Consistency is key. When I start putting my self care routine, (namely two walks per day) to the side, things start to slide. That sciatica I had a few months of reprieve from, starts to rear its ugly symptoms again. My anxious thoughts start to overpower. I feel gloomy, lonely, and hopeless. I’ve reached that part of the year where this rut happens, it’s seasonal depression. I naively thought since it’s been warmer and I’ve been outside more that it wouldn’t hit but no amount of outdoor time can fix it when there’s no UV light and thus no vitamin D to derive from the sun.
I opened the store timing-wise to counteract the feelings of isolation that also naturally happen come winter. We’re all just inside and prone to hibernation mode. Well, we have to eat, so come on by and get some food and conversation to break up the daily monotony, it’s good for all of us! It’s the week of Christmas so I’m baking and making neighbor treats. Having a sourdough crisis in that I can’t seem to get a good rise, so loaf after loaf is a new experiment and little tweaks here and there. If you’ve received a flatish loaf from me, it’s still good, just pop it in the toaster for a bit! Or make it into a stuffing or croutons, we’ve done all of the above with much delight.
This is all to say, this time of year is hard, but also joy filled. Lonely and quiet but also inviting and eye opening. Looking for ways to express gratitude daily. Noticing how I crave color this time of year when all is brown and flat, so when I look up and get a beautiful sunrise or sunset it feels like a gift just for me. Laughing with people but also crying about the pain of it all. We will come to know the vastness of our emotions but will not be slaves to them. I was made by a powerful Creator, and I am a powerful creation. It is within all of us. What we choose to do with is up to us.
Look what a three mile hike outside of town can do to get my writing flowing again. Thanks for reading!
It’s been 12 years since my mom breathed her last earthly breath. Today felt “off” in a lot of ways and when I finally recognized why I went a lot easier on myself and let my family know too. You can reset the day however many times you need and at any given moment. I’m also going to sleep before 10 on account of the time change so tomorrow me can be ready for the earlier sunrise.
It feels okay to write about what this south star concept means to me now that my dad is in the depths of his dementia and will never read or comprehend these words. This is in no disrespect to either of them I want to make that clear, but theirs was a marriage with a lot of turmoil. It was like two different marriages under one roof. My dad lived in a lot of darkness and depression for the decade after she died and before he got sick. She was the love of his life. Since he got dementia, he still thinks she’s alive, and it really works out better this way for all of us. My mom on the other hand wanted out. She voiced it regularly the last 5 years of her life. She felt stuck and tired and run down from holding up the marriage on her own due to the family disease of alcoholism. My dads raging alcoholism let him live in a fantasy world where everything was perfect, while she lived much of her life in misery – overworking to pay the always late bills, keeping the household afloat, martyring herself to the cause until it literally killed her.
I’ve forgiven them both in so many ways. And the biggest one is using their example as my south star. Whenever there is something out of harmony or reminiscent of my childhood growing up in an alcoholic home I don’t have to go resolve it using that same old beaten path. I can chart a new one and try something different. I can use any number tools that 12 step work has given me. I always have options and people to support me. I don’t have to do the same thing over and over again and expect different results (that’s the definition of insanity).
Don’t like a yelling house? Don’t yell and instead take your anger outside into nature. I screamed at the sky today and my throat still hurts. Don’t like passive aggressive behavior? Stand up to it and call it out for what it is in the moment. Ask for clarification and demand rigorous honesty. Be transparent with your kids about serious topics like money, sex, and addictions. Tell them where you’ve struggled and why. I didn’t get a North Star growing up but that doesn’t mean the next generation has to repeat the same traumas I experienced.
Gosh I miss my mom with such a huge part of my heart, but I wouldn’t have learned nearly all that I have in her absence. Her death pushed me to seek out healthy relationships with so many wonderful lifelong women friends and mentors that I know I wouldn’t have dared seeking out had she not died. I wouldn’t have the life I have today if she was still here, resentful and bitter. She loved a lot of things in her life earth-side, us kids above all else, being a grandma even if only for a short while, God, and even my dad despite his addiction. I don’t know how much she loved herself though, and that is another south star. Loving myself means I have love to offer others without reservation or judgement. She was a good example in modeling a Christ like love and for that I am grateful. Grief can me mixed and messy and this is what that powerful loss means to me 12 years later
This blog title comes from a book that was semi-required reading prior to any mission trip travels at my prior church. It is a helpful framework in traveling to developing countries on how to interact, how to level set our expectations, and basically how to not try to impose our ways of doing things or beliefs or values onto others. I think a lot of us get this cerebrally but in practice it is a lot harder.
The past two months we (but I mostly since I facilitated and brought all of this on) temporarily housed someone in our trailer and now that it’s done I have a lot of insight and also, like the title says, helping hurts. It was hard. There were some big missteps and misunderstandings. And frankly I invested way too much of my emotional bandwidth that left me weary and cynical.
The intentions here never wavered. When we were living on the road we were extended extreme kindness from several strangers as well as a church in Farmington, NM. Complete strangers allowed us to park our circus on their property for swaths of time that then allowed us to rest and plan and prepare for the next stop. It was a chaotic time but always grace filled. We were always grateful even if the circumstances weren’t perfect. And we always EXPRESSED that gratitude to our hosts, before during and after the experience. I knew I wanted to pay that hospitality forward when and where I could when the opportunity presented itself.
The opportunity presented itself with this traveler. But I abandoned a level setting of expectations that I should have expressed from the beginning. I’m terrible at setting boundaries and clear plans, so when those are lacking I quickly abandon my sense of serenity, be that around a relationship or a situation. This was the case and it became clear over a month ago that this wasn’t going to be as smooth sailing as we all thought it would be when we first went in. Fortunately, I have a team of friends and sponsor who can help me reason things out. I set a boundary and a deadline for this temporary housing situation to end. The past few weeks have been awkward but honest and we all survived. She left yesterday, the trailer is clean and she was respectful of our space. But I’m sad and disappointed because there was no thank you or real goodbye. Aside from a few conversations between her and I early on about gratitude, there was nothing else. I feel like a sucker who was taken advantage of for showing kindness. I see why people harden themselves off to doing these kind of gestures because we’re all just experiencing life with our hurts trailing behind us and not a lot of tools for collective healing or self reflection.
Would I do it again? Funnily, yes. So I’m not so disheartened or jaded from the experience that I’ve shut my heart to another possible opportunity to help. But I’m not an expert or a social worker so I’d do things vastly different if something like this came up again. Starting with agreeing to clear terms be that exchange of services or rent payments or what have you. I’ll also be more ready with what I can offer more clearly. When we stayed with our farmer friend Roger in Pagosa Springs, we had an hour long phone interview followed by a two hour sit down interview with him as a family to get really clear on boundaries and expectations. Gosh, Roger sure is wise. I can apply new wisdom too while keeping an open heart.
To the traveler, if you’re reading this, I’m sorry. I’m sorry for not having clear boundaries or expectations. I’m sorry for the fluctuations in temperatures as that trailer is not set up for long term living unless you know all of her ins and outs like we do. I thought that since we did it for so long, others could as well, and that turned out not to be the case and it’s on me for not communicating that very clearly from the very beginning. I’m sorry the shower was broken and that the wind blew out the pilot light so many times. So many things in that trailer in the elements are out of my control and every time something happened I felt terribly responsible. Also, thank you with the garden and chicken help during this early spring season. You clearly have knowledge and skills in those realms and i hope you get to keep applying those skills to new situations in your next place. If we ever cross paths again I want you to know we want the best for you and wish you all the good things you deserve. I hope you find the people and things you need to heal. It’s all possible and available. Happy trails to you.
Now onto our actual summer with travel and camping plans and zero drama.
It’s really been almost two months since my last writing. We’ve all been outside a whole lot (hallelujah!). I’ve been business planning, stumbling, tripping, getting stuck in fear and perfectionism, but I’m aware of that now and ready to step into action again.
I opened my planning notebook and the last day I took any business actions was the end of April. Then I allowed myself to get distracted by all the things; chickens, gardening, my dad’s things, my kid’s things. And on and on. It’s a destructive pattern that I can’t catch myself doing until I pause and recalibrate. Yesterday I plucked a box full of weeds from all over the yard. Last year when we got here there was little weeding to do – it was mostly dry and desolate, making the weeds very manageable and visible. The weeds I’m going after are brambly, all over the place, and once dry will become prickly goat heads. Bike tire killers, annoying to both people and dog feet everywhere. So I’m getting at them while they’re easy to pluck and soft enough to snag bare handed. But while I’m hunting I’m also thinking, (probably too much). About the state of our world, about the precariousness of starting a new business, about borrowing money for that business, about paperwork I still need to do for my dad’s needs, about driving all over the county for the next six weeks for Camden’s baseball, about Natalie starting some jobs this summer and how to shuffle cars for it all to work, about doctor and dentist appointments needing to be researched and scheduled. Like I said, all. the. things.
I got to the weeds for a few minutes this morning again but then had to stop. This goal of eradicating this specific weed in this moment is really keeping me from the work I need to do in pursuit of MY goals. Yes, it’s important, but I need not let it consume large swaths of my day. I need not exhaust my body first thing and then have nothing left in the tank for writing or planning later.
I’ve never been much for the write and schedule block in a planner, but maybe I need to change my mind on this. The things I put in the calendar rarely coincide with my own needs or goals. I have large chunks of day that I largely mismanage in service to the house or someone else. Do all mothers do this? Do all women do this? I thought I was more aware than I am.
The other thing that keeps coming up for my is the cynic who says that all of this effort is pointless so why even try. There are such huge societal issues playing out before our very eyes. We as a country are so sick and obsessed with weapons, more concerned with party over principle, completely numb to the horrors we hear of every single day. It’s exhausting to just be alive. What difference can a little store in the middle of nowhere (somewhere?) make? I could really use some encouragement in this area. The isolation of these thoughts keeps me stuck too. I feel powerless. So tell me reader, what you do to keep moving forward when we are the ones we have been waiting for.
It’s been a few weeks since sitting down to capture some thoughts. This podcast https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/mind-body-and-soil/id1615122217?i=1000604087792 … always gets my writing juices flowing so here I am again after a good listen. As for the title of this post, a more self deprecating phrase we’ve said as generalists over the years is “Jack of all trades, master of none”.
I’m very much in a similar rut of what I posted last month. I’ve come to embrace it as my mud season. More metaphor, but hang with me. A fellow writer I’ve recently started following http://jamesapearson.com…describes it as the gap between winter and spring where there is no clear path and every step feels heavy and uncertain. We are here both physically and theoretically as we trudge through the literal shit (manure) we’re trying to spread through the backyard to build soil, and emotionally as I do the deeper work of inner healing and connecting with my younger selves. Do not do this work alone, you’ll lose your muck boots in the depths of the sludge. I’m grateful for a support network helping me to navigate my own traumas and explore my forgotten childhood as well.
Manure that will help us build soilWaiting for it to dry out is a test in patience
Back to the generalist idea though. We’re in a pre-spring kind of whack-a-mole place with our homesteading and store plans. I announced the thing but am currently stuck in the mire of all the details. I can see where I want to be months or even years from now, but there is not a clear path and my inner compass is skewed because I haven’t been to this place before.
Homesteading requires a highly sustainable level of DIY and I’m still a novice in a lot of the areas needing my attention. Earlier this week for example, I had an ongoing text and phone thread with a soil guy about cover crop and testing soil samples, got a new internet router installed but was not able to connect (fortunately Zach was the generalist here and got us online when he got home), I mopped the muddy floors almost everyday, sent a customer service email, was supposed to apply for a grant with a deadline of Wednesday but due to the no Wi-Fi issue went ahead and skipped that round, took the dog to training class, on the way picked up a gallon of milk from our raw milk lady, grocery shopped up north, went to the chiropractor, attended a coaching call and a webinar, and there’s a whole other running list in my head of things to do, research, cook, clean, prepare, that doesn’t even touch the business side of things.
I know we all do this everyday, every month, etc. but the question I had to stop and ask today is the same as last writing. Where is it in service to my goals? What is my next right step? When we were living on the road this was always at the forefront of my mind, next right step was usually pretty clear and we became very intuitive and knowing where to go and when to make a move. Living inside dulls that intuition to some extent. But I don’t want to have dull instincts so I have to get in the mud and feel around for my footing.
Here’s an example of where I think we are (maybe) getting it right. We want chickens, always have, and have been around enough urban farms or even friends backyards to know having them is a great farming segue and low entry barrier project. We even have a dilapidated barn behind our house that housed some foul at some point. When we moved in last summer the kids started clearing out that space. When we circled back around to the research end of having chickens there was a lot of debate about building a new coop or using the existing one and just making improvements to it. Next right step (and next right available thing) meant that improving the existing structure is more viable for now. We already had the lumber at the ready to do the work. The boys made great headway last weekend and we’ll be getting some chicks in early April after our spring break. Same goes for the garden, we have seeds, at least some workable ground, and a separate barn space for getting some seeds started indoors. We all have to start somewhere with what we have and this is what we have for now. And it is enough.
🐣 coming soon!Other birds are not going to like these holes patchedCamden built a nesting box all on his own!
The mud season is messy but it can be full of fun challenges if we’re willing to look at it that way. I still grumble a lot on the cloudy and cold days but the temps are ever so slightly starting to climb and signs of spring are slowly making their selves known. I see it in the greening up of things and the return of more bird species to the area on my daily walks. Sometimes there’s even a clear blue sky to appreciate and if we’re really lucky no wind. Today is not such a day, but I can knock a few more things off my list from inside while I wait for another glimpse of the sun and for the mud to dry up.
The Writings of Breanne Mashek 