Inspired...

...to reflect on these past few years...

Four years ago, I was living at my mother's house. I had just withdrawn from one nursing school to transfer to another... requiring that I take almost a year off from school to await admission to the nursing program of my choice.  I was very lost.  I didn't know who I wanted to be.  I was dating the wrong man.  I was digging a 3x4 foot herb garden in my mother's front lawn.  I was beginning a nine-month herbalist training course, working two dissatisfying jobs, and searching.

Three years ago, I was living at my mother's house, fitting my whole life into a single room.  I was going to nursing school full time.  I'd been dating my boyfriend for a few months, and kindling secret hope for a future.  I was excited, broke as broke can be, and hoopdancing my heart out on a daily basis. I was so thrilled to be learning again, to be loved, to be moving forward.  I felt like my life had just started.

Two years ago, I had just graduated nursing school and come home from my first time at Burning Man.  I moved in with my boyfriend, and we were fitting both of our lives into an urban basement apartment. I could not find a nursing job for the life of me.  I was terrified that I'd fail my boards.  I was digging a few raised beds in the little backyard amongst our handful of chickens.  I was working as a phlebotomist at a small community hospital, teaching hoop dance classes and taking paid fire gigs, and still barely making ends meet enough to pay my half of the rent.  I was singing and drumming with my neighbor on a regular basis.  I had my one cat, Big Girl, who has been my best friend since my 15th birthday. I was just beginning to learn what it felt to have a place of my own, and envisioning what I wanted my life to look like.

One year ago, I was still living in that urban apartment with my fiance.  I was working night shift on a telemetry and PCU unit in a small community hospital... and I was still excited about that job at that time.  I had just started talking to my fiance about the possibility of buying a home within the year.. could we do it?  Could we afford it?  Where do we start looking?  We were planning a wedding, outgrowing our living space, and desperately lusting after land.  I had three cats, Big Girl, Nano, and Sammy... and they were outgrowing our living space too.  I was reading homesteading blogs and daydreaming about how it would feel to put my hands in the earth on my own slice of heaven.  I knew what I wanted, but I didn't know how to get there.

This autumn, I am a happily married woman.  I work as a nurse in one of the busiest emergency rooms in the northeastern US, I am trauma certified and damn good at what I do.  I harvest freshly cut salad for dinner from our greenhouse.  I carry wood from our barn to feed the fire in our wood stove.  I eat scrambled duck eggs for breakfast, collected from secret grass nests along the shore of our pond.  I wake up next to the best man in the world, in our own house, on our own five acres of beautiful land.  I know what I want from my life.  I know who I want to spend it with.  I know who I am. 

Four years, and I somehow went from lost, alone, and hungry... to being Home.