Sweet Fullness

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When Brad and I got married, I knew I needed to do some soul-searching when it came to having children. I had been single a long time, and I honestly think it was God’s kindness to me that He sort of lifted the desire for children away from my heart for those 10-plus years of being a single woman. I remember as a highschooler and college-aged young woman dreaming of having 10 kids, picking names out, and truly having an active desire to be a mother. But as the single years wore on, it was a struggle enough to grow in contentment and confidence that God would provide a husband if and when He chose to do so; I believe it was God’s kindness that temporarily and gently suspended the desire for children and kept it from being another stumbling block.

So when I found myself married to a good man, I knew I wanted to be the mother to his children, but I also had this strange sense of neutrality. Some of it is temperament – I’ve never been the baby-chasing sort. As sweet as new babies are, I never feel compelled to hold and cuddle other people’s babies, and am perfectly content to admire from a distance. But now that I was married? I knew this was something I needed to wrestle with. It wasn’t that I didn’t desire children, in an active sense, but rather that passively there was no active longing. Does that make sense? I wasn’t opposed to children, but I wasn’t actively experiencing a desire for them either. It was as if my years of singleness had sort of muffled the sense of that desire. And as I pondered that, I realized how empty that was.

Too often, I see women on social media or elsewhere, professing to be Believers and proclaiming confidently that they have absolutely no desire for children and that should be fine. Granted, I don’t know their situations, but a common thread in the Bible is God’s love of the family, and His desire for His people to raise families to His glory, beginning in the Garden of Eden, with the command to “be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it.” Procreation is obviously part of that. And my personal conviction is that if God says something is good, we should think so, too. If God commands something to His people, we should take that seriously. We are not victims of our desires.

So I began to pray and ask that God would give me right desires, desires that pleased Him, and that if it was His will that we have children that He would open my heart to children, and remove the fears that gnawed at the margins of my heart.

And it is wonderful how God answers prayers. Before too long, I found I was no longer praying that God would give me a desire for children (because He had answered that prayer and had given me the desires I had prayed for!) but I was praying that He would make me fruitful, and would give me contentment and peace if He didn’t open my womb. Because I also knew that, although I am responsible to cultivate right desires, God doesn’t always satisfy those desires the way we want or expect, and He owes me nothing.

Well, it took my breath away when I saw the two red lines, and took my breath away again when I heard the heartbeat for the first time and saw the baby on ultrasound at 19 weeks. I’ve been living in a state of constant flux between incredible reality and surreality. Nothing had prepared me for how sweet it would be to feel the first quickenings, or how comforting it is to feel the baby move at all hours of the day or night. Nothing had prepared me for the sweet fullness of expectant motherhood. Fears have slipped further and further away.

And I can’t wait to meet our baby girl in November.

P.S. I took these photos for us with a tripod and shutter timer while we were camping in the Bighorns this weekend. Brad was great, and even consented to push the shutter button for me a few times. 🙂

Ranch Wife Musings | No Place Like Home

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Originally printed in the Custer County Chronicle on July 16, 2025

In college, I fancied myself a traveler. I have since realized I am much too much of a homebody for that, and conveniently I married a man who “never left the farm,” as they say.

But I was much younger then, and I fantasized about being a world explorer. I had a penchant for foreign languages, and spent 6 weeks in France the summer before my junior studying French at a university in Dijon, gaining confidence in conversational French, and exploring southern France, soaking up all the Mediterranean sun and eating all the fresh (and wonderfully cheap and delicious) produce that could be found at the open-air markets throughout France. It really was a wonderful experience.

I’ve spent extended time with family in Alaska on a number of occasions, spent several days in Whitehorse, Canada, working on a project (another story for another time), and made a southwest road trip a few years back primarily to do a one-day Rim-to-Rim hike at the Grand Canyon. I’ve certainly not not travelled.

Brad and I do enjoy the chance to take our camper out once or twice in a summer, see some new scenery (or old scenery with new eyes), hike, and unplug, stepping away for a short time to be rejuvenated, coming back home refreshed and ready to get back to it with energy and vigor.

If one has the inclination and the financial and lifestyle flexibility to be able to travel, go for it. But I most certainly do not think travel is inherently beneficial. A lot of traveling is extremely consumeristic, shaped around lack of activity, too much food, and copious quantities of alcohol, all of which are objectively not great for you or your bank account. Done the wrong way, travel is a form of escapism, and can become the means by which the daily grind is reinforced as something to need a vacation from (as opposed to recognizing a need to occasionally recharge and seeing a vacation as the means to that end). The mentality around “vacationing” can promote discontent and dissatisfaction with reality. Social media doesn’t help, as people splash their luxury-appearing vacations all over Facebook and Instagram, making expensive getaways appear as if they are and should be the norm. If that’s how you’re going to travel, I’d probably suggest staying home. It might be temporarily enjoyable, but it won’t make your life – your real life – better in the long run.

But that isn’t the only option. The other option requires discipline in the daily mundane, determining to be content and thankful with the real life you are living.

Because traveling in order to see another culture, international or regional, with your own eyes? Absolutely that can be a great thing! Traveling in order to get glimpses of the beauty of God’s creation in another area of the country or the world? Absolutely. Traveling so that your eyes are drawn in wonder around a landscape or a cityscape that boggles the mind and makes you praise God for His creativity or the creativity with which He has blessed the human race? Yes!

And then, maybe most importantly, traveling so that your heart strings are tugged back to the beauty of the life God has given you? Yes. A thousand times, yes.

Don’t use travel as an escape, a drug to cope with “real life.”

Travel so that your life, in all of its normalness and mundanity, comes into focus in the best of ways. Travel so that your heart longs for home. Travel so that you are forced to remember the little things you take for granted. Travel so that you have no other option but gratitude.

And that takes work, truly. It takes work every day to cultivate a grateful heart, and eyes that see the beauty in the things that you have become accustomed to. It takes work some days to say with genuineness, “Thank you, God”, in a culture that preaches a gospel of restless discontent. If life is hard, whether related to work or family or marriage or something else altogether, we can be tempted to see escape as the best solution. 

But where you are, right now? You’re there for a reason.

While I was out of town last week, I couldn’t stop remembering home, and all those little things I take for granted every day. Our freezing-cold well water. The way the sunrise looks in summer. The chaos of my garden. The refreshment of an early morning walk. The musical creak of a gate. Posey and her calves sneaking in to water. My husband’s lanky form swinging down to the barn, and his “Boys! Boys!” to call the horses in for breakfast. The puppies terrorizing the barn cats.

The day I got back, I sat down by my chicken coop and just watched and listened. The quiet was like music. It wasn’t silence. It was much, much better. It was all the sounds that make up this life I live. The chickens scratching, or clucking to themselves while dust bathing. A couple hens squabbling when a mother hen felt it necessary to defend her half-grown chick. The cats trilling contentedly. A horse stomping in the corral. The breeze stirring the limbs of the pines.

I was home.

And there is no place like it.  

A Partnership with Sun and Sky

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Originally printed in the July/August 2025 issue of Down Country Roads Magazine

A gentle breath of wind stirs the laundry hanging on the line – A row of snap-front shirts and faded jeans, a row of quilts and sheets. Hung out wet and cool, taken in warm and dry, bringing that clean smell of sunshine into the house. And what a privilege to complete that task in partnership with sun and sky. Such a small thing. Yet it isn’t small at all.

They tell us we don’t belong. From their remote offices of steel and glass, shaded from the sun and unable to see the sky, they wag their so-knowing fingers at the rancher, whose father’s grandfather made a living in cooperation with the natural world. But here we are, and here we’ll stay, continuing in that partnership with sun and sky, wind and weather.

In the first summer days of scorching heat, the hayfields change, slowly, then not so slowly. Alfalfa turns from green to purple, and the brome grass turns from green to golden-brown as the feathered heads cure out. The vivid colors fade. That first swath is cut. That first windrow raked. That first bale rolled. “Chasing hay,” it is called, and one by one the area ranchers and farmers take to the fields. Cutting and raking and baling and yarding it up, timing the activity to the perfect streak of weather, partnering with the sun and the sky.

The flower garden is a riot of color, and constant activity. Countless numbers of bees drone comfortably, bending flower after flower under their slight weight, little wings stirring leaves, little legs weighed heavy with golden dust, in a mesmerizing dance of industry and grace. How something as small as a bee can have such a vital role to play is humbling. And how sweet it is to partner with those tiny workers, with something as ordinary as a homey flower garden, to help them feed their young as they help us grow our own gardens. What a sweet partnership, with sun and sky and flying thing.

Our little yard is rimmed with young fruit trees, planted as memorials to important days and as an investment in tomorrow. We have our wedding trees, and our-family-is-growing trees, trees that mark days and loves and in future years we’ll taste again those sweetnesses, fruit in hand. What simpler stewardship than to plant a tree? The apples begin to swell and blush as the days shorten, and in the woods across the ranch chokecherries hang like clusters of grapes on every side hill, it seems, and in every ravine. Many feed the birds, but many find their way into the kitchen and in this form or that they will grace tables in the months ahead. It is stewardship, partnership, cooperation with the world around us to wisely use the bounty.

From ivory towers come criticisms and accusations, rules and regulations, suggestions and mandates – But what do they know? And how could they know? Have they planted a tree? Or harvested a crop? Or watched a calf take its first suckle of mama’s milk? Have they stumbled across a sleeping bull elk in a high meadow, and watched in awe as he shook off slumber and disappeared into the woods? Have they watched the antelope raise their young? Have they welcomed the sun and the wind and the natural order of things?

Feasting on native forage, the milk cow is well-fleshed, her lean frame filled out beautifully under a healthful layer of summer plenty. Her milk is rich and sweet and abundant on sunlight-turned-to-grass – No wonder her calves are as stout as they are. Their summer coats are sleek and glossy, their gentle eyes bright and content as they seek out shade on a warm day and chew their cud. They truly haven’t a care. The beef herd is out to summer pasture, thriving in their self-sufficiency. What a life they live, gently handled, carefully tended, in this partnership with sun and sky and beast of the field.

The hens dart to and fro in the barn yard, sometimes making it up as far as the house and the garden. They are gorgeous this time of year, feathers full and flawless, and their eggs are a marvel as well – Hard symmetry cracks open to reveal a golden heart, the darkest of yolks, dark with summer’s vegetation and the insects the chickens consume, golden like at no other time of the year. The egg basket runs over, and the bounty overtakes the kitchen. Another simple partnership, with sun and sky and barnyard fowl.

How simple, each of these partnerships, each of these stewardships. How intuitive and instinctive to want to be a part of this world we live in, to care for it, to help it to thrive. To live in and amongst, not apart from. To take what we need with gratitude, to cultivate and invest, and to leave our little corner of this green earth better than it was when we came to it. And finally, to leave something for the next generation, something beautiful and beloved.

It isn’t we who have invaded, carving up the landscape to suit our whims and ways. It isn’t we who have razed the woods and hidden the hills beneath asphalt and high-rises, chiseling away at the contours of the land to favor buildings of cinderblock and stone. It isn’t we who have divided and subdivided, trading the warmth of the living land for the coldness of a dollar. It isn’t we who have rerouted waterways and planted lawns where native grass once grew. It isn’t we who have buried fertile ground beneath roads and infrastructure, slowly erasing the beautiful asymmetry of rolling hills and prairies.   

We are stewards. We exist with and alongside the birds and beasts, the land and trees, the wind and the weather; not bending nature to suit our wills but submitting ourselves to nature’s order, partnering, not subjugating, working with, not against. We live here. In partnership with sun and sky.

Ranch Wife Musings | On Whose Shoulders We Stand

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Originally printed in the Custer County Chronicle on June 18, 2025

Have you ever noticed the following contrast?

When Mother’s Day comes around, in sweeps the sappy sentimentality from all quarters, religious and secular alike. Church sermons laud the important role mothers play, encouraging mothers to embrace their God-given status and find joy in the motherhood journey. Ushers hand out $5 gift cards for ice cream or flowers to all the mothers. Mothers are showered with admiration and gifts, treated to lunch, and generally doted upon. All the wrongs mothers can commit are overlooked, and motherhood is suddenly elevated to frank heroism by a culture that at all other times actively discourages women from having children and decries motherhood as being demeaning and bowing to the patriarchy (but can’t even define “mother” anyway), while memes circulate social media saying that Mother’s Day isn’t just for mothers, but for anyone who wants to be considered a mother – cat moms, dog moms, anyone. I find it all very confusing.

Father’s Day rolls around, though, and it is a different dynamic altogether. Church services might give a tiny nod to the day itself, might offer a brief prayer of thanks for all the fathers in our lives, but any sermon that takes place is generally not a celebration of God’s gift of fathers but a warning to fathers that they had better shape up, and here’s how to do it. Fathers aren’t lavished with gifts, and social media takes no break from the campaign against toxic masculinity (which really is usually just a campaign against masculinity, period). Fathers are often the butt of sarcastic jokes, and many run-of-the-mill issues full-grown adults wrestle with are tacitly or explicitly blamed on fathers and mistakes that were made during childhood. 

The dichotomy is striking, if nothing else.

It seems to be a daily thing on the news, hearing about violent crimes, abuses, tyrannies, behind each of which is a man being dragged through the mud, sometimes justifiably, sometimes not. But for every single one of those events that dominate the news cycle, I would guess there are 10,000 men, invisible to all but their families, standing in the gap for their wives and children, for their communities, and for their faith. Men who rightly set the standard for manhood, for virtue and morality, for right and wrong, willing to hold the line against those who threaten the spiritual and physical wellbeing of those they love.

And we need that. We need those men. Desperately.

In a society where many social ills truly can be traced to fatherlessness and abuse by fathers, what we need is more strong, masculine figures, not fewer. More men who take the privilege of their strength seriously. And those men who are exemplary in their roles as husbands and fathers should never be in doubt about their value or importance.

We are who we are because of our fathers. Good fathers give us an example to follow. Poor fathers give a warning about what to avoid. But our fathers make us, and that trickles down through the generations, for better or for worse. Men learn how to treat their wives by watching how their fathers treat their mothers, for better or for worse. Women learn how they should be treated by watching how their fathers treat their mothers, for better or for worse. The importance of fatherhood – for better or for worse – absolutely cannot be overstated.

My dad set the standard of manhood for me. He was a steady, dependable, wise, Godly force in my life through all of my growing up years (and still is), and so much of the woman I became is a direct result of the example set by my own father. His living out of his masculinity gave so much context for my living out of my femininity. So much of what characterizes my faith and my thoughts and my loves and interests are because of my dad. How I view life, how I process information, decisions I’ve made – because of my dad. As an adult, he became the standard for what I ought to pray and look for in a husband, and his example of a loving and kind father and husband set the bar when I was dating. He demonstrated devotion to God, faithfulness to wife, love of children, gentle but firm in his expectations and corrections of us, and always pointing us back to Christ. He, with all of his imperfections and flaws notwithstanding, was my standard of masculinity and manhood.

Then there is my father-in-law, who has been a constant presence in my life for the last 7 years, as the first person on the volunteer fire department to take me under his wing and show me the ropes, and, more importantly, as the man who helped make my husband the man that he is. And I’m so thankful for that. I’m thankful for the honesty and integrity that my father-in-law has modeled to his son, for the instinct to generosity, the work ethic and ingenuity (it is amazing what can be done with wire and willpower), the commitment to family and community, the importance of being a capable and compassionate leader, and that there are more important things in life than the money in one’s bank account. I’m even thankful for the somewhat twisted sense of humor that I now have to suffer with on a daily basis.

And it isn’t too long before I get to watch husband step into his own role as father. Who we are because of our fathers will shape and mold the next generation.

We stand on the shoulders of the men who made us.

A Love that Feels Like Home

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It is amazing how fast everything can shift.

At the age of 30, with no one in sight, I had more or less come to the conclusion that I’d be a loner for the rest of my life, or at least the foreseeable future, and honestly I functioned decently in that capacity. Introverted by nature, and truly trusting in a loving Heavenly Father who knew what I needed – not wanted, but needed – I had learned a level of contentment. As an adult, I had wrestled with well-intended but off-kilter promotion of marriage as the ultimate state for the Christian. Things like, “Marriage is God’s greatest gift.” (No, it isn’t, Jesus is) Or, “being a wife and mother is God’s highest calling.” (Then what about those to whom God doesn’t give that privilege? Did He shortchange those women? Some beautiful clarity from the Westminster Catechism: “What is the chief end of man? The chief end of man is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever.” Wow.)

I wrestled with loneliness and uncertainty, grew in contentment but never perfected that virtue, and grew in my trust of God, logically and theologically concluding that the “gift of singleness,” at least for the time being, was mine, and I could either thank God for it and learn to flourish in it or try to throw it back in His face like an ungrateful child. As an aside, contentment cannot be circumstantial. If a person can’t find contentment and trust in God in an undesirable state, he or she truly won’t find contentment or trust in God in the coveted state.

So I threw myself into my work, whatever it was, and after a few years of volunteer firefighting, search and rescue, becoming EMT certified and getting my National Outdoor Leadership School Wilderness First Responder certification, I found myself pursuing my paramedic education and then employed as a firefighter-paramedic for the Rapid City Fire Department. It was new and exciting, it was challenging, it was satisfying, it provided camaraderie and a level of security, and it was finally something I could picture myself doing years down the road, if that was what God had in store. I grew in physical fitness and stamina, mastered the art of keeping my head down and doing my job, and pretty swiftly earned a level of respect from my coworkers and officers.

And then everything shifted. Into my adrenaline-laced life of lights and sirens, IVs and EKGs, life and death situations where death was a key feature all too often, 24- and 48-hour sleepless shifts, a life that I was embracing but never really felt like it was embracing me back, into that life came a familiar face and form. A face and form that had caught my eye over the years. A comfortable and comforting presence, brotherly, humorous, companionable.

I think of the first handful of days we spent together. Our first date to the Gaslight Restaurant in Rockerville – I remember telling my mom ahead of time that I honestly wasn’t very excited. I’d been disappointed enough times before. But something here was different. He picked me up at my cabin, the old-fashioned way. When our meal was served, he took my hand and said a simple prayer. He treated me like a queen. And we sat in his truck in the driveway in front of my house and talked. For two more hours. This was different.

We picked chokecherries together at his place, a few days later, and he grilled hamburgers. The best burger I’d ever had. And we talked. For hours. He hugged me before I left. And I didn’t want to let go.

We cemented a leaky stock tank a few days after that. “Boy, I bet you’re impressed,” his dad quipped, when he brought out the bags of cement. “I volunteered,” I quipped back.

That familiar face and form brought peace and certainty, and within 11 days – 11 days – I knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that I would be this cowboy’s wife.

His sweat-stained cowboy hat, snap-front western shirt, and dust-covered boots; his lanky figure and his easy, swinging gait; his wide, straight smile flashing bright in his brown, sun-leathered face; large, gentle hands that just about swallowed mine; and behind his thick glasses a pair of eyes almost too handsome that just about disappeared when he laughed. Everything shifted. I felt like I was home.

For two introverted, self-sufficient, independent individuals in their 30s to suddenly be confronted with “their person” and no shadow of doubt was nothing short of a work of God. He had planned this, and He was bringing it about. We realized and verbalized often that “we are better together.” And we both knew. Beyond the shadow of a doubt.

We got married 10 months later on a beautiful June afternoon under a blue sky with just a bit of rain, after 4 months of dating and 6 months of engagement, and we are now looking back on 3 years. Three blessed years. Three tough years. Three incredibly good years. Three growing years. Three years of becoming more and more the people that God wants us to be in the life in which He has placed us. I’m not the person I was 3 years ago, thank God, and neither is he. Isn’t that amazing? It isn’t all roses and sunshine. But it has been so incredibly good.

Years of loneliness put into perspective the petty and selfish desires that are the root of so much marital conflict. Painful relationships highlighted the sweetness of what God had given us. We had been given a partner for life, and as quickly as 10 months of dating and engagement went, or the first year or two of marriage, there was a mutual feeling of “always.” Like we’d always been together. Like we’d always been married.

I left a life of Nomex and tactical boots and embraced a life of blue jeans and muck boots. I left a life of constant adrenaline and trauma for the steady, peaceful volatility that is life on a ranch. I found my person. And everything suddenly made sense.

Memories from childhood, simple longings in a little girl’s heart, an unexplainable affection for the Black Hills, strange homesickness driving past places I didn’t even know and had no idea would become my home as a married woman: everything made sense.

God has given me such a gift in my husband. He is a flawed man with a perfect Savior, who loves his Savior and loves me. He is my provider and protector, my support and best friend. He is home.

Early in our marriage, I remember Brad laughing as I trotted out of the house wearing a short little nightgown and sandals with a calf bottle in hand to feed the calf waiting at the gate below the yard. “You belong here,” he said when I got back in.

And what a life he has invited me into with him. What wholesomeness and wholeness. What a life he has given me. I am more myself now than I was 3 years ago, or 5 years ago, or 10 years ago. What a life God has allowed us to build together. What sweetness when you find a love that feels like home.

It took awhile. And it was entirely, wonderfully worth it.

“God bless the broken road, that led me straight to you.”

Happy anniversary, my love.

Ranch Wife Musings | The Need to be Needed

Posted on by under Agriculture and Ranching, Photography

Originally published in the Custer County Chronicle on May 21, 2025

The month of May goes by in a whirlwind of fun and hard work, and there is much rejoicing when the last cow calves and the last calf is branded. The nonstop chaos of calving and branding is followed by the shortest of lulls, before the summer settles into its routine. A thousand prayers for rain have been followed up by a thousand thanks, as we’ve emptied the rain gauge not of tenths or hundredths of an inch, but inches. Whole inches. Inches of slow rain that was actually able to soak into the ground where it will do the most good. We aren’t likely to get a hay crop this year, or not much of one, but we should be able to grow grass, and that is huge.

One season blends and blurs into the next, but it is this spring season that is the highlight for many. After months of winter solitude, branding season feels like a family reunion but without the drama, with all the hugs and handshakes, laughter and jokes, stories and community gossip, finding out all the goings on and the comings up, the graduations and babies and engagements and lives well-lived.

And it is in the chaos of spring work that the ranching community shines as exactly that – a community. We branded our main herd on Saturday, an endeavor that is humbling in its scope, humbling in how many people it takes to actually get the job done, humbling to see how many are willing to help in any way they can. Brandings are like that.

As I handed out hot coffee at our mid-morning break, I was able to study the faces, some smiling, some serious, and all the different walks of life they represent. There are the cowboy ranchers, the true-blue, western-through-and-through, how-my-grandpa-did-it type. There are the dirt bikes and four-wheelers, we-can-do-this-faster type. There are the button-front shirt and cowboy-hat-wearing crowd, and the sweatshirt and ballcap wearing crowd. There are the ones with spurs jingling on costly boots, and those wearing comfortable and well-worn tennis shoes. There are the tobacco chewing ones and the straighter-than-straight-laced ones. There are the beer drinkers and the tea totallers. The coffee drinkers and the water drinkers. There are the ones who know cows as well as they know their kids, and ones who know horses and ropes but cows, not so much. There are those who grew up doing this, and those who learned along the way, and those who simply show up for the work, for the fun and the challenge and the sense of community.

And with all the differences, all the variety, the work is seamless. The fellowship is sweet. And none of those categories matter to anyone. It doesn’t matter if you’re wrestling or roping, branding or cutting, vaccinating or watching the gate, everyone jumps in to get the work done. Although some who come do get help in return with their brandings or cow work, the only repayment many want is a good meal at the end – and we do a good meal, if I do say so myself – and the satisfaction of a job well done, stories swapped, laughs shared, and for them that is plenty. And they’d do it again in a heartbeat.

What is it about agriculture, ranching in particular, that invites this? Or creates this? What is it about ranch work that brings out the best in so many, and fosters an enthusiasm for someone else’s work? When I look at other sectors of society, I’m puzzled and even disenchanted. Even sectors of society where lip service is paid to the importance of community are lacking significantly in this department. I see organizations struggling to recruit involvement from more than the barest percentage of people, and their lack of community reflects this.

I think one factor, maybe the most important factor, is need. Genuine need. Acknowledged need. Ranching families know that they can’t do it alone. They don’t have the luxury to hand-pick those who agree with them or look just like them or never irritate or annoy. They need this neighbor and that neighbor, even the neighbor who might think differently about this issue or that issue, or the neighbor who does things differently, or the neighbor who occasionally pushes some buttons and grates on some nerves. And that neighbor needs them right back.

Could it be that we need to be needed? And we need to need others? It might be that simple.

Our culture tells us, all of us, that we’re good on our own, autonomy is the ultimate state, blaze your own trail, follow your own heart, chase your dreams with no thought to anyone else, and you don’t need anyone but yourself. And too many people have bought into this in one way or another. Connections become optional. Connections become a matter of convenience or personal preference.

Real, genuine need erases so many of those devastating societal luxuries, where connections are based on pet interests and shared hobbies, curating one’s community like a museum curator curating art. When we handpick our community, we tend to reap surface-level connections, clique-like interactions based on emotions and how well we slept and what we ate for breakfast.

But, when community is picked for you, by proximity and history and shared needs, something much deeper forms and something much more lasting is reaped, something that extends beyond brandings and cow work, something that forms the family-like structure of a resilient community.

We need to be needed. And we need to need others.