Where's Anne Been? The Worst and Best Season of my life...

If you’re a regular visitor here, you may have noticed the blog posts have been more than a little sparse as of late. This has been both the best and worst year of my life, and while I do have a video about this (click below to watch), if you’re more of a reader, or are just curious about the many things not covered in that video, read on for more of the story.

In an effort to be the kind of person who practices what they preach, 2 years ago, I took a few really big steps back from a lot of the things I was doing with my business and social media in general in an effort to reframe and refocus how I was spending my time so it would better reflect my goal to be more fully present for and focused on the few things that truly matter to me: my marriage, my family and our local community.

family and local community

My Marraige

2 years ago, Adam made the decision to leave his corporate career. It’s always been my dream to do life alongside my favorite people, to mix life and calling and to spend our time working toward a common goal: doing fulfilling, meaningful work that (hopefully) leaves this world at least a little better than we found it.

A family business has huge potential to create total chaos and tension, especially if financial strife enters the mix at any point, but it also has potential to teach spouses to lean into one another’s strengths, to lean on one another and work as a team, and to provide a lot more flexibility with regard to shifting things around to better accommodate some of the hurdles that come with farming, raising kids, and living in community with others.

It has been a huge adjustment for both of us and has definitely highlighted a lot of opportunities for growth, both as people and in our marriage, but when we are actually able to work well together, it’s also really highlighted what a fantastic team we truly can be. When things have been good, they’ve been really great, and the analytics for every aspect of the business we’ve chosen to continue to pursue together all reflect that to be true: we’ve seen massive audience growth on our Youtube channel, we’ve gotten to work with some real dream clients both publicly and privately, and I’m currently in the middle of a “world tour” of sorts, traveling the country, teaching, and offering several keynote addresses to folks I never dreamed I’d be standing in front of.

Kids, and Miscarriage

And in February, after 12 years of struggling to grow our family, we found out we were pregnant. This little miracle baby brought us together, built beautiful bridges with family, and helped us both shift our identity towards being the parents we’ve both spent so, so long hoping to become. We’d named her, we loved her, and then after celebrating for months within our close community, the week we were going to share the good news about our baby girl with the rest of the whole world… we lost the pregnancy, and the fallout from severe morning sickness throughout the pregnancy and the recovery after the miscarriage has taken a real toll on both of us. We’re working to find a way forward and have found many bright spots in the grieving process, but some things just plain suck, no matter how you look at them, and this was one of those things.

My mom

A few of you may know my mom has been ill for some time. It’s been 5 years since she was given “6 weeks to live.” As if the “bonus” time we’ve gotten with her hasn’t been gift enough, the monumental shift in perspective that accompanied facing the death of my best friend and biggest cheerleader has also changed the way I’ve looked at every interaction with every important person in my life since the first conversation with her I truly believed at the time would be the last. My mom is my hero, who I am today is a dim reflection of the person she is, and I attribute 100% of the things I’ve ultimately been able to learn and accomplish to the way she’s advocated for, encouraged, and championed me throughout my life.

Mom and I with a miracle baby goat: Mom has been the farm’s biggest supporter and champion since the beginning. She’d always wanted to live on a farm, but because she and my dad have been involved in missions work which has involved regular world travel for 45 years, we never even had a family pet, for fear that extended stays abroad would make us poor stewards of any animal we might otherwise have taken on.

And though so many things about the pandemic sucked so much for so many of us, one unintended side-effect of the global shutdown is that it happened smack dab in the middle of a visit from my mom, which ultimately resulted in her living with us for the better part of the two years we were all so massively impacted by the pandemic. Living with family/inlaws can always be tricky, and Adam definitely gained a few more points toward his ultimate sainthood in the process of doing so, but that perspective shift gave us both so much of what we needed to make that time together truly memorable in the best ways. As it happened, we also realized that mom spending extended periods of time on the farm in TN also massively positively impacted her health, and though medical science wasn’t able to accomplish this after 2 years of treatments, we learned just how big an impact on health and longevity good food, grown right, sunshine, regular exercise, and a sense of meaning, purpose and fulfillment can truly have: mom regressed from being in stage 4 kidney disease (total failure) to stage 2, and claims she has never felt better than she does today.

Local Community, Tyler, and our Dairy business

When we moved to TN, knowing Adam wasn’t likely ever going to love donning a pair of overalls and a hayfork as much as I do, I was intentional about finding a partner to farm with. It came in the form of our neighbor Tyler who was running a small raw milk herdshare from her farm to augment her husband’s vegetable CSA/restaurant program. Tyler and I linked up and have been working together 4.5 years now to become better grass farmers and animal stewards with the side effect of high quality, dairy and beef that’s been not just sustainably, but regeneratively raised. Cows have turned out to be, by far, my favorite farming endeavor, and despite some truly devastating setbacks along the way (last year we had a disease outbreak in our herd that forced us to basically start completely over), the one dairy cow I bought in February of 2020 to add to Tyler’s herd has somehow since turned into 18 beautiful bovines trotting about our pastures.