2020 - If You Give A Girl A Homestead

The Holidays

It's hard to believe that it has been almost 10 months since Jeremy left us and 2020 started it colossal spiral downward. I have had people asking how I am doing and so I thought I would check in with everyone. Plus I am finding sharing my heart with you all here, is healing. It helps me put words and clarity to some of the thoughts and feeling that seem to be swirling about in my heart and head. I have been dreading this season, not wanting to walk it, but knowing the only way to healing is to walk through it. Maybe even limping through it. Maybe even crawling through it some days. But in order for healing, I…we… have to move through it. Embracing what we can and recognizing what we just do not have the capacity for and being ok with that. Moving into last year’s Christmas…

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December 9, 2020

Travel

What’s in a Picture

I love this picture. And it isn’t because, having just left Colorado where humidity is non-existent, my hair was on point. There is another reason. Or rather, reasons. We were driving from Denver and heading to the Grand Tetons in the northwest of Wyoming. We had just gotten into Wyoming and I realized that I hadn’t put the actual campground’s location into in my GPS. I had just plugged in Grand Tetons. Um…the Grand Tetons are kinda, well, grand. I probably should have been more specific. I realized my mistake and cleared out my directions only to then realize I had made a bigger mistake. My data wasn’t working (I realized later I had hit a button that had turned it off) and there was no cell service. I could not pull up ANY directions. So there we were… in Wyoming, headed in the right direction, but completely without directions.…

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October 14, 2020

Daily Life / Travel

13th

Dates. People observe them as markers to life events. Birthdays, first meetings, first dates, job changes, house buying, sobriety, weddings, deaths, national and global tragedies. There is something about the marking of time with those life events that remind us of joy or pain or even a shift that occurs within us. For me, that day is the 13th. It was Friday, the 13th , that I sat at a picnic table trying to get a hold of Jeremy knowing he was in the hospital and they had just done a CT scan. I knew it was bad. I had known since Labor Day that something was wrong. I had a field trip to Williamsburg planned for the kids and I was not sure if I should still go. He ended up going to the doctor before I left because I felt so uneasy about going. He went in and she did…

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September 13, 2020

About the Homestead / Daily Life / Travel

A Mountain Called Grief

A week or so after Jeremy’s memorial service, I decided I needed to take the kids to the mountains for a hike. It was something that Jeremy and I loved to do. He loved the mountains. When it came to vacation time, he would have opted for the mountains rather than the beach every time. I tried to make our big vacations at the beach, but weekend getaways were in the mountains for him. Hiking didn’t happen too much over the last 14 years, just because the littles were, well, little. Our hikes or rather walks were usually easy when we ventured out as a whole family. We were just starting to come to the age with all the kids that we could do little more adventurous hikes because they could keep up. No more having to carry anyone halfway through our excursions or listening to an excessive amount of…

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May 11, 2020

About the Homestead / Daily Life

Grief

I get asked a lot how I am doing and I know some of them are not just a polite, “How are you doing?” but rather a “Dee, my heart hurts for you guys and I want to make it all better for you in some way and I don’t know how. And I really want to make sure you are OK” type of how are you doing? I know by social media appearances I am doing OK. I am getting up every morning and I am getting stuff done. I am posting the successes and the happy moments. But I am not posting how that every morning even if I don’t see it coming, I cry. Or every night, I am sure to have some tears well up. And that there are several times during the day that I am hit with it all and I crumble. I see…

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April 16, 2020