Dee Brown, Author at If You Give A Girl A Homestead

Three Words

When Jeremy was first diagnosed and we shared it publicly with everyone, his mentor from his teenage years reached out to him and shared something that Jeremy held on to throughout all of this. His mentor said that when his wife was going through cancer, she had said she didn’t want her pain to be wasted. This statement resonated with Jeremy and he told me on several occasions that that was what he wanted. He didn’t want his pain wasted. And I think by many of you allowing me to share the pain and hurt but yet the hope and the light in all this allowed for that. I spoke to a dear friend a couple days after Jeremy’s passing and she said that she had been shocked to hear that Jeremy was going home on hospice and that only a few short days later that he was gone. She…

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August 24, 2022

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We Dance

When my husband was first diagnosed, I realized the severity of his illness. I also realized that without a medical or supernatural miracle, our time was limited. Very limited. The further we got into his cancer battle, he and I started discussing death. The first time we talked about the reality that we were facing, Jeremy told me that he felt relieved that we had faced talking about it together. I remember in that discussion and few that followed, he would tell me he wasn’t scared of death or where he was going. He was confident in that and always, “Dee, God’s got me.” However, he was concerned about the process of walking through the door from this life to the next. And every time, I promised that I would be right there with him and that he wouldn’t have to do it on his own. We would do it…

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August 7, 2022

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They Will Be Called Oaks

The last couple of weeks leading up to the two year anniversary of Jeremy's death, I have been flooded with memories of that January and February of 2020. The things that lead up to February 13. I've thought of conversations that Jeremy and I had in the hospital room after we knew he would be going home on hospice. They consisted of talking through a lot of practical things, like what truck I would need since he wasn’t going to be around to take care of our older truck. However, we also talked about unfulfilled dreams, like getting a camper and doing more camping trips with the kids or taking a trip out west with them. And we talked about the table that he wouldn’t build. Ever since we had moved onto the farm, we had discussed him building a three-plank farm table that was long enough to fit many…

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February 21, 2022

Daily Life

Life

Looking back over the last two years, I am able to see the progression in my family’s grief processing. It’s not always clear while you are in it, but looking back you can see distinct shifts. The first year was us trying to breathe. Trying to work through not only the grief of losing Jeremy, but also the trauma that we experienced. During that year, I learned how to recognize and differentiate between the two. There were times that my brain, randomly would release a trauma based memory and I would be side swiped by it. It would undo me. I realized how much my brain had taken in and had stuffed in order to keep going. Unfortunately, after his death and the immediate chaos that seemed to follow due to the pandemic, resources that would have been available, especially to my kids, were not. So we limped along, doing…

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February 3, 2022

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Ocean Waves

This week, I stole away to the NC shores to try to take some time to regroup and get my squirrels lined up and behaving. What was I thinking? It’s was going to take a lot longer than two days to do that. I think I was only able to catch one. The first day was rainy, so I couldn’t get out on the beach, but yesterday was sunny and in the sixties. So after spending most of the day on one project, I got outside as the sun was starting to go down to walk the shoreline that was calling to me. I was amazed at all the shells and sea rocks that covered the sand as I walked along. I reached down and picked up a smooth white rock and turned it over in my hand. It felt soothing, solid, and strong. And I wondered how long it…

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March 5, 2021

About the Homestead / Daily Life

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

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Day 3

This morning I woke up at 6:30 (7:30 back home) and was able to climb one of the sand dunes to have my morning coffee. It was beautiful. I was able to catch those moments of magic light but chose not to pick up the phone to try to capture it. I sat in it. Once the sun was well on its way, I went back down to the camper to get the kids going. After they got dressed, they grabbed breakfast to eat outside and then run and play on the dunes while I prepared us to go. I was just about done when they came back. I noticed a lot of yellow jackets being attracted to the water that had dripped down from the roof of the camper so there was a little bit of maneuvering to make sure we didn’t get stung. The yellow jackets in TX…

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June 24, 2020

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Day 2

Day 2: This morning I woke up around 6:30 with dread. Last night when I went to bed I was seriously questioning my sanity. Ok, I’ve always questioned it but REALLY questioned it. We got a later start than I had wanted and I looked for a place to get an extra tire, but struck out. I think because it is Sunday. Walmart’s tire department was closed due to covid though, so maybe both. I made sure to keep my speed at 60 mph, praying not to have another blow out. Today was fairly uneventful, thank goodness. We stopped at LeTourneau University and I could tell that it was soothing to my older two. I don’t really know how to explain it. I watched as they took off on an empty campus and I could tell their hearts were full imaging their dad as he walked around campus. They wanted…

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June 22, 2020