Personal Growth – Page 3 – Practical Homesteading

The Scariest Button I Click as a Homesteading Mom Blogger

What’s the thing you’re most scared to do? What would it take to get you to do it?

I’ve been writing online for nine months, and you’d think the fear would have faded. But every time I hover over “Publish,” my heart still skips. It’s funny — no matter how many posts I write, that little flash of fear never really goes away.

The Scariest Button I Click

“Publish” on my most vulnerable stories.

I can talk all day about raising kids, growing food, and finding our rhythm in community. I’ve shared about my postpartum struggles and other tender seasons because I want other moms to know they’re not alone. That kind of openness feels easier now—but there are deeper stories I haven’t shared yet. The ones that changed me, stretched me, and still make my stomach knot when I think about putting them out there.

The Drafts That Wait

Some of those stories sit in my drafts folder, half‑finished, holding the hardest moments—the times that tested my faith, my patience, and my sense of self. I know sharing them might help someone else, but I still hesitate. I worry about being misunderstood, about saying too much, about people turning away. But I also know that the most meaningful connections grow when we show up honestly, even when it scares us.

What It Would Take

A clear why: Remembering that if one person feels seen, the fear is worth it.
Gentle accountability: Friends who nudge me to keep showing up.
Boundaries: Knowing which parts of my story I can hold close.
Small practice: One honest sentence at a time, letting courage build slowly.

Growing Braver

The fear never really leaves. But each time I hit “publish,” I feel a little steadier, a little stronger. I see that courage isn’t a single leap—it’s the quiet, everyday choosing to keep growing, even when it’s uncomfortable. Maybe that’s what real community is built on: showing up with our full selves, mess and all, and finding we’re not alone after all.

Feature Photo by yousef samuil on Unsplash

If you’re comfortable, tell me one area where you’re trying to be braver this year.

If this story made you feel a little less alone, share it with a friend who might need it too. Better yet, invite them over for coffee and a real conversation. Subscribe for more reflections on growing food, raising kids, and building community—new posts every Sunday and Thursday.

Seeds of Patience: What Planting Onions with My Child Taught Me About Growth

My six‑year‑old son and I stand together in the soft, golden light of a winter morning. Outside, the world lies quiet under a thin layer of snow. Inside, our kitchen hums with gentle purpose. On an old sour cream container cover, tiny onion seeds rest—black flecks of promise. The soil waits to cradle them in recycled strawberry cartons. My son points to the sunbeam and whispers that the floating dust looks like magic. I smile and agree.

With tweezers in hand, I show him how to lift each seed and drop it into place. He tries once, twice, and then finds his rhythm. We do this a hundred times—two sets of hands planting quiet hope in the soil. The air smells of earth and possibility. Even in midwinter, there’s life brewing under our fingertips.

I am struck by how vulnerable each seed is—relying entirely on us for warmth, water, and light. They hold the potential to feed our family, just as my son holds his own potential, waiting for the right care to help him thrive. I can give him a home, guidance, and love, but not control what takes root or how quickly it grows. All I can do is nurture and trust.

Each morning, we peek into the trays. Nothing happens—until, suddenly, everything does. A thin green shoot bends toward the light, impossibly fragile yet fierce in its will to live. I feel that same thrill watching my son master something new. The patience, the waiting, the joy of discovery—all unfolds in its own time.

Over the weeks, we’ll water carefully, clip the tops, and ready the seedlings for their place in the garden. By summer, they’ll feed us, just as these shared moments feed me in ways I never expected. It feels good to know that something small, started with care, can ripple outward into community.

Gardening keeps teaching me that growth—whether in a seed, a child, or a neighborhood—comes from the same things: attention, patience, and faith in what we cannot yet see. Maybe that’s why tending these small beginnings feels so deeply hopeful.

In my next post, I’ll share exactly how we start our onions indoors each January, in case you’d like to bring a little green magic into your own winter days.

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Why I Read Survivor Stories About Strength and Hope

Daily writing prompt

What books do you want to read?

View all responses

Books shape us as much as we shape gardens or communities. They feed the mind, plant empathy, and remind us that resilience often grows in the darkest places.

When I saw today’s prompt — “What books do you want to read?” — I realized my answer says a lot about what kind of growth I’m craving this year. Reading has always been more than a pastime; it’s how I connect. Story time with my kids is sacred — we laugh, wonder, and sometimes ask big questions together. Once, I even read The Disaster Artist aloud to my husband, and we laughed so hard we cried. That joy lives in my memory like a cherished heirloom.

📚 Reading with the village

Beyond home, I gather monthly at our local library for book club — a lively mix of neighbors and new friends united by stories and snacks. We’ve been deep in historical fiction lately, stepping into lives far from our own. These evenings remind me that community grows naturally when people come together to wonder.

If you’re curious about what we’ve been reading together, I share highlights and reflections on my Book Club Reads page (this page contains affiliate links — I may earn a small commission, at no extra cost to you, if you decide to purchase. Thank you for supporting Practical Homesteading!).

🌿 Why survivor stories call to me

Recently, I’ve found myself drawn to stories of survival — real people facing impossible odds and somehow finding light. Maybe it’s because they show not only how people survive, but why they choose to keep living.

Here are a few titles that top my list right now:

“Man’s Search for Meaning” by Viktor Frankl
A profound reflection on finding purpose even in suffering. Frankl’s insights from Auschwitz remind me that inner strength begins with meaning.

“Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage” by Alfred Lansing
Twenty-eight men trapped on Antarctic ice for more than a year — and every one of them survives. It’s a gripping lesson in leadership, loyalty, and hope against all odds.

“Jungle” by Yossi Ghinsberg
Still on my to-read list, this one explores what happens when you’re alone in the Amazon and survival depends on the mind as much as the body.

🌼 Lessons for everyday resilience

I hope I never face what these survivors endured, yet I read their stories to understand the quiet strength that grows inside us all. I want my children to see that resilience works like a garden — cultivated through patience, weathering storms, and trusting in renewal.

Reading reminds me that every family, every friendship, is its own kind of survival story. We move through hard seasons by leaning on one another and holding faith that winter won’t last forever.

“Endurance isn’t about toughness — it’s about purpose, compassion, and hope taking root in the hardest soil.”

So, as I grow food, raise kids, and build community, I’ll keep reading about people who found light when the world went dark. These stories keep me grounded — and remind me that, like a garden in spring, we can always begin again.

What about you — which story has taught you the most about resilience? Please share your book recommendations in the comments! I love to learn and grow with you!

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The Story Behind My Name: From “Face” to Embracing Faith

Write about your first name: its meaning, significance, etymology, etc.

As the last of six girls, I drew the “leftover” name that ended up rewriting my story.

Faith was not the name my parents had planned—because they hadn’t planned any name at all. The night I was born, my mom kept suggesting options and my dad kept turning them down. Nothing felt quite right. Then my mom suggested Faith, adding almost offhandedly, “Everyone needs a little Faith.” This time, my dad didn’t argue. Just like that, Faith became mine.

For years, I didn’t love that origin story. My name felt too different, too noticeable. On the phone, if I said it too fast, people would ask me to repeat it or guess something else entirely. One child dubbed me “Face” in a moment of childhood brilliance. That pretty much summed up how I felt—misheard, slightly awkward, and more than a little self-conscious about a name that drew attention I didn’t want.

Names have a way of catching up with you, though. As I got older, I started to sit with the meaning of Faith. At its simplest, it means “belief in something greater than yourself.” That “something greater” is different for everyone—God, the universe, a calling, a purpose, or even the quiet conviction that life can be better than it is today. There is a tenderness in that idea, a kind of built-in hope. My name stopped feeling like an odd label and started feeling more like an invitation.

Faith, on its own, doesn’t magically fix anything. Belief without action can easily turn into wishful thinking. But when you pair faith with hard work, grit, and determination, it becomes a powerful force. It keeps you moving when the path is unclear. It nudges you to try again after a setback. It whispers that the effort is still worth it, even when the outcome isn’t guaranteed .

Now, when I introduce myself, I do it with a little more warmth toward that younger version of me who cringed at her own name. I carry a word that reminds me daily to look beyond what I can see, to trust that there is more possible than what is obvious, and to keep showing up and doing the work anyway.

Everyone may not need me, exactly—but everyone does need a little faith. And somehow, over the years, that has become something I’m proud to embody.

Feature photo by Alex Shute on Unsplash

What’s the story behind your name? Share below—let’s uncover what we carry .

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When Toddler Dishes Taught This Working Mom to Feel Loved

Can you share a positive example of where you’ve felt loved?

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Ever feel like love keeps reaching for you, but some old instinct makes you duck away?

That’s been my story for most of my life, a quiet belief that something was fundamentally wrong with me—something that disqualified me from being truly, deeply loved. When people went out of their way with kindness, whether it was a thoughtful gesture or words meant to affirm me, I found myself almost unable to bear it. I’d deflect with a joke, change the subject, or pull back to what felt like a safer distance, convincing myself I didn’t really need anyone after all. And yet, from that very distance, I’d ache and complain that no one truly cared.

Where the Pattern Began
Looking back, I can trace much of this to childhood on our Wisconsin dairy farm. Farming carried relentless stress—long days in the fields, milking cows, haying season pressures that stretched my parents thin. The farm always came first, and while they poured everything into keeping it alive, we six girls learned to need less, do more, and stay out of the way. We never needed words to feel the pressure, but children read rooms like seismographs, absorbing every sigh, every moment of bone-deep tiredness. I internalized that needing anything made me a burden. So I shrank myself: good student, low-maintenance helper, hyper-independent. Better to be useful than to be needy.

That pattern wove into adulthood. My love language became acts of service—cooking, cleaning, organizing, stepping in quietly. It became both how I loved and my shield. Always doing meant never done for, staying safely in control as the helper, never the helped.

When My Children Started to Change Everything
Motherhood began unraveling this through hundreds of small moments. When my babies nestled against me, their complete trust felt like a start. But deeper change came as they grew, each finding ways to love me back through acts of service—their tiny mirror of what I’d modeled for them.

My two-year-old adores doing the dishes. She drags a chair to the sink, climbs up purposefully, rag in hand, and tackles plastic bowls and spoons. Counters grow wetter, floor becomes a puddle, but her earnest eyes shine with pride. The old me wants to take over. Instead, I hand her another bowl and say softly, “You’re such a good helper. Thank you.”

My six-year-old is mastering the art of folding laundry. When our daughter arrived, survival mode hit hard. For a while it was simply faster to do everything ourselves. Now that we’re coming out of that season, we’re intentionally pulling him into family contributions, even though it takes more effort and patience from us. He folds t-shirts into neat squares, pairs up socks as best he can. Sometimes I open my drawer to discover one of dad’s underwear tucked in with my things. I gently correct him as I place it in dad’s drawer. Now he proudly asks first, “Mom, is this yours or Dad’s?” Him learning to be involved feels worth it for his well-being in the long run.

Then there are the rocks. He loves bringing me stones that he finds: smooth pebbles, bits of quartz, sometimes just muddy treasures he knows I’ll appreciate. As an environmental professional with a geology background, his rocks land right in the center of my heart. He’ll run up, eyes shining, holding out his find: “Mom, I found this special rock just for you!” I take time to study each one with him, turning it over in my hands before placing it in this clear container where his rock collection resides.

The Moment Love Finally Landed
These imperfect acts were their love language, mirroring mine. Rejecting them would mean rejecting their hearts. So I’m practicing receiving: drying toddler plates, keeping laundry stacks as-is, treasuring every rock.

One overwhelmed day, I found my two-year-old at the sink, surrounded by suds and her pile of “clean” bowls. Water dripped from her elbows, face earnest, clearly seeing my exhaustion. No words needed—her effort said, “Mommy’s tired. I’m helping.”

That cracked me open. All my life avoiding burdenhood, here was my toddler seeing me and choosing to lighten my load anyway.

The Homesteading Lesson Love Teaches
Love arrived not as overwhelming force, but through soggy dishes, earnest laundry folds, rocks gathered for Mommy—humble acts from small hands noticing my need. My lived-in home holds these lessons.

My children teach me love shows in ordinary service. When I receive without fixing, I rewrite “burden” as “belonging.” They prove I’m not too much—I’m exactly right for their help, their effort, their love. And teaching my son to contribute builds his confidence for life ahead.

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Why I Chose Homesteading

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I turn 36 this week, and it feels like as good a time as any to tell you who I am.

I am

a wife
a working mother of 2 beautiful children
an environmental professional
a homesteader
a gardener
a reader
an animal caretaker
an aspiring writer (the blog you’re reading is me practicing)
an amateur historian
a perfectionist
a ruminator
a friend
a daughter
a sister

Growing Up on a Wisconsin Dairy Farm
I grew up on a family dairy farm in Southeastern Wisconsin during the 1990s—a tough decade when small operations were disappearing fast.

Our farm had a 60-cow herd through years of economic stress. In 2001, we sold the herd and rented the land to a larger operation. By then, my five older sisters had mostly moved on. My parents took “city jobs”—Ma at the local grocery store, Dad first as a farmhand, then for a local drilling company. They bought beef cattle for me to raise through my teen years.

The Teenage Rebel Who Wanted Out
Before my dad took over from his father, farmers traveled no more than a mile to access all their land. By the time he changed careers 25 years later, some had to drive an hour or more to reach the farthest corners of their acreage. The world I grew up in was already shifting fast beneath my feet.

But as a teenager, I couldn’t have cared less about the cattle I was entrusted with. Farming felt pointless. I was determined to “get out of Dodge County” and go to college in nearby Madison. Books came easily to me, and I wore that like armor. I had a chip on my shoulder—I thought I was smarter than the farm life, better than staying put, that I had everything figured out.

Pride, Pain, and Coming Back to Earth
Pride comes before a fall, as they say. I never had one dramatic crash, but I had low moments that humbled me.

When I was 17, I sustained serious burn injuries on my arms and chest. I received skin grafts on my arms. I spent a long season wrestling with shame and the fact that I was marked by scars. When I finally reached Madison—the dream I’d chased—I felt small next to high achievers who hadn’t come from farms and had flawless skin.

Even after landing a job as an environmental professional, I stood in rooms feeling inadequate beside people who seemed to know so much more. It took years to accept I wasn’t the smartest person in the room—but I still had something valuable to offer.

Love, Long Courtship, and Hotel-Hopping 20s
I started dating my now-husband at 19. We’d known each other longer, but that’s when our story began. He didn’t grow up on a farm but found agriculture fascinating. He thought it was neat that I’d spent my childhood around cows, even as I ran away from that identity.

After a long courtship, we married when I was 27. We loved each other deeply, but finding our rhythm took time. Through trial and error, we landed on shared ground: children, homesteading, and country living.

All along, I’d quietly loved making things from scratch, even if I didn’t call it homesteading. Freshman year of college, I made pizza entirely from scratch (except the cheese). It took three times longer than it should have. I ruined zucchini bread by confusing tablespoons for teaspoons of salt. Junior year, I bought a crockpot (affiliate link) that made my dorm floor jealous of the dinner smells wafting from my room.

Motherhood Opened My Eyes
I graduated grad school at 24 and we moved near Green Bay for my job. For the next six years—my freewheeling late 20s—we traveled heavily—for work and fun—with each other, family, and friends. Hotels became our second home. It was a wonderful season of freedom I hated to see end.

Then I had my son just before turning 30. Motherhood was like someone handing me color television after a lifetime of black-and-white. The challenges were endless—physical, emotional, exhausting. But when he smiled and grabbed my finger with his tiny, chunky hand, everything faded. I wanted to be better for him.

That first year coincided with Covid. No village. Husband working a lot. Our beautiful house on 18 acres of “dream land” suddenly felt hollow. Land doesn’t raise children. Pride in property lines doesn’t fill the gaps. As we talked about baby number two, we made a deliberate choice: we moved back to our hometown near Mayville, Wisconsin.

Choosing This Life Freely
I watched our family navigate those farm changes—not out of obligation, but circumstance. Now I’m choosing this life freely. We’re gardening, raising chickens, baking bread, and raising kids.

The girl who couldn’t wait to escape Dodge County returned on her own terms. At 36, I’m still learning I don’t need to be the smartest person in the room—just someone who shows up, learns, and shares.

This blog is me doing that. Someone standing in the middle of her story. Rooted, growing, still in progress.

Practical Homesteading: growing food, raising kids, building community.

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Why Seahorses Are My Favorite Animal (Not Chickens!)

What is your favorite animal?

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I’m going off script here. You’d expect a homestead star from a homestead girly like me—like the clever pigs rearranging their shelter to face the sun or chickens pecking frogs and toes with equal fervor. I cherish those animals. They shape our daily lessons.

Yet today, I’m choosing the seahorse. I’ve never kept one. It serves no farm purpose. But that’s its magic—it prompts reflection on family roles from an ocean’s distance.

What fascinates me is its gentle role reversal. The female deposits eggs, but the male tucks them into his pouch, nurtures them, and births the young. This challenges “men provide, women nurture.” It models shared responsibility where both partners stay strong, gentle, and committed.

That’s not just ocean poetry—it’s our story since returning to our hometown. My husband and I share caretaking duties seamlessly. He minds the children during my work calls (sometimes after I paced with our baby in this baby carrier (affiliate link). No toy chaos waits behind—hard-won after frank talks that tested us both. He tends evening chicken feeds amid dusty clucks while I plan garden rows, much like seahorses exchanging roles beneath the waves.

Caregiving thrives on that flexibility. It’s the yin-yang balance of roles shifting as needed—under ocean depths where seahorses trade pouches and responsibilities, or right here in the farmyard dust where my husband and I pass the load back and forth. Whether it’s him stepping up with the kids so I can wrap a call, or me tackling garden rows while he handles the coop, this give-and-take nurtures what endures: a family that bends without breaking.

What animal has shaped your view of family? Or what’s your unexpected favorite animal? Share your story below!

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How Teams + Chickens Power My Work-from-Home Mom Life

In what ways do you communicate online?

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Online communication wraps my days like an old quilt—patched from COVID chaos into something warm and steady, threading work demands with homestead heart.

Work: Coworkers Made It Possible
Picture March 2020: lockdown just hit, my 4-month-old screaming through a call with all my coworkers, less than a week into daycare closures. A kind voice chimed in—”Hey, there’s a mute button”—a small grace that eased my overwhelm and turned chaos into control.

I wouldn’t have built this virtual career stride without my amazing coworkers who saw me through. That moment etched Teams mastery into me: nailing the mute through fussy spells while pacing in this baby carrier (affiliate link), leaning on chat pings for quick collaboration, sharing OneDrive links for big files without inbox jams from my stand-up desk (affiliate link), and email for the decisions that stick.

Now both kids know to hush during calls—proof of growth from raw survival to steady rhythm, all thanks to that team support.

Personal: The Good Stuff We Share
You know how Google Calendar just saves us? Color-coded birthdays popping up for relatives, schedule nudges so nothing falls through the cracks. Facebook, though—that’s our family laugh album. Me posting those glorious flat “nailed it” pancakes with a giggle, plus coop fixes glowing in sunset light. Email is for the heartfelt catch-ups that stick with you. It’s all that unpolished joy keeping far-flung friends and family right there with us, cheering the wins through the quiet stretches .

Homestead Recharge
Those personal connections keep me going, but after the workday’s emotional drain—especially tough Teams calls and tough reports—it’s the chickens that truly reset me.

I slip out to the run where hens cluck hello amid dust baths. Their simple rhythm grounds me in why I grind. It’s a feathered reset that clears my head for garden plots ahead. Those quiet moments remind me this online hustle fuels real soil and seeds. It’s where virtual threads meet tangible roots, weaving work grit into family purpose one contented cluck at a time .

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Signed House Contract at Used Car Lot-On Our Honeymoon Trip to Alaska

Think back on your most memorable road trip.

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We signed a house contract at a used car lot—on our honeymoon road trip to Alaska.

My husband and I postponed our honeymoon for a year because we both dreamed of driving from Wisconsin to Alaska. At first, we planned to fly, but then he asked why we didn’t look up the driving logistics. I did, and it came out to about 60 continuous hours on the road.

“That doesn’t seem too bad,” I thought.

So we began planning a three-week road trip for June 2018. We bought a new Subaru Crosstrek, figured out the perfect gear and packing technique, and anxiously counted down the days.

Affiliate Links for Recommended Travel Gear:

Trailer hitch

Rear mounted cargo hold

Cooler

Blackout Shades

The House That Hijacked Our Honeymoon
What we didn’t plan for happened the day before we left. We toured a beautiful house and property that was for sale by owner. We were actively looking, and this one appeared on the market that Monday. The day before departure, we put in an offer. The next morning, already packed and driving down the highway, we got the call: they accepted it. Then came the catch—they insisted we turn around, come back without a realtor, and negotiate the terms in person.

In hindsight, the red flags were glaring. At the time, we were just young and excited. We’d only made it to the next town over, so back we went to sit with them and work out an agreement that we later learned was heavily biased toward the seller.

The Used Car Lot “Realtor”
They had plenty of experience. They’d bought rental properties before, were about thirty years older than us, and had their real estate friend there “just to write up the paperwork.” We met them at his actual business building: a used car sales lot. Meanwhile, we had a suitcase in the backseat, a printed itinerary to Alaska, and a lot of naive trust that people were generally fair. We signed what they put in front of us, then handed the agreement to a lawyer we hired sight unseen because the deal needed to close before we returned from our trip— because this was the trip of a lifetime we’d already postponed once.

We told ourselves it was fine. We didn’t know enough yet to recognize just how stacked against us the whole setup really was.

Alaska via Internet Cafés
From Velva, North Dakota, we hired a real estate lawyer over the phone. From Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, we tracked down a home inspector willing to examine a property we hadn’t even emotionally committed to yet. From a restaurant with spotty Wi-Fi, we opened our email and read the lawyer’s first warning that the terms weren’t great. From Watson Lake, Yukon—somewhere between the Sign Post Forest and actual spruce forests—we began to grasp just how bad the terms really were. And from Anchorage, Alaska, with mountains filling the windows and our honeymoon dreams fading in the background, my husband was completely fed up and trying to convince me to walk away from the whole deal.

I pushed on anyway, stubborn and hopeful as ever. I hunted down internet cafés and libraries in small towns, asking clerks if they had a scanner I could borrow. I hunched over public computers, printing documents, signing them, re-scanning, and emailing everything back to the lawyer and sellers while other travelers casually checked weather reports or email. There’s a particular absurdity to signing legal addendums about well inspections with bear safety posters hanging on the wall behind you.

We felt like we were in a real-life Subaru commercial

Honeymoon Highlights Amid the Chaos
The road trip itself was everything we’d dreamed of and nothing like we imagined. We drove long stretches of highway that seemed to belong to no one, met kind strangers at gas stations, and watched the sky turn light again at 3 am . We ate sandwiches in the car, argued about which way to turn, and pointed out every moose sighting like excited kids. But running underneath all the glaciers and mountain passes was this constant undercurrent of “Did that email go through?” “What did the lawyer say now?” “Are we making a huge mistake?”

The glacier view to end all glacier views

What That House Meant to Us
Looking back, what makes this road trip so memorable isn’t just the honeymoon or the bad real estate decision. It was us—very early in our marriage—learning how each of us handles pressure. He was ready to cut our losses for the sake of peace. I was determined not to walk away from something we’d already invested so much in: time, money, emotion, and the dream of that house and property. We took turns being the calm one and the panicked one. We learned how to argue in a car without a door to slam and how to apologize at the next gas station.

In the end, the house did become ours, but not without real emotional and financial cost.

However, that property saw us bring home our first child, learn how to garden from scratch, fix a house that needed a lot of love, grade our first driveway, and bring home our very first chickens—the true beginning of our homesteading life. Five years later, we sold it. Not because we didn’t love it, but because we needed to move closer to family as we planned for our daughter.

The road from Wisconsin to Alaska became the backdrop for midnight phone calls, scanned signatures, and the slow realization that experience and age really do matter when you’re sitting across from someone at a negotiation table—or their used car lot “realtor.”

If I had it to do over, I’d bring a realtor, a lawyer, and a far more cautious pen. But that trip also forced us to grow up a little faster and see each other clearly, flaws, stubbornness, and all.

When I think of my most memorable road trip, I don’t just picture mountains or long stretches of Canadian highway. I see a young couple in an overstuffed Subaru, chasing one dream all the way to Alaska while fighting not to lose another one back home.

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Wooden Cross Necklace Survived Fire, Lost at Super 8

Describe an item you were incredibly attached to as a youth. What became of it?

What small object survived your worst day—but vanished from a Super 8 nightstand?

Mine was a simple wooden cross necklace—lacquer-coated wood, brass eye screw at the top, black cord. I received it at a Catholic Confirmation retreat my junior year of high school. Surrounded by teens from other schools, I fell inexplicably in love with it. Wore it constantly, except when bathing.

The Fire That Almost Took It
Two weeks after Confirmation—May 28, 2007—I sustained serious burn injuries to my arms and chest. My shirt collar burned away. The black cord was destroyed in the chaos. In the hospital, as I faced blood loss and skin grafts, I assumed the cross was gone forever.

Then my sister found it—miraculously intact in our driveway. She brought it to me while nurses changed dressings. I was at my lowest point physically and emotionally. That wooden cross became proof of rescue when I needed a miracle most.

My Anchor Through a Decade of Motion
I restrung it as soon as healing skin allowed. For the next 10 years, it never left my neck, carrying me through:
• High school graduation
• College finals when I doubted everything
• Early days knowing my now-husband (we got together at 19)
• Hotel stays traveling with him, friends, family
• Road trips, work trips, and my first attempts at bread in the breadmaker

Through hotel check-ins, late-night talks, suitcase unpacking—the cross stayed steady. My talisman during that season of motion, before marriage and kids.

The Super 8 Loss
Then one careless moment at a Super 8 in Fresno, California. Forgot it on the nightstand. Realized at the next hotel. Called back. Nothing.

Ten years of survival—gone. I was devastated.

What I Carry Now
That cross wasn’t jewelry. It carried a decade’s worth of rescue:
• The driveway miracle my sister handed me
• Hospital reassurance when nurses changed dressings
• Steady presence from teenage faith to breadmaker experiments with my future husband

Looking Back: Attachment’s Double Edge
Losing it taught me objects anchor but don’t last. Their power lives in what they witness, not what they are. That cross saw me from scarred teenager to traveling 20-something experimenting with breadmaker loaves. It helped shape the woman who now kneads bread by hand with her kids’ sticky fingers on our homestead.

Its lessons remain. Some fires burn cords but not meaning. Some things leave nightstands but not memory.

What object got you through your 20s transitions—college chaos, early love, pre-kids road trips? Did you keep it? Lose it?

Share below—I want to hear your stories.

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