It’s dark and quiet this morning, a cold autumn wind whistling through the trees and making me thankful for afghans and blankets and a second cup of hot coffee.

The last few months have been intense, a hurtling sort of time when you just need to hang on for dear life and push through until you can find breathing space again. A time where self-care is essential to make it to the end of each day when you can finally collapse into bed, sleep like the dead, and wake up in the wee hours to start fresh.

Yes, it’s been hard, painful, and scary, but also rich and meaningful and laced with connections with incredible people who make me stop and smile and feel like there is much reason for hope.

tangled vines

It’s been a time of personal hibernation for me, pulling back from much to make sure I can handle the vital without crumpling.

And now I’m catching my breath as we move into a new season without floods and catastrophic storms and cancer concerns and huge work commitments and debilitating injuries and broken water pipes and dead appliances and the innumerable other things that have had us shaking our heads and wondering, what next?!

This week I get to wash laundry in a washing machine instead of by hand, fill animal troughs with a hose instead of hauling buckets, hear properly with both ears, and take time to actually plan my next steps instead of lurching from one bonkers situation to another.

I am grateful.

autumn tree seeds

Grateful for baby guinea fowl in the warm kitchen, bottles of pear ginger jam on the window sill, and new asparagus shooting up in the gardens. For cuddly dogs, full rainwater tanks, and our first harvest of pomegranates. Aren’t they beautiful?

basket of pomegranates

The newspaper I work for is closing this week and, even though we all know it’s the right thing and the right time, we’re rather sad. We’ve loved working together, loved sharing the stories of our amazing community, and we’re going to miss it and each other very much.

I’m not sure what my next steps are, but, as we write stories for our last issue on Friday and pack up the newsroom and meet together for final drinks, I’m quietly excited about the future.

In the meantime, I plan to rest, potter in my gardens, work on farm projects with Bear, and trust that my next steps will be good ones. xo