigan

There is a weaving I made from twine, yarn, and dried grasses and flowers from my own beds. It holds seasons inside it—things that lived, faded, and were gathered again into something new.

A birdcage hangs nearby, given to me by coworkers years ago for a birthday. Its door remains open. It doesn’t need explanation beyond that.

There is driftwood shaped into a mobile, gathered from a beach near my home. It moves slightly with the air, carrying memory of water, weather, and time.

And there are cyanotypes—images made from sunlight itself. Impressions of what was placed in their path, held by exposure and patience. Added with a touch of my own zentagle designs.

None of these things are separate from the greenhouse. They belong because they reflect what it is becoming for me: not just a place to grow food or flowers, but a place where memory, creativity, and nature coexist without asking permission.

I have always been drawn to the earth. Even as a child, long before I understood it, I felt most myself in the presence of living things. Plants, soil, water, animals—there was a kind of clarity there I didn’t find elsewhere.

I think I have spent my life tending in different forms. People, children, animals, gardens, objects. Even ideas. Even stories.

The greenhouse didn’t give me that impulse. It gave it a place to stand again.

And maybe that is what I am finally understanding.

I didn’t return to gardening.

I returned to myself.

And now I keep notes on the things that truly matter.

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In small town America, the Fourth of July doesn’t arrive as a single event. It comes in layers—some scheduled, some inherited, and the best ones happening slightly off to the side of the official program.

This year, we adjusted the rhythm.

The town still held its parade, of course. It always does. But for us, the real gathering happened the night before—when the heat of the day finally loosened its grip and the yard opened into something that felt like its own temporary township.

Close to one hundred people came including our daughter and all our grandchildren My husband was in charge of the guest list. Everyone showed up, bringing a few extra people along. In the Upper Penisula of Michigan a party for one, is a party for all. It was a really fun, great group, and I enjoyed meeting and greeting everyone.

They came with potluck dishes wrapped in foil, desserts balanced carefully in hands, folding chairs tucked under arms like they were muscle memory. They came with music already chosen, coolers already half-open, and the easy confidence of people who don’t need directions to belong here.

And then the yard did what it always does when enough people arrive—it stopped being a yard.

William was at the grill, moving between hot dogs, burgers, and brats with the steady focus of someone who has learned that fire management is its own civic skill. I handled the baby back ribs, slow-cooked and unapologetically committed, the kind of food that doesn’t negotiate with time—it simply insists on it.

Around us, the evening unfolded in that loose, unplanned way only small towns seem to manage well. Chairs formed circles that immediately re-formed. Conversations drifted and returned. Someone always knew someone else, and if they didn’t, they did by the end of the plate.

It wasn’t chaos—it was organized friendliness.

And it was, in its own way, perfectly efficient… which is not something I usually say about hosting nearly a hundred people in your yard while also pretending you’re not actively running a municipal-scale catering operation.

William is deeply involved in the public life of the county—boards, committees, volunteer work that quietly holds things together in the background. He also knows nearly everyone, which means half the evening functioned like an ongoing reunion where no one had to check name tags. At one point I realized he had successfully greeted people, flipped burgers, and solved what appeared to be a minor logistical dispute about lawn chairs—all without ever leaving the grill.

That, I’ve decided, is his actual superpower.

After the party, the house finally settled into a peaceful quiet.

I went out to the greenhouse to shut off the fan and water. A simple end-of-day ritual. Nothing unusual. Nothing that suggested I was about to become part of the landscaping.

William stopped by to talk to me through the door.

A few final comments about the evening. A debrief, really. The kind of conversation that happens when everything important has already been done and you’re both standing in the soft afterglow of it.

At some point during this entirely ordinary exchange, he flipped his beautiful handmade door latch.

Locked it. Without realizing it, then went back inside for the night.

And I did not have my phone.

There is a very specific kind of silence that follows that realization. Not panic. Not drama. Just a slow, measured recalculation of one’s relationship to modern civilization.

The greenhouse at night is its own small world—humid, faintly glowing from residual heat, full of plant breath and settling soil. Being inside it alone is peaceful in theory. Being inside it accidentally is slightly more existential.

I considered my options.

They were… limited.

No phone. No backup plan. No dramatic exit strategy.

So I did the only thing left to do.

I watered the plants.

There is something humbling about tending tomatoes while also wondering if your husband has noticed you’ve been quietly reassigned to “outdoor infrastructure.”

Time passed differently. Not badly. Just… differently. The kind of stillness where you become aware you are not, in fact, the center of any urgent universe. Lucky for me I have a chair out there, and a small notebook and pencil.

Eventually, patience ran out. Several hours had passed. Lots of interesting phrases got written down in that notebook.

I was mad.

Not poetic-mad. Not reflective-mad.

The practical kind.

I kicked the greenhouse door outward and broke the latch.

It turns out resolve is a very effective key.

Inside the house, I found William exactly where one might expect a man who had recently completed a large community BBQ and survived the social obligations of a small town holiday—snoozing in front of the television, entirely at peace with the universe and completely unaware that his marriage had just performed emergency maintenance on a door.

He looked up. I looked at him.

No immediate explanation was required.

We simply agreed, in that silent way long marriages do, that the greenhouse is both a sanctuary and a lightly unpredictable containment system when door hardware is involved.

I have since added a note to my records:

Never underestimate a latch, a long day, or a man who believes “I’ll just sit down for a minute” is a reversible action.

And I am still keeping notes from there.

Thanks for reading - Small Town Girl

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Author's Note:

This piece reflects on estrangement, family relationships, and the ongoing effort to live with love that has no clear resolution.

☆☆☆

There is a light on our porch that I turn on every evening at dusk.

It isn't there to guide strangers.

It isn't there because someone is expected home.

It's there because that's what porch lights do.

They quietly say, If you need to find your way home, you'll be able to locate it. Lately, I've been thinking about the simple act of turning on that light.

You see,

I'm estranged from two people I love.

My brother stopped speaking to me after our father died six years ago. There was no dramatic confrontation. Just silence.

The truth is, we were never especially close—not in childhood and not in adulthood. I've often wondered why. Some distances in families simply exist without explanation. Even so, I love my brother. I leave the porch light on for him as well.

My son is another story.

About two years ago, I began to feel him pulling away. At first it was little things, followed by questions about his childhood. I always answered honestly. Then, in March of this year, he called my husband and said he wasn't going to be part of my life for a while. He asked that I not contact him.

• There was no conversation between us.

• No chance to ask questions.

• No opportunity to understand.

I believed my son and I could always talk things through. I never imagined there would come a day when we couldn't have a conversation about any topic. But I was wrong.

I know he remembers parts of his childhood differently than I do.

I don't dismiss his memories. They are real to him.

But they are not the memories I remember.

That has been one of the hardest truths to accept—that two people can love each other and still remember the same life experience differently.

Whatever happens between us, one truth will never change. It has been the honor of my lifetime to be his mother. Watching him become the man he is today, and seeing the beautiful family he has built, has been one of life's greatest gifts.

I don't want to spend the remainder of my days separated from him.

People often ask how I'm doing. The truthful answer isn't simple. Some days are steady. Some days I feel nothing but despair.

I have Parkinson's now, and living with a progressive illness changes the way you think about time. Fear has a way of quietly slipping into the room when you least expect it.

What if I never see my son again? Or my two lovely granddaughters?

That isn't a dramatic question. It's the one that wakes me up at three in the morning.

This simple life isn't simple at all.

Relationships are complicated in ways most of us understand, even if we don't always talk about them. Families change. Hearts get hurt. Distance grows. Sometimes there is no single moment you can point to and say, that's when everything changed.

Over the past few years, I've learned something I never expected.

• Love cannot force a door open.

• It cannot make another person ready.

• It cannot rewrite the past.

So I've stopped trying to control what I cannot control. Instead, I've chosen something else.

I've chosen to leave the porch light on.

For me, that doesn't mean waiting with my life on hold. It doesn't mean pretending nothing happened.

It means I refuse to let bitterness become the last chapter of our story.

If my son ever finds his way back, he won't find a locked door.

• He'll find love.

• He'll find forgiveness.

• He'll find a mother who never stopped loving him.

• He will find the porch light on.

I don't know what tomorrow brings.

None of us do.

But I know this much.

Some lights aren't left on because we expect someone to come home.

They're left on because love doesn't know how to do anything else.

People sometimes imagine that life in a small town, tucked between the forest and the lake, is simple. In many ways it is. But the human heart doesn't care where you live. Love, loss, joy, disappointment, hope—they find us all. - SMALL TOWN GIRL

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There comes a point in a woman’s life when she quietly begins renegotiating the terms of the agreement.

• Not the big life rules.

• Not with her husband.

• Not with her children.

But with herself

For instance...

Those rules of work, dress… you know. The ones that used to feel important... and suddenly don’t.

The first thing I let go of the moment I retired was my bras. The minute I walk through the door, comfort wins. When I'm home, the bra comes off. Even my prim and proper friend Nanette, gave up her bra.

My sister-in-law Judy and I once had a wonderful bonding moment over this very subject. I have two bras left, and they only come out for special public engagements.

And thong underwear? Or even bikini briefs? Gone.

I never understood the thong. I once concluded that the reason my granddaughter Tory's generation was so angry was because they had to wear thongs every day.

Tory, of course, firmly assured me I was wrong.

However, I am now a firm believer in the granny panty

At this stage of life, no one is getting a surprise fashion show anyway.

You see, somewhere between fifty and seventy, comfort stages a hostile takeover.

Elastic waistbands suddenly seem like engineering marvels.

Shoes, when worn, are chosen for arch support instead of compliments. And those Skechers Slip-ins are the greatest footwear invention ever created for this Small Town Girl—with one possible exception: my beloved Birkenstocks.

My footwear of choice, however, is... nothing.

I love being barefoot. There is something grounding about feeling the earth beneath my feet that reminds me I am still here—still connected to something real and simple.

And no retired woman I know has ever said, "These jeans are terribly uncomfortable, but they make me look fabulous, so I'll wear them all day."

We've earned the right to be comfortable.

But here's what's funny.

The older I've gotten, the things I've let go of have very little to do with clothing.

There was a time when I endured things in the name of appearance.

Now I ask a different question:

Is this actually necessary?

And if the answer is no, it's gone.

I've also given up fast food. Not in a dramatic, restrictive way. Just a quiet decision that my body deserves better than "quick and convenient." Some things simply no longer make the cut.

And then there is perhaps the biggest shift of all.

Along with my quest to stop apologizing, I stopped caring what most people think.

That one didn't happen overnight. It arrived slowly, like a long exhale

Recently, after a fabulous tea party with my daughter, I went grocery shopping wearing my favorite peacock hat and a fur coat simply because they made me feel good. People looked. I smiled. And I kept walking. There was a time when that would have mattered deeply to me.

Now I think, if it made someone smile or gave them a story to tell later, that's enough.

Although I must confess that my Parkinson's sometimes causes me to stagger or drag my feet. I've actually had people ask if I'm drunk and whether they should call transit so I wouldn't have to drive home.

That still stings a little.

But in the interest of public safety... I understand.

And as for having a perfect house... Well... that ship sailed years ago.

I've made peace with the fact that perfection and I were never destined for a lifelong relationship.

My house looks lived in. Its turned into an office for my husband and an art studio for me. Our passions are visibly on display.

Maybe this wasn't so much a change as it was an acceptance.

• Sometimes there are dishes in the sink.

• Sometimes there clay residue across the table.

• Sometimes there is paint drying where paint probably shouldn't be drying.

That's not failure.

That's living.

What I've come to understand is that growing older isn't only about what we lose.

It's about what we stop carrying.

• We stop wearing what hurts.

• We stop eating what doesn't nourish us.

• We stop apologizing for being ourselves.

• We stop trying to impress people who were never really watching that closely anyway.

And in their place, something better arrives.

• Comfort.

• Honesty.

• Freedom.

• And a willingness to wear a peacock hat to the grocery store simply because it makes us happy.

Maybe that's the real gift of this stage of life.

We become unapologetically ourselves.

So I'm curious...

What have you happily let go of?

I have a feeling I'm not the only one discovering that certain freedoms get lighter with age.

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“It actually doesn’t take much to be considered a difficult woman. That’s why there are so many of us.”

When I first read that Jane Goodall quote, I laughed. Then it stopped me in my tracks.

I believe that post also resonated with many of my readers—close to 15,000 of you liked, commented, or restacked it. So I'm certain some of you can relate to what I’m about to say.

Now for as long as I can remember I’ve always been considered difficult. Then I realized something.

I’ve been apologizing for it for nearly seventy years.

Not because I’ve spent seventy years doing terrible things. Not because I’ve spent seventy years hurting people.

I’ve been apologizing because, somewhere along the way,

• I learned to people-please.

• I learned that it was my role to keep the peace.

• I believed that being difficult was not a virtue.

• And I learned to scan every room for signs that I had done something wrong.

At first, apologizing was survival.

Later, it became a habit.

Then it became identity.

Somewhere along the way, I became the person who said “I’m sorry” before anyone even asked.

• I’m sorry for being late.

• I’m sorry for asking.

• I’m sorry for forgetting.

• I’m sorry for taking up your time.

• I’m sorry you’re upset.

• I’m sorry things didn’t work out.

• I’m sorry for breathing… on the wrong day.

Looking back, I can see how much energy went into trying to get everything right.

• If I paid closer attention.

• If I worked harder.

• If I loved better.

• If I tried harder.

Maybe then I could avoid disappointing people.

But life doesn’t work that way.

What is acceptable one day becomes unacceptable the next. What worked yesterday quietly stops working today.

The rules change. The expectations shift. The goalposts move.

And I’ve learned this the hard way:

It is exhausting when the goalposts keep moving.

When people don’t know where the boundaries are, they stop trusting themselves. That’s what happened to me. I started questioning my judgment. I replayed conversations instead of living my life.

In short, I tried to apologize my way out of being a “difficult woman.”

To be honest, I don’t remember anyone talking about boundaries when I was growing up in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

The word wasn’t part of our vocabulary. Neither was trauma. We didn’t talk about emotional labor, triggers, or self-care—at least not where I grew up.

Life was simple on the surface. You behaved. You respected your elders. You did your chores. You got on with it.

Looking back now, I sometimes wonder how many of the things we talk about so openly today were always there—just unnamed.

We may not have called them boundaries, but we had expectations.

We may not have called it trauma, but we carried it.

We may not have called it people-pleasing, but many of us became experts at it.

The language has changed.

The human experience hasn’t—much.

Today, thanks to some important lessons from my daughter, son, and husband, I find myself learning a new language for experiences I’ve carried my whole life.

These days…

• I still make mistakes.

• I still forget things.

• I still get things wrong.

• If I’ve hurt someone, I will apologize.

• If I’ve offended someone, I will own it.

But I no longer apologize for being “difficult.”

I no longer apologize for expressing myself.

I no longer apologize for disagreeing.

And I no longer believe I should spend months—or years—apologizing for the same mistake or actual offense.

At some point, an apology has to end.

Constant apologizing keeps you in a defensive posture. Instead of learning, you spend your energy proving remorse. I’ve done enough of that.

I have apologized for past decisions more times than I can count. The words have played over and over in my head. And what I've learned is this.

Accountability and self-punishment are not the same thing.

One heals. The other exhausts.

Yes… I am a difficult woman. I wear that banner with pride.

Not because I refuse to admit when I’m wrong.

But because I no longer believe I have to apologize for being human.

And after seventy years, that feels like progress.

Still learning—somewhere between the forest and the lake.

SMALL TOWN GIRL

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I have always been a thrifter.

Some people golf. Some people knit. Some people spend their weekends relaxing. I rummage through other people's stuff.

How this began fifty years ago, I honestly can't remember. Perhaps it started with a garage sale. Perhaps it was a flea market. Perhaps I was born this way.

Whatever the cause, I've spent decades happily digging through boxes, peering into barns, and pulling over for yard sale signs with the enthusiasm most people reserve for seeing a celebrity.

What began as a hobby eventually turned into a thriving resale business.

These days I'm always on the hunt for vintage glass, antiques, and unusual treasures to stock my store. Auctions, estate sales, thrift stores, church rummage sales—if there's a chance of finding something old and wonderful, I'm probably already on my way.

My husband claims I have a sixth sense for these things. I prefer to think of it as a highly specialized skill set.

So when I spotted a simple ad for a yard sale, I did what any responsible vintage dealer would do.

I immediately dropped everything and went. What I didn't know was that this wasn't going to be an ordinary yard sale

To this day, I'm not entirely convinced we found everything.

It all began with a Facebook posting. Simple. Almost unremarkable. A yard sale listing that gave no hint of what was waiting behind it.

The first time I went, I took my husband. I thought it would be quick—take a look, maybe find a few things, and move on with the day.

That assumption didn’t survive the driveway.

I thought I lived rural, but this address wasn't even on the GPS map. The ad said, turn left at the sign just beyond the fire station and follow the signs to the end. Cryptic for sure. We finally found our destination.

The house sat overlooking a lake like something out of a dream—quiet, unexpected, almost castle-like in its presence. We had driven near that area before and never once imagined something like this was tucked back there.

What we didn’t know then was that we weren’t arriving at a yard sale. We were stepping into an estate unfolding in real time. The owner was selling the home and everything inside it. Not just clearing out a few items, but releasing an entire lifetime of collecting. Five generations worth of the most beautiful things.

The first wave filled a three-car garage wall to wall with vintage clothing. Dresses from the 1920s onward, delicate hats, handbags, jewelry, and garments so well-preserved they felt like they had been waiting decades for another chance to be seen.

And that was only the beginning.

Actual Sale Photos

There was a massive pole barn filled to the brim with antiques. Tables, boxes, furniture, glassware, and objects layered so densely that you couldn’t take it all in at once. Every glance revealed something you hadn’t noticed before.

I went home that day thinking I had seen it all. I hadn’t. I bought a lot of copper. Copper always sells well in my shop. I knew I had to return, and quickly so I called my good friend Glenda

Glenda is my garage sale/auction partner and, quite honestly, a resale goddess. The kind of person who sees value instantly where others see clutter. Once she came with me, we returned almost every Friday for weeks.

And every time we went back, something new appeared. By week five we had become friends with the homes owner, Dina. By week 8 we were greeted with hugs.

And…

More tables. More boxes. More discoveries brought out from somewhere deeper in the estate.

It became clear that this wasn’t a one-time sale. It was unfolding in layers, as if the house itself was slowly letting go of its memories. We stopped calling it a quick stop.

It became a ritual.

Hours at a time, moving through the barn, the garage, the tables, and whatever new corner had been opened since our last visit.

And still, we kept finding things we had missed—or things that simply hadn’t been there before. Of course, we didn’t leave empty-handed. And neither did other friends we brought. Even my Granddaughter Tory bought 3 or 4 vintage dresses.

Over time, I brought home copper vessels with rich patina, art glass, vintage jewelry, purses, and hats from another era—each one carrying its own quiet history.

But my favorite find was something I didn’t expect to feel so attached to.

A 1950s hat adorned with peacock and quail feathers.

The moment I saw it, I knew it was mine.

I still think about the woman who once wore it. Whether she saved it for special occasions or wore it without hesitation. Whether she knew it would one day end up in a barn overlooking a lake, waiting for another woman to fall in love with it decades later.

Then winter came.

And just like that, the estate sale closed.

The doors were shut. The lake house went quiet. And Dina, who had spent a lifetime collecting it all went to Florida for the season.

All of it—paused.

Now Glenda and I still talk about it. We wonder if it will open again. Dina said, maybe in August. There are still rooms we never saw, boxes never uncovered, stories still waiting to be told.

Because somehow, it never felt like we saw everything. And maybe that’s the truth of it.

Some places don’t feel finished when they close.

And some treasures don’t feel like they’ve all been found.

Not yet anyway.

Somewhere between the forest and the lake. SMALL TOWN GIRL

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Tory was supposed to stay at my house last night.

I had already settled into the idea of it—quiet evening, her here, me finally home after spending time at my daughter’s watching three grandchildren. I was tired in that way that builds up over a full day of being needed.

And I was disappointed when the day kept shifting and she didn’t show. Not dramatically. Just that quiet kind of disappointment you don’t announce out loud because it feels too small to justify, but it sits with you anyway.

By evening, I could feel something else underneath it: she didn’t need to be here.

Not really.

Tory has been in my life since she took her first breath. She spent summers with me when she was a child—barefoot, fast-moving, always halfway between something she was supposed to be doing and something she absolutely wasn’t. Later, she came to live with us on the old farm when she was a freshman in high school.

That version of her thought she knew everything. I mostly let her keep that belief for a while. She learned quickly that our small town school, with a class of around 40, was vastly different than the Denver school she was used too. But Tory made friends quickly.

Tory is my light in the darkness. Funny, Serious, Blunt and Sarcastic, yet Shy. She is 26, and loves her life.

Last night, she came instead in the middle of a different kind of storm.

Her boyfriend has a started a new business. Everything had gone wrong in a chain reaction only life seems capable of producing. And at the end of it, in the middle of exhaustion and chaos, he told her he loved her.

She panicked. And left. Without a response. And somehow ended up at my house anyway.

There’s a particular look I’ve come to recognize in people when they walk into my kitchen carrying emotional overload. It’s not about age. It’s about not knowing where to put what you’re feeling.

I had to pull the story out of her. She told me the story in pieces—the day, the stress, the moment, the panic. Then she got to the part where she came here instead of going back. She has always had a very long list of must haves in a relationship and up until now she has refused to have a long time boyfriend. But this man is different.

That’s when I asked her the only question that mattered.

“Do you love him?”

She said yes.

So I pointed toward the door and said,

“ Get your butt out of here and go tell that man you love him”.

Now, I should be clear: I am not usually in the business of directing other people’s romantic lives. (Well that is probablynot 100 percent true.) I’ve spent enough years learning that most people arrive at their own decisions eventually, usually after ignoring everyone else first.

But sometimes you can see the entire knot in front of you, and the simplest thing you can do is stop someone from tightening it further.

Then she gave me the best Tory hug and left.

And I sat in my greenhouse afterward thinking about how strange it is to be both a mother and grandmother. You spend decades being the center of someone’s world, and then one day you become the place they come back to when they need to figure out how to return to their own.

There is a quiet humor in that role too. No handbook. No formal training. Just years of practice in knowing when to speak and when to simply point toward the door and say something that sounds a little more confident than you feel.

This morning, I’m not disappointed anymore.

I was yesterday—just a little, the way you are when you think someone is coming and they don’t. But I also know Tory well enough to recognize when she doesn’t belong in my home for the night, even if she thinks she does.

She needed to go back to her own life.

She needed to say I Love You to the man who said it to her.

And now I imagine a young man somewhere, trying to build a business out of nothing but effort and hope, waking up to a conversation that ended better than it began.

As for me, I’m still in bed, thinking about how long I’ve known her. From summers to teenage years to grown-up decisions made in panic and love.

It’s a strange privilege, watching someone you once held by the hand learn how to hold their own life.

And sometimes, if you’re lucky, they still show up at your kitchen first.

Even if all you do is remind them—gently or not—that the right direction is usually the one that sends them back out the door.

But first, Coffee and Carrot Cake.

and yes…she told him, she loved him too. Somewhere between the forest and the lake.

Thanks for Reading -

SMALL TOWN GIRL

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I am sitting at my daughter’s kitchen table while the grandchildren are still asleep. The coffee is hot. The morning is still. And for a brief moment, nothing needs answering.

Her home sits somewhere between the forest and the lake, on a small hobby farm where life is never truly idle. Gardens stretch outward when the season allows. Ducks and geese move across the yard with complete authority. Chickens scatter in directions that only make sense to them. Four dogs shift between naps and patrols, ensuring the world is never without motion.

Even in silence, the place feels alive.

The twins, a boy and girl are ten now. Full of opinions, quick wit, and just enough sass to keep every adult in a constant state of negotiation. Their energy doesn’t simply arrive—it fills space.

Their older brother is fourteen. More reserved. Observant. He moves through the world carefully, as if deciding what deserves his words and what does not. He notices everything, even when he says very little about it.

Together, they are growing up in a place that shapes them as much as any school or lesson ever could.

My daughter’s partner, Wes, has lived here his entire life. As a Native American he is deeply rooted in this land and its rhythms. He has shared knowledge with the children that is practical, grounded, and passed on through doing rather than talking. Fishing, tracking seasonal changes, reading weather, understanding land—not as ideas, but as lived experience.

Because of him, they don’t just live on this land. They move with it.

They fish. They string line, bait hooks, and clean what they catch. In warmer months, they kayak or boat the waterways, learning balance and confidence on moving water. In winter, they ice fish on frozen lakes where entire temporary communities appear—small shanties, snowmobiles crossing white expanses, pickup trucks driving across what is, in another season, open water.

It is not something I grew up with. It still feels extraordinary to me.

They ride dirt bikes and four-wheelers along wooded trails, learning awareness, control, and respect for terrain that does not forgive carelessness. They forage for morel mushrooms and berries. These are not conveniences. They are skills. And they are taught seriously—structured, supervised, and understood as part of growing up in a place where self-reliance is not theoretical.

This is a family that could, if life demanded it, function with a level of self-sufficiency that many people today no longer possess. And I don’t say that lightly. It is not romantic. It is not effortless. It is built through repetition, responsibility, and time.

And I find myself thinking often about that word—simple.

Because simple life is misunderstood.

From the outside, it can look like ease. Quiet mornings. Open land. Fewer complications.

But what I see here is something different.

Simplicity on the surface is supported by complexity underneath. Skills. Knowledge. Discipline. The ability to do things that modern life often allows people to outsource or avoid entirely

Self-sufficiency is not simple.

Convenience is simple.

And they are not the same thing.

Last night, I decided we would have what I can only call Dessert for Dinner.

Something that could only be accomplished with their parents out of town and me, their willing grandmother, leading the charge.

We drove to the local dairy cream and ordered large sundaes, cones, and flurries. No one objected. In fact, it felt entirely appropriate for a household that runs on both structure and joy. Tomorrow, I hope to take them to the movies, though I’ve learned by now that plans with children are always suggestions rather than commitments.

When my own children were young, I rarely noticed these in-between moments. There was always something demanding attention. Something urgent. Something next.

Now I notice the pauses.

The small spaces before movement begins.

The quiet agreement between night and morning.

Soon enough, there will be footsteps overhead. Cabinet doors opening. Voices overlapping. Someone will insist they are not hungry and then reconsider five minutes later. Someone else will be looking for something that was absolutely placed somewhere “safe.”

And the house will become what it always becomes.

Loud. Full. Lived in.

And right.

One day, these children will be grown. The twins will no longer race through hallways or argue over everything and nothing at the same time. The fourteen-year-old will have a life shaped by his own choices, his own quiet observations carried forward into adulthood.

And this house, like all houses, will eventually return to stillness again.

But not yet.

Not today.

Today, I am sitting in the early morning knowing this: the simple life is not the absence of complexity.

It is the presence of what matters most.

And that is not easy at all.

It is everything.

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One of my earliest memories is lying in a lounge chair in our backyard in Dearborn, Michigan, with my father, looking up into the night sky searching for Sputnik. We had just returned from Nuremberg, where my Dad had been stationed.

Dad talked about the Russians, the Cold War, and the possibility that we were being watched from space. I was too young to understand any of it, but I listened. It was my first lesson that what happened in the world mattered.

Years later, after the Kent State shootings, students at our high school organized a walkout. We gathered around the flagpole in protest, and before long I was attending demonstrations in Chicago, much to my parents' total frustration and dismay.

Politics had become personal.

Over time, my father and I came to see politics very differently. He was conservative. I was not. Yet we talked, debated, and disagreed for years. Politics was something we discussed, not something that defined us.

The news was different then, too.

You watched the evening news. You read the newspaper. Then you went on with your life.

Somewhere between cable news, smartphones, and social media, the boundaries disappeared.

Now politics follows us everywhere.

We no longer consume just the news. We consume everyone's reaction to the news.

I know because I participated. I am guilty of being obsessed with everything that was happening in the world.

My father watched Fox News. I watched MSNBC. Many of our friends did the same. Looking back, regardless of our politics, we all seemed a little anxious, a little angry, and increasingly fearful about the future.

And that is what concerns me.

Not disagreement. Democracy has always depended on disagreement.

What concerns me is the atmosphere of constant alarm.

Fear can motivate people to act. My own involvement after Kent State, during Vietnam, and now NO KINGS, proves that.

But what happens when fear never lets up?

When every issue is treated as an emergency, do we eventually lose the ability to recognize a genuine emergency when it arrives?

If democracy depends upon informed citizens, have we heard so much that we have stopped listening?

These are not rhetorical questions. I genuinely don't know the answers.

I only know that I reached a point where I was spending so much time watching tv and learning all about the latest crisis that I was missing parts of my own life

• The house needed to be cleaned.

• Friends needed visiting.

• Family needed loving.

Life was happening all around me while I was focused on events occurring hundreds of miles away.

These days I am searching for a different balance.

• I still vote.

• I still protest.

• I still write letters.

• I still care deeply about what happens in this country.

But I am learning that there is a difference between being informed and being immersed.

One helps us understand the world.

The other can slowly consume it.

In my quest for a simpler life, this is the question I cannot answer:

How do we remain awake to the world without allowing the world's anxiety to become our own?

Nothing about that feels simple.

Somewhere between the forest and the lake. SMALL TOWN GIRL

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