Category: Random Musings

The One where it’s Cold, and Joy is Still a Form of Resistance.

Published on by almostfarmgirl2 Comments

Day one of Trump’s second term.

It’s cold outside. My weather app reports a wind chill of -25. I’m sitting at my desk while I eat some oatmeal, drink some coffee. Work up the nerve to go outside and take care of the barn.

<<<>>>

I’ve already blocked someone on social media today, a person who barely knew me through my ex. I laughed as I did it, honestly, the thought suddenly occurring to me that I don’t actually need to stay “social media” friends with someone who only ever seemed to pop up to insult me.

To be honest, like so many, I’m debating taking my leave of Zuckerberg’s media empire entirely. TikTok was already a cesspool. I’ve never really been a fan of Twitter. I’m still there–here, if you’re reading this through Facebook–but investigating other options. (Note: If you enjoy this blog and follow it on Facebook or Instagram, maybe consider joining the email list.)

Several friends have reached out today. Between the overt Nazi Salutes at the inauguration–Elon’s Nazi Salute(s) really were just icing on an ugly cake that we already knew was laced with arsenic–and the executive orders and pardons already granted, we can feel the tone of what’s coming.

<<<>>>

And yet…we’ve been here before. The presidency of this lunatic looming, and I can’t help but remind myself that we survived it once before. Not everyone, mind you, but most of us. Democracy. America. I understand that I’m expressing a survivorship bias, but it’s still a fact: we did this before. We can do it again.

Last time Trump took office, I was in a very different place. My marriage falling to pieces. I was only weeks away from filing for divorce. Heartbroken. Soulbroken. I wanted to believe that Trump’s racist and xenophobic campaign promises were empty, but I still braced myself for four years of ugliness. And it came. It found us.

We know more now. We know that Trump’s ugliness is deep and wide, and that it revealed a deep and wide ugliness in the soul of our country. We know that his vile promises aren’t empty, but that he doesn’t really care about most of them either. (The wall, the TikTok ban, kids in cages: all policies he walked back for his own convenience.)

I know that the next four years will reveal an awful lot of rot in our country and our countrymen (and women…fellow white suburban women, I’m looking at you…), but I also know that his presidency, even with the halls of government stacked in his favor, will not be a monolith.

<<<>>>

Last time, if you had told me on the first day of Trump’s presidency that joy was rushing towards me at the speed of light, I wonder if I would have believed you. But it was. The first nine months of that term would mark some of the worst days of my life, but joy was coming. Falling in love. Building community. Rediscovering who I was and who I could be.

I guess that’s what I’ve been thinking about today: regardless of who haunts the halls of power, we are still here. Still living. Still showing up. And mark my words: some of what is coming is going to be beautiful. Not because of Trump, but in spite of him.

<<<>>>

I said the same thing to almost everyone today, including myself: Joy is resistance. He does not get to steal four years of joy from my life. I will not give it up. But also, I have found that it is stronger, sneakier, more expansive than we like to give it credit for. And, even more than that, it makes us stronger. Joy steels your spine and opens your heart. It reminds us what we’re here for.

<<<>>>

It’s still so cold. And it will be, for now, but the weather app promises more reasonable weather will come in time.

And, honestly, even though the polar vortex weather always puts me in a foul mood, I’m beginning to subscribe to the Scandinavian idea that “there is no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothes.” That, at the heart of things, it’s up to us to respond to the thing’s we’re facing as best we can.

The cold will greet me, maybe even take my breath away. But the barn and it’s creatures, the sky and this ridgeline, they will do their healing work, just like they’ve always done.

And I will remember that joy rushes towards us so quietly that, even when all feels lost, we never know all the ways it is planning to show up.


The One Where Joy is Resistance (and some of you will leave, I hope respectfully, after reading this.)

Published on by almostfarmgirl12 Comments

It’s warm outside. The bird song is louder than it should be for November. I try not to let my concerns over the t-shirt weather spiral. We all know the planet is getting warmer.

I haven’t been terribly political in this space. Partially because it is more convenient to keep my politics out of my writing. My art. It’s less vulnerable. I’ve dropped hits here and there, but mostly I write about the ranch and the animals and how I process the things I feel about my life and the world. About my love. About loss. About potatoes.

But today, for the past few days, I’ve been gutted. Heartbroken. I voted enthusiastically for Kamala. Donated to the campaign. I have the hat. All of it. Tuesday I was so hopeful that I was about to witness the historic moment: the election of a woman president.

And instead, I watched as state after state went red.

<<<>>>

I was raised to keep the peace and be polite and feminine. I was raised in the evangelical church, not one specific one, but in and out of many. I was raised with and in the height of purity culture. I attended Christian schools. Was homeschooled with a Christian high school curriculum that taught the threat of Catholicism and Islam in our history textbooks and taught the importance of male headship in families in civics texts. Our science books taught that evolution was a hoax. I attended a Christian University where I took almost enough Biblical Studies Classes to have a minor.

I was devout. I gave ten percent of my income away like clockwork. I believed abortion was murder. That LGBTQ people were going to hell and that “hate the sin; love the sinner” was an acceptable position. If I keep digging, I can unearth uglier and uglier beliefs that I was fed. I was willing to eat them up.

I’m not sure I need to spell all of them out here.

And yet, I was first called a “baby killer” when I was a young teen and told my uncle that I disagreed with one of his environmental positions (drilling in Alaska, I think) because I thought we needed to protect the earth. He used that term again when he emailed me a racist email about Obama (a doctored photo of Airforce One with a minstrel show style, cartoonish President Obama painted on the side eating watermelon) and I told him I didn’t mind political emails but that I didn’t want racist ones. That time he added “libtard” to modify “baby killer.”

I never quite toed the line. But I voted McCain. (I wouldn’t do it now, but I actually don’t regret that one.) I would have voted Obama during his second election cycle, but my mom threatened to kick me out of the house if I did, and I thought she would somehow know. That year marks my only election cycle voting third party.

I married young, to a “good Christian,” wearing white, with all that implies. I followed the script.

<<<>>>

I’m working on a book that details more of this. The whole story. The divorce after his infidelity and lying and nearly breaking myself to save a marriage that I was told was the only one god would ever recognize in my life. The deconstruction. My shattering and rebuilding. Finding my way back into my body after years of being told it was sinful and not to be trusted and of the world. After a lifetime of having it implied, and sometimes even outright stated, that it would belong to someone else when I married, that no one else would want it after it had been touched. That no one would want me.

All here on this ranch with these creatures. It’s a book that may only ever act as therapy, but that I’m telling you about only to say that the story is too long to tell here.

<<<>>>

The rise of MAGA and Trump saw my final and complete break from conservativism and evangelicalism. The best of what I was taught in my church upbringing was Jesus, a radical who was murdered for speaking truth to power and shining a light on the way society failed to protect its most vulnerable. I kept looking for evidence of his command to “love thy neighbor” and wasn’t seeing it. When I questioned Conservative policies during the first Trump presidency, for example my horror at the policy of separating children from their parents at the Mexican border and keeping those children in cages, I was reminded that “libtards” support killing babies. That my support of them made me a baby killer. I was guilty by association.

<<<>>>

(To be clear, I do believe in a woman’s complete right to her own bodily autonomy. But, again, there’s only so much space in one post.)

<<<>>>

Today, as I write this, I’m sad and scared for the most vulnerable people in our society. I’m scared for women, well aware of those who have already lost their lives to Trump abortion bans. I’m scared for myself.

I’m scared for my queer friends. I’ve listened for several days to close friends who are exploring their options to leave the country. They’re scared that their legal marriages will not only be made illegal, but that the existence of those marriages will put them on a list that confirms their queerness.

I’m scared for Gaza and Ukraine.

I’m scared for the millions of undocumented immigrants who he has been so open about rounding up and deporting on “day one.”

As a former evangelical, I’m far more terrified than most of Project 2025.

I’m in disbelief that half of our voting populace sees no problem with voting for a man who’s been credibly accused of rape 26 times. Who’s most famous audio is a recording of him bragging about getting away with assualt “grab em by the pussy.” Who sent dearly needed Covid supplies to Russia when American hospitals couldn’t get them and Covid deaths here were so rampant that our hospitals had refrigerator trucks outside to stack the bodies. A man whose win was celebrated by the Klan, by literal Nazi’s, by dictators who he considers his close friends.

<<<>>>

(I was about to say that I won’t dwell on all of that in this post, but to many of you I’m sure it feels like I already have. If you’re reading this and want to tell me how disappointed you are in me, maybe just don’t. Maybe just hit unsubscribe.)

<<<>>>

I have spent the past few days feeling gutted. And I’ve cried, a lot.

But I’m still here. Still at the ranch with the critters. And today, while I was trying not to think about the heat in the light of an new administration known for gutting environmental policy, I heard the a bird song in the distance. Long and lilting. And the air smelled like the fallen leaves that crunched underfoot. The azure of the sky a backdrop to shifting branches holding onto their final leaves. I pulled my hand to my heart, closed my eyes, and tried to take in the song.

And for a moment, I smiled, feeling the moment of joy that sprang from that birds song and holding it close.

<<<>>>

If Trump’s coming administration is anything like the last, it will be really bad for a lot of vulnerable people. But I’m not seeing resignation. I’m seeing people reaching out. Loving. Preparing.

<<<>>>

Julia Cameron wrote “Survival lies in sanity, and sanity lies in paying attention.”

A therapist friend of mine has been reminding me to fill my emotional reserves. Feel joy and hope and allow it to fill me up. Lately, for months now, I have been touching my hand to my heart every time I see something lovely that causes me to pause. Today I did it when I heard the bird.

There will be much to do, I think. But for now, remember that “Survival lies in sanity, and sanity lies in paying attention.” And remember that Joy is, and always has been, an act of resistance.

Much Love.


On the Guest Cottage and Curating Space (PS – I missed you)

Published on by almostfarmgirl3 Comments

I am sitting at my desk.

I could make a list of everything on my plate that feels more urgent than this: this moment, at my desk, taking time to put down the words that have been circling in my head for months. Maybe longer.

More urgent. More useful. More practical. More important.

I’ve been absent from this blog for so long that it no longer feels necessary to apologize. You weren’t expecting me, so I need not apologize for being late.

Instead I will just be back. Slipping into my own absence, checking to see if things are as I left them.

<<<>>>

John and I finally bought the ranch this year. Without much fanfare, failing even to pop the bottle of fancy sparkling wine that we had tucked into the fridge for the occasion, we shifted from renters to owners (or, at least, mortgage holders) and began chipping away at the most unsexy list of projects you can imagine. Addressing drainage issues, water damage. Repainting. Reorganizing.

Day by day, moment by moment, progress began taking shape, first with the items that couldn’t wait (flooding in the basement every time it rained was getting beyond old) and then with the changes that brought us closer to our goals.

<<<>>>

Offering our guest house on Airbnb has been a goal of mine for a long time.

For years, I’ve heard this place described as “magic” by those who visit. Friends or acquaintances would come, and they would tell me that everything seems a little more real out here. That this place and the animals, the woods and trees and sunsets offered up a reminder to settle in. To breathe. They would leave more relaxed than they came and tell me that the hours they spent here offered respite from the worries of their daily life.

That experience has always seemed like such a sacred thing to be able to share.

The Guest Cottage, in process. The patio is going in soon.

Once we held the mortgage on the ranch, we started working towards sharing it.

Since April, I’ve been chipping away at all the work that needed done. The house needed paint inside and out. The floors needed to be refinished. The roof, per insurance requirements, required replacement. For months, all my time and all our money poured through the little guest cottage at the edge of the woods, and we come closer to our goal by inches. Even now, I’m waiting on to hear from our contractor on three remaining window replacements. Just today, I ordered gravel and sand so we can finish out a patio.

It’s getting close.

<<<>>>

The guest house is small, about 750 square feet, but it feels bigger when there is no longer an inch of it I haven’t touched. Every step of the way, I found myself making decisions about the space I wanted to curate. I changed the colors on the walls inside and out. Brightened the ceilings. Chose new stain for the original 1940s wood flooring. I picked new light fixtures and blinds. New entry doors. New hardware. A new vanity.

It feels like an entirely new place, and I can see myself in every decision.

Here’s something I didn’t expect: the whole process felt incredibly vulnerable, and it gets more and more that way the closer we come to finishing. The more that I changed, the more the little house began to feel like a reflection of me.

Last weekend, I sat on the floor framing art prints while John worked on putting in a new light fixture. I flipped through the prints I bought, flowers on vintage book pages, and reflected on an observation a friend had recently made (Paige, I hope you don’t mind that I quoted you): “This project is the perfect intersection of your passions. English. Gardening. Vintage craftmanship. Nature. It’s the perfect Cherity piece.”

One of the prints I framed this weekend. I don’t think I could love them more.

I had wondered if anyone would notice.

I stacked those prints next to the already framed photos of my critters and began drafting in my mind the gallery wall where they would meet.

There’s a vulnerability in creating a space like this. I suppose plenty of people can probably do it without pouring out so much of themselves, but, for me, it feels like an offering. Here. See this place I love. Here. See these things I find beauty in. Here. Share the joy I’ve found here. Here. Take a deep breath and let yourself settle in.

I’ve been surprised by this place and this process. By how different it feels to build something like this from the ground up. It feels so wholly new.

Soon it will be live, and we will share it, but, for now, I thought you might like in on my latest adventure.

I hope to have more to say soon, but either way, it’s nice to be back in my little corner of the internet. I hope this finds you well.

All my love ~ Cherity (AlmostFarmgirl)

On Steadiness and Wintering

Published on by almostfarmgirl1 Comment

“I turned the heat up four degrees,” John walked into the living room with an air of resignation wearing a zip up jacket, heavy sweatpants, and chunky wool socks, “and I don’t even care.”

I nod as he sits down next to me on the couch, acknowledging both our tacit agreement to keep the heat low and his deviation from it.

The house is big and poorly insulated and drafty. It’s expensive to heat, fueled by propane that accounts for one of our biggest singular expenses and much of it sits unused; we exist in only so many rooms of this sprawling 1970s ranch style home. Usually we keep the heat on low and bundle up, using a space heater to make our bedroom a little cozier.

But today?

Fuck it.

We are officially into mid-March, and in the midwest that means circling back to roughly the sixth iteration of winter. Admittedly, it’s been cold for months, but now, with temperatures swinging only just above freezing and regular rains, it’s now cold and damp.

I’m over cold and damp.

The horses are back in winter coats. Ponies have been coming in overnight during the rain and snow, and piggies are still piled in deep, deep bedding that renders them completely camouflaged except for their little snouts sticking up above the hay. I’ve had flashes of “sweatshirt but no coat” chores, but mostly I’m still shrouded in Carhart during my morning and evening rounds.

All of this to say, John can turn the heat up tonight; propane bill be damned.

<<<>>>

Winter out here is hard. It’s long and it’s cold. Come February, I’m over it in a way that I can’t quite describe. Come March, during years like this one where the daffodils pop up promising a change of seasons without any evidence of warmth to back them up, I start to feel a bone deep sort of exhaustion.

It’s the weather.

But, also, right now the weather isn’t the only thing making me feel unsteady and tired. There are some big personal uncertainties that it’s probably best not to discuss here, but that have been making me feel unmoored for months.

There’s my mother’s health. She went into the hospital last year in August and has been in and out of the hospital, notably with a nearly two month stint in the hospital in November, and dealing with health difficulties ever since.

There’s the loss of my dear rescue horse, Jiminy, who passed of old age recently, and watching the decline of one of my favorite llamas of late.

It’s the weather, and it’s more than the weather, and it still feels like the weather. It still feels like something is ubiquitous and in the air.

<<<>>>

It seems like nearly everyone I know is going through this sort of season. Shaky. Uncertain. I have friends dealing with job uncertainty. Personal uncertainty. Relational uncertainty. We, all of us, seem to be trudging, dragging our feet through mud. Our lives seem to be reflecting the season with its slow growth and the deep chill.

That’s not to say that everything is bad. I’m in a healthy relationship. I have the best friends. Supportive family. I’ve started regularly teaching yoga, which I didn’t expect to do but very much enjoy. And even the unsteadiness offers it’s lessons. I recently told a friend that the unsteadiness in my life is a masterclass in stability.

A while back someone told me that I’m the calmest, steadiest person they know. I didn’t quite know how to respond. It was like they held up a mirror, so that I could see what they see, but that reflection of me seemed like someone else entirely.

I told my dad about that comment later, and he asked how I see myself.

“Oh. Like Beaker. From The Muppets.”

“Which one is that?

“The one that runs around screaming all the time…because he’s on fire.”

Dad shook his head, “I think it’s safe to say that version isn’t entirely accurate.”

<<<>>>

John and I picked up a new foster dog yesterday, an 18 month old German Shepherd mix named Steak who the foster organization renamed Stella. She was an owner surrender with her sister to a local animal control.

She climbed into my lap for a hug

Honestly, I wasn’t going to bring home any more fosters until my life found some more solid ground, but she was on the (very) short list for euthanasia, and I’m a sucker for German Shepherds. So we carved out a tiny bit of margin in our lives (with a hacksaw, I’m pretty sure) where there previously was none, and we brought her home.

She’s sweet as pie, and anxious, and a little bit dog reactive, so she won’t be as easy a foster as I had hoped, but she also moved from her home with her sister to a shelter with her sister and then to my house without her sister in the span of weeks. The poor thing is scared and overstimulated and confused.

I recognize some of those emotions in myself, I think. And I believe that it’s only a matter of time until she can relax into feeling safe. She’s already starting to recognize some steadiness in me. I’m starting to recognize some steadiness in me.

<<<>>>

It snowed last night, as though this spring wasn’t wintery enough without putting on a show about it.

Stella is in her crate licking a peanut butter bone. My dogs are chilling on the bedroom floor while I write and John eats breakfast. We didn’t get great sleep last night; Stella howled her insecurity, making sleep elusive, so that’s something we will have to figure out.

And, we will.

The thing I know about winter is that, eventually, it makes it’s way into Spring. The thing I know about wintering is that it doesn’t last forever. The thing I know about unsteady ground is that, if you keep standing up, it usually teaches you to find your footing.

Meanwhile, chores beckon, as they do every morning.

It’s good to know some things in life are one hundred percent predictable.

Preparation and Presence: Some Thoughts on Fall

Published on by almostfarmgirl5 Comments

The barn swallows that make their summer home in our barn have flown south, announcing with their absence that summer is at it’s end.

I suppose they leave one day at dawn. That’s the best explanation I have for the fact that I never notice them leaving so much as I notice that they’ve left. I notice their absence. One day I walk up to the barn, and it’s just…quiet.

Of course, there are other signs of the changing season.

There’s the cricket song that seems to get louder as the weather begins to chill, like a finale to the symphony they’ve played all summer.

There’s the sounds of the Great Horned Owls hooting in the evening as they call back and forth across the property.

But the barn swallows…they herald in the change of season in such a tangible way to me, always appearing and disappearing like magic. Coming and going without fanfare. One day come, announcing summer, and one day gone, my hint of the coming autumn, sandwiched between the first acorns and the fire-red maple leaves.

The presence and absence of barn swallows signal the liminal spaces of my year. The inbetweens.

<<<>>>

I’m almost always a little taken aback by fall. It reminds me of guests arriving early while I myself am running behind. The knock at the door when your hair is still a bit damp, and you haven’t finished putting away the things that had fallen out of place since you last entertained. The glance at your watch and the deep breath you take when you knew something was coming but thought you should have had more time before it actually got here.

Ideally, by the time autumn arrives, the barn is fully stocked with hay. Blankets are washed and put away from last winter, ready to be used again when called upon, and there is a supply of straw set aside to keep little piggies warm as the cold starts to settle in.

Of course, life almost never behaves “ideally.”

<<<>>>

It recently crossed my mind that farm life forces me to strike a balance between presence and preparation in a very visceral way. “Be here now,” only goes so far before you find yourself unprepared for what comes next.

And yet, we don’t have to look very far to find evidence that most of the business of living can’t be prepared for. I can buy hay; in fact, I must buy hay. It’s a necessary preparation, but the preparation is not the living. Stacking hay makes way for winter, but I also must take the season as she comes.

And, if I focus too hard on what comes next, I miss what is right in front of me.

<<<>>>

Yesterday afternoon, I found myself in my veggie garden on my hands and knees, pulling newly turned earth through my fingers in search of potatoes. I started the chore simply because I knew it needed to be done before we have a freeze, but I fell into a rhythm quickly and began to enjoy the process.

Potatoes keep you honest. They force you to pull the weeds you ignored, to turn over the earth, to search with your hands. Potatoes require that you get dirty (or maybe they don’t, but I can’t see the fun in that…)

I felt childlike, pulling my fingers through the loamy dirt in the garden, appreciating the texture of soil that we’ve tilled compost into for three years running. I was reminded of the holes I used to dig in the yard as a child for no real reason. (To see if you really could dig to the other side of the world I think…have I mentioned before that I was a super weird kid?)

I pulled potatoes in shades of purple and gold and red, and they each felt a little like a buried treasure. I almost gleefully tossed them into a box.

I garden for about a hundred reasons: feeding my family, feeding my critters, feeding my friends, reducing our carbon footprint, and appreciating the seasonality of food all come to mind. But the most meaningful reasons for me are the reminders that the garden provides and the presence it brings me into. I dig in the earth and remember that I am part of the earth and that she provides for me bounteously if I let her. That the water I need literally falls from the sky and that the food grows out of the ground I walk on. That potatoes can be pulled from loamy soil in shades of ruby and amethyst and gold, and that real wealth is not metal or stone, but is the food and water and sunlight that sustain us.

When I’m in the garden, especially when I’m literally in the dirt, I’m present. Appreciating the bounty of fall without my thoughts wandering to the coming cold.

<<<>>>

Fall is a liminal space, and sometimes it’s hard to exist in such spaces without thinking yourself forward or backward, but fall on the ranch encourages me to acknowledge what’s coming while sitting with what is here. Soon the freeze will come. Pastures will go dormant. Plants I’ve tending all year in the garden will die back. More of the wild things will migrate, and those of us who make our home here year round will tuck in for the coming cold.

Hay that we’ve set up in the barn, potatoes we’ve dug, squash we’ve harvested, it will all be there to sustain us. The preparations will prove their value. And we will take the winter as she comes.

But, in the meantime, I have more vegetables to harvest and more digging to do on my hands and knees in the cool, loamy soil.

I hope fall is finding you well. I hope you take some time to pause and notice; the swallows have informed me that fall is here, and the leaves are about to remind us of just how beautiful change can be.

Rose in our back woods.

Gardens, celiac disease, and being kind

Published on by almostfarmgirl3 Comments

“Your garden looks great this year!”

“Wow! The garden looks fantastic! Last year by now it was crazy.”

“Man, I’m proud of you. You really kept up with the garden.”

First tomato crop
Butterfly garden.

My gardens are impressive this year. Huge. Productive. Largely weeded. I’m getting comments from nearly everyone who sees them, especially if they’ve see my gardens in the past. Mostly, come July, let alone September, my gardens are lost in the weeds; this year, they looks comparatively manicured. Still, when I hear the compliments they feel a tiny bit sideways. That isn’t how they’re intended.

It’s just how they land.

For some reason, my past attempts feel like failure. More than that, like personal failings.

Why exactly did I succeed this year and fail before? Am I just lazy? Why do I feel blamed for what I didn’t do instead of proud of what I’ve managed to accomplish.

Then I pause, remind myself, sometimes out loud: “Life is easier when you aren’t sick all of the time.”

<<<>>>

Just over a year ago, I found out that I have celiac disease. The changes I have made since–namely ridding my life of all forms of gluten–have been life altering.

Celiac is an autoimmune disorder caused by gluten (a component of wheat) that triggers all kinds of seemingly unrelated symptoms. My symptoms included headaches and migraines, digestive upset, stabbing pain in my stomach, severe fatigue, joint pain, chronic inflammation, peripheral neuropathy, mood changes, and bloating. It also, likely, contributed pretty substantially to both my anxiety and depression. (I mean, I still have those, but they are much more manageable now.)

It’s a pretty extensive list of widely varying symptoms, and before I figured out what was going on, I wasn’t sure whether I was dying or a hypochondriac. (I was beginning to feel pretty sure it was one of the two…)

Over time, gluten exposure can kill the intestines of people with celiac; as such, undiagnosed, it can be deadly. Either way, it makes life pretty miserable.

Within two weeks of getting ridding my diet of gluten, I began to understand what it is to feel healthy. Those weeks were full of epiphanies: You mean it isn’t normal to feel ill after every time you eat? Wait…I literally had a low level headache all of the time? I can make it through a day without taking a nap?

And the weirdest one…

My face isn’t round????

These photos were taken about a week apart. Like I said, not round.

(All of the inflammation had made my face swollen. I lived my entire life thinking I have a round face; I don’t.)

Later, I learned that celiac disease is genetic and that it affects 1% of the general population.

It affects at least 20% of my maternal cousins.

I didn’t realize how much pain I was in, or how fatigued I was, until it went away. I had been running the farm by pushing through pain, and I had beaten myself up for all the ways I hadn’t been able to keep up. Like with the garden.

<<<>>>

Why am I telling you all of this?

Partly, it’s because I discovered this problem by following an internet research rabbit hole. I tested the theory by removing gluten from my diet on my own, and THEN I talked to my doctors about it. I know there are a lot of people out there living with this thing who aren’t aware of it, and I know that it’s possible that telling my story could help. I had been living chronically ill for so long, I didn’t recognize many of my symptoms as symptoms, and I sure as shit didn’t think anything on that random list was related. I’m not the only one.

Also, and this lesson comes up over and over again in my life: it turns out I am often too hard on myself.

<<<>>>

I spent part of the evening shredding yellow squash from the garden for the lasagna I made for dinner and for the muffins I will make tomorrow. Earlier today, I stuck probably thirty tomatoes in the freezer, part of a hack that makes them easy to peel for salsa and canning. I have more green beans than I know what to do with. Honestly, I will probably feed a bunch of them to the pigs this weekend instead of their grain.

I have watermelons to pick, pesto to make, potatoes to dig, and butternut and acorn squash ripening on the vine. My tomato cages have collapsed under the weight of the plants, and my sunflowers, which I honestly just grow for the birds, are 8+ feet high.

My garden looks pretty great this year.

It’s never looked this good before, but it turns out, I’ve never been truly well to take care of it before either. I wish I would have known to give myself a little grace about it before now.

We have all heard the saying “be kind to people, you never know what they’re going through,” and there is so much truth there.

We need to be kind to ourselves too though, and we often are not, not realizing that we don’t always understand everything we, ourselves, are going through.

One of my zinnias from the butterfly garden.

Be kind, loves. Especially to yourselves.

Love like lilacs…on Grandma Alyce and a life well-lived

Published on by almostfarmgirl2 Comments

Everyone and everything I love is holy…

I pause as the sentence pops to mind. It does occasionally, even though it came to me completely by accident at first, the consequence of a mistype and autocorrect.

<<<>>>

A few years ago, a friend and I were chatting about therapy. She was gearing up to go back, but was dreading the work. I was thinking that I probably needed to get back on antidepressants first, because as my depression sat, I didn’t think I would actually get anywhere.

“It would be a fairly nihilistic therapy session,” I began.
“Therapist: so what brings you in today
Me: everyone and everything I love is “

And here’s where I started to write “going to die” and autocorrect changed “going” to “holy.”

I think sometimes the universe interjects itself into our lives, and in this case, I think it was letting me know that I was missing the point.

<<<>>>

Everyone and everything I love is going to die…

My 92 year old grandmother, Alyce, passed away on June 28, leaving behind 9 children, 21 grandchildren, and 26 great grandchildren. Less than a week before, John and I drove up to visit her in the nursing home to which she had recently been moved. We met my cousin Erin there, and the four of us passed the afternoon.

Me, Grandma, Erin, and John

It wouldn’t turn out to be my last visit with her, but the possibility clung to me, a thought I worked to push back. I wanted to enjoy my time with her, and I did. We talked and laughed. Hugged. I turned pages for her while she looked at our wedding album. She told us about the singer who had come to the nursing home the week before. The song she requested. I wish I could remember the name…

Grandma was moved to hospice the next day; it was her choice, and we knew it was coming. She chose to transfer when it became apparent that her congestive heart failure was getting the better of her; she was tired of the doctor visits. Of struggling to breathe.

Maybe, in some ways, she was just tired.

A few days later, I went back to see her again. This time at hospice. She couldn’t speak much, could barely stay awake. The nurses (god bless hospice nurses) kept her comfortable and answered our questions.

Family rotated through. My cousins sat with me. I called my dad and told him to come. I watched several of her sons say their goodbyes. My father audibly. My uncle with a hug.

Her heart was giving out, but her mind was still sharp. She worked to say “I love you” to each of us.

Strange, there was so much sadness in that room, but what struck me over and over was the way love spilled out from every corner. The way it permeated the air.

We stood with her on the edge of death, and it was holy.

<<<>>>

We sat vigil with grandma, no one leaving until the next person had come in. She was never alone.

We talked about her life as we held space for her. Memories each of us had. It’s strange how the people you love, the people who love you, hold different pieces of you. Strange how you can come together and add pieces, one after another, until you paint a vibrant picture.

It’s remarkable how you can come to the end of a 92 year life and leave everyone you know wishing it was longer. I think every single one of us will miss her. And I think the ones who didn’t know her, like my cousins’ children whose memory is still too young, will hear stories that will make them proud of her.

<<<>>>

On July 3, we attended her Celebration of Life.

It’s funny. Knowing her my whole life didn’t quite prepare me for her eulogy. For learning about all of the living she did in the space before me, before my aunts and uncles, before even my grandfather was part of her story.

She had told me about her childhood here and there. I knew that her parents had divorced, in a time when almost no one divorced, and that she had been in the custody of her mother as a young child because her father was willing to take his sons but “didn’t want the girl.” Then she was handed around between caregivers. Her mother. Random relatives. The upstairs neighbor. Her grandparents.

She had a traumatic childhood, one that gave her every excuse in the world to perpetuate the trauma she experienced, but she broke the cycle during a time when people weren’t talking about breaking trauma cycles and mental health resources were far less available. She raised loved and loving children. She was known for welcoming everyone who came through her door (and usually feeding them, even though she actually hated to cook).

I found out that she was a writer, too, in high school. Creative writing. Press club. Even the editor of her high school newspaper. How had that never come up?

I listened to stories about the jobs she held: preschool teacher, Headstart teacher, Meals-on-Wheels deliverer. All jobs that lifted others up. Cared for them.

Hearing new stories from her life felt a little bit magic: a reminder of the depth and breath of nearly a century on this planet. A reminder that we were celebrating a life that had been well lived.

<<<>>>

I asked her what her favorite flower was once. She told me about how her children would bring her lilacs in the spring, and she told me about how she would have liked to have purple roses for her wedding to my grandfather, but that they were poor, so she made her wedding flowers out of tissue. I like that she answered the question with stories.

We had daisies and lily of the valley at her funeral, because I guess those were her favorites, too.

But I think about the tissue roses, and how she made something beautiful with so little. And I think about the lilacs, and how the answer to what she loved wasn’t about the aesthetics. It was about the way her children showed their love. It was about the story.

<<<>>>

Have you ever walked into a grove of blooming lilacs in the evening when the air is heavy? Or walked into a midwestern farmhouse where the cut flowers are sitting in a vase on the table? The scent always registers before the source. It permeates the air.

I think about her final days in hospice, and it occurs to me that grandma spent her final days surrounded by a love like lilacs. A love you felt hanging in the air before you could pin down a source.

<<<>>>

Everyone and everything we love is going to die; everyone and everything we love is holy.

I miss her.

I didn’t see Grandma all that often, but I feel her absence. The planet was better with her on it.

But, also, the planet is better for her having been on it. That, I think, is the most we can wish for anyone in the end.

Well, that, and a holy love.

Like lilacs

Grandma and Grandpa

Leg Yields and Core Values.

Published on by almostfarmgirl4 Comments

“Leg yield off the wall to the center of the arena, and then switch sides and leg yield back onto the wall. It doesn’t matter whether or not you get there. I just want you to try.”

I hear my trainer’s instructions from my spot in the saddle, sitting on a gruella lesson mare named Violet. I turn down the long side of the arena and begin my leg yield, concentrating on the simultaneous use of my hands, legs, and seat to achieve a desired outcome. My focus is on the leg yield, but the second set of her instructions are sticky, and I find myself repeating her words for the rest of the lesson, then again on my drive home: It doesn’t matter if you get there…just try.

<<<>>>

I started taking riding lessons again. Once a week I drive an hour and a half to a dressage barn to ride horses that aren’t mine.

Me and Mac. Gearing up for a lesson.

I did the math, and I’ve been riding on and off for about 27 years. With the exception of reading, singing, and possibly writing, that makes it my the most long term pastime of my life, but in recent years, especially after my marriage to a man who regularly made it a point to criticize my skill in the saddle, my confidence had plummeted, and I didn’t feel up to restarting or riding my horses on my own. When my bestie and riding buddy, Lauren, moved away from the ranch to take up her next adventure, I made the leap back into lessons, hoping that I could rebuild some of the confidence I had lost.

Once upon a time, you could put me on about any reasonable horse and point me at a jump course (or…insert whatever discipline I happened to be riding here…), and I would take off without hesitation. I would do it because I knew that, in all likelihood, I could do it.

But for years now, I’ve been less sure. I’ve been uncertain, and I’m not good at uncertain.

<<<>>>

It doesn’t matter if you get there…just try.

I’ve been thinking a lot about core values lately. If you haven’t heard the term, your core values are your (five or so) fundamental, guiding beliefs. These are the ideas that move you. If you’re living in alignment with them, you are likely to consider yourself on track or successful. If you aren’t living in alignment with them, you will probably feel like shit about yourself or your decisions.

In the pre-pandemic, before times, I taught my students about core values in my business communication class. I did this because I wanted them to understand their internal ethic when it came to how they wished to do business. (Additionally, I think the discussion itself is a valuable tool in anyone’s toolbox; knowing your core values can, among other things, actually make you less susceptible to advertising.)

Values can fall all over the map of human beliefs. They can be a positive force (kindness as a core value, for example), but many of them are not (popularity or wealth building as a core value comes to mind). Some are more neutral (success, because the term really only means what you believe it to mean for you). Some are evaluated based on the reactions of other people external to yourself (again, popularity comes to mind). These values will likely cause you pain, because you’re not actually in control of whether or not you’re living them out. Others, like love, are judged by your own internal rubric.

Research suggests that you’re better off having values under your control (judged by your rubric, not how you think others perceive you) and values that are growth-minded instead of measured by a singular event. (If success is a core value, don’t define it as having a nice car, because when you have the nice car, there will be no where else for the value to take you. They tend to feel empty when that’s the case.)

(Here’s a list with about 500 examples of possible core values. They’re worth a glance.)

Your actions, feelings, and the way you perceive yourself are guided by your specific set of values. It’s best to understand what they are.

<<<>>>

Here are the questions I’ve been asking myself lately: What’s driving me? Am I driven by values that I actually want to be driven by? How am I measuring my success or failure as a person?

Can I change my values to reflect more of the life I want?

I realized the more I dug down that I am judging myself by core values that I don’t actually believe in. A few of them are cultural–material success, productivity, capitalism–and some are ideas that I grew up with and internalized uncritically as a child. (It occurred to me as I worked through all of this that much of the cognitive dissonance we experience as humans comes from the conflict between your values and the values instilled in you by your family of origin (the values of your childhood).)

Growing up, my mother’s mantra was “Be the best.” She continued, quoting her father, “Be the best. If you’re going to be a ditch digger, then be the best ditch digger, and soon you’ll be in charge of all the other ditch diggers.” Honestly, there are some worthy values buried in there, and for some they might have walked away with values of personal responsibility or hard work, but that’s not how it landed for me.

Instead, I got stuck on “be the best,” which distills down to the core value of “best,” and, for many of us, this is a toxic value. For one thing, it’s based on how you compare to other people, and we know that that is problematic, but also, because I valued myself on whether or not I was “best,” I was, and still am, resistant to trying anything that I don’t already know I’ll be good at.

Here’s a fact: I am not the best at anything.

This is not a disparagement. There are certainly things I’m good at, but there is no category in which I am Simone Biles or Michael Phelps. I am not, and will never be, the best. And I’m learning to be ok with that.

<<<>>>

I made a list.

Here’s are the five values that I want to have guiding my life. (Some are hyphenated, so it’s possible I cheated a bit, but I think they’re different faces of the same idea.)

* Authenticity/Vulnerability
* Compassion
* Creativity
* Fun
* Learning/Self-Knowledge

These are my chosen core values. Some of them I do a pretty good job at living out. Others not so much–I am just terrible at fun to be honest–but knowing what I want them to be helps me to measure my actions accordingly.

Here are a few of the values I find myself living by that I’m working to untangle, recognize, and remove:
* Best
* Materially Successful
* Productive

All of these values fuel my perfectionism, which, ironically, makes me way less productive, successful, or likely to ever be the best. I judge myself by them regularly, even though I don’t believe they should be guiding values in my life.

<<<>>>

Back to the lesson:

I worked on leg yields on and off for the rest of the lesson. None of them were flawless.

Once upon a time I used to tell adults that I wanted to ride in the Olympics someday. I don’t think it was ever true. I didn’t have a burning desire to be the best in the world. I really just wanted to spend time with horses, and I felt as though I had to justify it in a productive way, even then. Even as a child.

I will never be an Olympian. I don’t want to be.

Riding lessons take about 4 and a half hours out of my day for me to sit in the saddle for a half an hour. But you know what? It’s a FUN half an hour! It isn’t productive. I will never, ever be the best, but I am learning a lot of new and interesting ways to fail.

It’s reminding me that trying is it’s own reward, even when I don’t achieve my goal, whatever that goal happens to be.

My instructor is still echoing in my head.

“It doesn’t matter whether or not you get there. I just want you to try.”

<<<>>>

Drop a comment if you took a look at the list! What are your core values? Are the values guiding your life the values you want guiding your life?

April Snow and All

Published on by almostfarmgirl2 Comments

It snowed today.

According to the weather, it may snow again tomorrow.

Spring in the Midwest can be like this, with flip flops and tank tops one day and winter gear the next, pulled from a closet where you all too optimistically stashed them away just a week earlier.

Last night, I spent the last hour and a half before sunset in a winter jacket preparing the barn, blanketing a few vulnerable animals, and covering plants that had the audacity to emerge before the final frost of the season.

I was back and forth from the house to the barn so much that my dog, Rose, laid down begrudgedly in the garden instead of keeping pace as I did my chores. She looked at me seemingly frustrated, perhaps wondering why I couldn’t just pick a spot already.

“I just have to make it to the end of the week…” I thought, dragging a old watering trough behind me from the back barn to the garden, a soon to be cover for my already blooming daffodils.

<<<>>>

It’s been about a year since Covid changed things for all of us. Seasons have shifted one to the next like a playlist that brings us back to the beginning again. Masks now hang next to my keys, and I would no sooner go out without one than the other. Everything and nothing is the same.

I’ve been quiet this year, I suppose. (Shout out to the followers who are still reading this even though my last blog post was nearly four months ago.) The best of intentions to write didn’t get me very far in our pandemic world. Maybe I haven’t felt like I had much to write about. In some ways, that seems like the case; the day to day doesn’t change all that much at the moment.

Maybe a lot of what I could have written about is sad.

Maybe, and I suspect there’s some truth in this, it’s that a lot of us have developed some plague-induced level of attention deficit. It’s just been harder to focus for a while now, especially on the things that are still right in front of us.

Maybe, and I KNOW there’s truth in this, the pandemic has a lot of us pouring ourselves out and not taking much time to fill back up. A friend and fellow writer reminded me very gently several weeks back that no one can pour from an empty cup.

Probably my quiet is some combination of all of these things, and probably a whole host of other factors that haven’t occurred to me yet.

<<<>>>

I think a lot of us are thinking about “just making it to…” the end of the week, the end of the semester, the end of the pandemic. More than usual, we’ve gotten used to living in a state of anticipation, of grinning and bearing it until something changes. We stay quiet. We hold…hopefully steady.

We wait.

About two weeks ago, John and I brought home a foster dog who was not quite as advertised. She was supposed to be cat and dog friendly, and she just is not. Don’t get me wrong. She’s a good dog, but she has to be kept on a leash– when not in her kennel–at all times. She’s sweet as pie with people, but the girl is unpredictably animal aggressive. It complicated our lives a fair bit.

She’s going home with her adopter to be an only pet on Thursday, but, somehow, in the meantime, she made me acutely aware of all of my waiting.

Last night, trudging through Monday to get to Thursday, when the household would settle and the weather would go back to something closer to normal, I wondered just how much of my life has been spent this way.

Waiting.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with anticipation or hope, but sometimes, especially maybe when a global pandemic has all of us holding our breath until things get back to normal, we forget to live the in between.

Last week, I found myself driving over the river to meet John for dinner. I was stressed out, thinking about our difficult foster dog, fences that needed mending, bills coming due. My shoulders were noticeably tensed and my jaw had clenched.

And I thought “Soon.”

Soon it will be different. Better. Easier. I focused on some ephemeral moment in the future when I would have a little more room to breath. I may have actually been holding my breath.

To my left, the sun glinted off the river, light playing on the water, practically splashing in the waves. I let out a sigh as I noticed it.

And a new thought.

“Now.”

Right now. Sunset on the Illinois River. Snow on the Daffodils. This is the life we have been waiting for. Whatever it is, pandemic and all.

Sometimes, I think, we don’t miss the forest for the trees.

We miss the trees for the forest.

We miss the way the sun glints off the water at sunset because we are worried about the difficult foster situation and are focusing on the next change. We miss the favorite song that comes on the radio as we drive to meet someone we love and are lucky enough to be able to still see because we have a bill looming and a date attached. We miss the evening bird song because we are frantically trying to cover the plants before the snow comes.

We miss the life we’re living for the worries we have over it.

<<<>>>

Today I made a point to notice how unexpectedly beautiful spring flowers are when they’re covered in snow. I took a minute to breath. To give myself a break. Even to take a nap.

The worries, of course, are still there, but the time will never come when they aren’t. The weather in the Midwest will always be unpredictable. Animal rescue, for as long as I do it, will come with it’s complications. There will always be a new bill. There will always be something to stress about.

The key, I think, is not to live a life of “it will be better when,” but to recognize the both/and nature of the life and world. Especially now. Especially when the news and our lives are always there to remind us that this world is complicated and hard. When we are tired, and life has us quiet.

Frederick Buechner once wrote “Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid.”

Beautiful and terrible. Exciting and mundane. Here, my beloveds, is the world: the terrible, beautiful, anxiety-inducing world that we live in.

I hope we all remember to notice it. To notice the moments of our actual life, as it actually is.

April snow and all.

“I think, this year, we’re all just trying to figure out how to get by.”

Published on by almostfarmgirl1 Comment

Merry Christmas Eve, my loves.

If you’re reading this, you made it to the final round of Jumanji…I mean, 2020. Congratulations.

I hope this post/letter finds you well.

I’m listening to the Acoustic Christmas playlist on Spotify–I highly recommend it–sitting on my couch. One of the most perfect Fraser Firs in the history of Christmas stands to my right, covered in lights and ornaments that twinkle. My hay guy, who also happens to be my Christmas tree guy, told me that his trees sold out much faster this year; what usually sells in two weeks sold in something like eight days.

I think that means that everyone was a little more ready than usual for a dose of Christmas magic.

This has been such a weird year. I know that all of you know that, but man, I’m amazed by all that has come to pass since I wrote my last Christmas post. For a lot of us, that weird year is going to end with a weird holiday. For me, tonight is the first Christmas Eve that I won’t be spending with my father’s side of the family. We usually play Bunco and eat lots of food and sing carols. This year we’re having a Zoom meeting.

<<<>>>

Last night, while waiting at the local Italian restaurant for (to-go) garlic bread, a family friend walked in. I used to babysit his kids, and I was actually in his daughter’s wedding, but he didn’t immediately recognize me in a mask. I said hi, but could tell that he was having trouble placing me. (Also, when I was regularly in his family’s proximity, my hair wasn’t pink, so there’s that too.)

“You’re…Ch…?”

He paused and almost said my sister’s name before I completed the word with my own.

“Cherity”

“I’m sorry. It’s just hard to tell with these masks.”

I nodded. Agreed. Smiled. But again, hard to say if he could tell I smiled, because mask.

We politely chit chatted for a bit as we both waited on our carry out. We exchanged hellos for our families. (“Tell your parents I said hi.” That sort of thing) He asked how I was doing. I replied with a perfunctory, “Doing ok, getting ready for the holiday.” He replied by shaking his head no in a world weary sort of way.

“I think, this year, we’re all just trying to figure out how to get by.”

There was nothing new in that sentiment, but I was thinking about it as I drove home. The way this virus is a very collective experience.

We, all of us, trying to figure out how to get by.

<<<>>>

Over the last few days, I’ve been thinking a lot about light.

Monday, the 21st, was the winter solstice. It’s the day in our year with the shortest period of daylight, and, consequently, the longest night.

The solstice is why we put lights on our Christmas trees. (Actually, Yule, the holiday of the solstice, is why we have Christmas trees at all.) The solstice is the time when we look for light inside, rather than outside. It’s when we carry the memory of light in an act of solidarity with the earth as she makes her way back towards it.

The solstice is our reminder that darkness always seems the most all-encompassing right before light starts to come back. And light always comes back.

I thought, too, about how so many cultures have celebrations of light, many of them this time of year. Christmas. Yule. Hanukah. Kwanza. All celebrate the light. All of them teach us to hold onto it.

This time of year, we celebrate the light that we cannot see.

This year is a really good time to celebrate light that we cannot see.

<<<>>>

I listened to Christmas carols on the way home from the restaurant. O Come, O Come, Emmanuel came on, moving through my shuffle. It’s always been one of my favorite carols.

It’s a song of heartbreak and joy, and I’ve always loved art that allows, as in life, for those two emotions to co-exist.

It’s the song of the end of exile. A song of redemption that begins with God and ends in us, no matter what happens around us. The name, Emmanuel, means “God with Us.” The carol is a celebration of a world where God indwells. Even when things aren’t perfect.

<<<>>>

Lauren and I did chores early tonight, filling up hay feeders and hay nets with an abundance of alfalfa, enough to get all the critters through a cold, dark night. We fed everyone, including our newest residents, two mini donkeys and three potbelly pigs who needed a soft place to land.

For me, chores are a measure of continuity. The way so many things stay the same even when the world is chaotic. The way that the world behaves according to its own rhythms. The way, every year, we do chores earlier in December as we wait upon longer days and more light.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about all of the light festivals. The way they prove that we have more in common than not. The way that we all cling to the knowledge that light follows the darkness, regardless of our creed.

I find myself thinking of all of you, and hoping that you all are holding onto the light. It’s coming. The light will be here soon. In the meantime, the answer is always more love.

I pray that you take this holiday season, whatever holiday you celebrate, to love your neighbor.

Your homeless neighbor. Your neighbor of color. Your LGBTQ neighbor. Your immigrant neighbor.

Remember that all of us are waiting, together, on the light. Remember that all of us, this year, are just trying to figure out how to get by.

Merry Christmas everyone.

<<<>>>