This weekend, we spent the morning chasing baby bantams chicks at the homestead of our close family friends. Their home, in fact, was the first place that welcomed me into the Driftless. A place so dear to my heart built over time, infused with their magic, love and creative spirit. They, when young like us, originally lived on this piece of land in a trailer and over the years have build the most magical and loving place. Their story served as sort of blueprint + inspiration for our own dreams for our land.

On my first trip to the Driftless, AJ and I were still living in California, in grad school at the time, he had wanted me to experience my first snowy “white Christmas”. We flew into the big city of Milwaukee and then over the next day drove the meandering two lane highways in a snowstorm to this little homestead in the valley where we cozied on in.

We stayed here with our good friend’s parents. Our friend was still living on the west coast at the time, but her parents welcomed us into their home with open arms. After arriving we woke up to the valley covered in snow and a slow, intentional, morning spent by the wood fire. She was baking bread and collecting eggs from her hens. We shared conversations about mindfulness over breakfast and coffee, time was lost to us. I admired her plants in the windowsill while snow fell outdoors. A little babbling creek flowing alongside the house.

AJ looked into my eyes and he was beaming. This was the place, this was the lifestyle, a deep and raw connection that made him come alive. He felt at home. And these two humans accepting their flaws, imperfectly living out a slow and mindful life were a beacon of light.

We returned home to our fast paced grad school grind and realized that what we had witness was our desire for our lives together too. We could choose a different path.

Over the course of the next six months we prepared to get married and to make a move across the country. Step by step towards a kind of life that was not modeled for us growing up, but was one we each deeply craved for ourselves.

I’m so grateful for the four days we stayed with them and the portal it provided into a different way of living. When we visit their home, as we do from time to time, i’m reminded of the college students who were happy together but unhappy with their status quo.

We moved our family here to the Driftless to slow down, to connect more deeply with the earth and each other and to build the life we needed. I realized on our slow Saturday morning, that sometimes we fail at the core values of what drew us here. Each time I’m brought back to this memory, its an opportunity to realign, to pull our days closer and closer to the core. We don’t always spend time unplugged from our phones, connecting to each other, especially in pandemic life, it’s hard to not always be doing, and going, and working without childcare + without a village. How do we come home in our day to day life?

It’s a question I wrestle with in this line of work that has unfolded for me. How do I share my life, my words, my creative expression, here on the blog and on Instagram with balance? I’m immensely grateful for the opportunities I’ve been given and the work I get to do, it fills me with such joy, purpose, and it’s how I contribute to the possibility of making our dream a reality, but I can forget how to just be.

How can I infuse our days with intentionality instead of being pulled by whatever is coming next? We wanted to get off the rollercoaster but sometimes if feels like we jumped back on for a ride….How do we uphold the values that spoke to us those snowy mornings?

As we are diving into the planning stages of building out at our land, I’m working to center this idea of slow living, slow dreams, and intentionality. It is easy to want something to manifest itself overnight, but what comes of surrendering to the process and letting things unfold naturally and in their own time? My taurus nature embraces this idea that good things take time, but all the Aries energy in my chart can feel like a sense of urgency looms.

How can we find home in each present moment, allowing the here and now to be enough, without running forward to what is next?