I am a country girl, a wife, homemaker, and registered nurse.
I grew up in a small cabin surrounded by hundred of acres of forest and abandoned farm land in what seemed like the middle of nowhere. We grew our own food, plowed the garden with horses, and went without any modern conveniences. My soul was fed by starlight on dark nights, sunrises and bird songs on dewy mornings, long wanderings in the deep forest, and the gentle rolling foot hills of the Appalachian Mountains.
I am a recovering daughter of patriarchy. My parents wanted to shelter us from the evils of the world. We were sheltered through homeschooling and allow little access to anything outside of my parents' belief system. Though I believe their motivation was good, in practice it left me feeling imprisoned and hopeless. One day I made the decision to walk away from that world and the only life I knew. I was 26 years old, and knew very little about how to function independantly as part of society.
The last 11 years have been a journey of finding out who I am and understanding where I came from. I put myself through nursing school, and met and married a good man who loves me simply for who I am. In 2009 after 9 years of living in a small city and feeling lost and out of place there, we bought 13 acres out in the country in lower Michigan. After leaving my parents' home, I finally have a place where my soul can feel at home.
I now have a place where I can tend the soil and build my dream of someday living in part from the land again. Right now my life is spent trying to maintain the balance between a demanding, but very rewarding, nursing job, tending my gardens and home, and dealing with what is often a crushing chronic fatigue.
I started this blog to share the every day beauty that I find in my life. Thanks for stopping by. I hope you enjoy my blog and stay a while to visit! You will find photos of the beauty that surrounds me everyday, an occasional recipe, gardening tips, and bits of my life story as I slowly write it.
