"I feel that one day’s best is another day’s worst, and that’s ok." Yes, it is okay. Let us normalize this. 🩵 Breaking and building up. A continual restrengthening. Thank you for being here and sharing.
Such a wonderful post filled with lived out wisdom. Thank you for sharing it Alex. "I fled and chose at the same time. That’s not a contradiction. That’s just what choosing looks like when you’re honest about all of what’s moving you" That, mindset, the Geographic Cure: How when we struggle and then choose to move to a new location thinking our problems won't come with us. It's such an interesting idea that must in some ways be drawn into our DNA. Some form of a survival mechanism switched on in times of stress. Like some strange form of epigenetics tied to wanting to live a life less stressed out.
I really feel that instinct you named, like something in our DNA that says go. I wonder if that’s the body’s way of asking for space to metabolize what the mind can’t yet process. What do you think... is movement sometimes the only way we know how to listen?
Great question Alexander. I have found one of the hardest ways to listen to myself is when I get stressed and all the various ways I go about trying to do something about it. I begin to move in too many ways instead of chilling out and just breathing. I have to listen to the way I'm eating as I tend to use food as a coping mechanism. I have to train my mind to say hey it's okay - slow down - put that fork down and go for a walk around the block. After you are back from the walk, if you are still hungry you can have a little more. Not the rest of the plate.
“The city had taught me to consume. The countryside taught me to make do.” I remember being offended once when Genevieve Spackman asked me if I was from Idaho. Even though I grew up in the rural area of Lake Tahoe, I thought her question demeaning. Silly me!
It wasn’t until being on a motorcycle ride with my husband through the back parts of Idaho when my daughter asked him what Idaho is known for. In his wisdom, he replied “Idaho is a producing state, not a consuming state.“ That made all the difference in the world to me! I understand what it means to produce rather than consume.
I am, and forever will be, a country girl. I’m proud of it. I now value drives through Idaho and other rural areas; I identify more with the people, their values, and their lifestyles.
Thanks for writing from your gut Alex. You have my respect!
Haha, yes, I doubt Gen meant it in a demeaning way! But I can see what you mean. So often people do think and act in demeaning ways toward rural areas. If they only knew! I think there is a mutual misunderstanding from both rural and urban people!
I "fled" in my divorce. I left the city, not for the country, but for the road. I left groundedness in a home for freedom of travel. And eventually, I ended up back in the city. And, it was the both/and of those travel days...the grieving what I left behind, the running away from the pain...AND the moving forward into new directions, the running toward something new...it was years before I stopped feeling the pain of the scar on a daily basis. And now, I can barely remember what it felt like even when I rub the weathered skin of the emotional scars.
I think the both/and of running from and running toward, of feeling (even wallowing) in the grief at the same moment as dreaming and stepping into the future is the full aliveness of it all.
could aliveness be both the liminal space AND the crossover space? well duh, of course it is.
Teri, this is so rich. You put words to the exact tension I’ve been feeling, that both fleeing and choosing can be acts of truth at once. I love how you describe the road as its own kind of teacher, how movement held your grief and your dreaming in the same space. That image of the scar really got me too. There’s something so honest about admitting that healing doesn’t erase the mark, it just changes how we carry it.
I think you’re right about aliveness being both the liminal space and the crossover. Maybe the line between them is thinner than we imagine... maybe it’s all one long threshold that keeps moving with us. I think I said this once... we just live in liminality all the time. Haha!
This is beautiful, Alex. (But of course it would be.) First, the cedar garden beds--may I admit I am a wee bit jealous? Love them. The real comment starts here, though: I agree that living in a rural setting offers a much simpler life, room to breathe. I miss it more than I ever write about. The thing is, I was raised a city gal and never knew differently until my husband and I ended up in a small town (seriously like Mayberry) and started our life as newlyweds there.
It was at this country home where I brought home Felicity, then Sarah, and where I learned about homesteading. We had a vibrant vegetable garden, planted two Bartlett pear trees, pruned the existing grapevine, harvested herbs galore (mostly spearmint, which I made for tea). I had a clothes line for drying sheets in the spring breeze. It really was idyllic in so many ways, even though we lived on Main Street.
With one blinking stoplight, Felicity and I often strolled to the post office to pick up our mail (there was no mail delivery to homes), where Bruce and Greg, the postal workers, knew each of us by name and would chat about life (Bruce was a runner, Greg often showed us photos of his granddaughter named Arielle, named after the Little Mermaid).
Anyway, I miss it. We moved back to the city of my childhood because of my husband's job, but also to be closer to the majority of Sarah's doctors and specialists. And she has such an excellent team, really, but my heart misses the slower pace of rural living. I hate being in the thick of constant noise and "no chickens allowed" (because we were going to start a chicken coop) and impatient people everywhere.
So this is good you are nourishing yourself in more ways than one. So so good.
Jeannie, I felt every part of this: the post office, the spearmint tea, the single stoplight, the rhythm of a life where people actually knew your name. There’s a tenderness in what you described that feels almost endangered now.
I know what you mean about missing that pace, that room to breathe. Rural life seems to offer a kind of intimacy with the ordinary, where time slows down just enough for small moments to take root. It’s not that life is easier there, but the hardness has texture. You can see it, hold it, work with it. In cities, so much of that gets flattened into noise.
What really struck me was your line about nourishing yourself in more ways than one. That feels like the heart of it. The place isn’t just landscape, it’s relationship with the earth, with memory, with how we show up to the day. I think once you’ve known that kind of rhythm, it stays in your bones. Maybe you carry the countryside with you even now, in how you notice things, or how you love the people around you.
Alex, I'm saving your comment, because it's so layered, and the language you use (“an endangered tenderness,” for one) really struck me as deep inner truth. I also hadn't thought about how maybe my 8 years of rural living really did make a lasting impression in my life, in the way I notice things and prefer to pause throughout my day.
You're right, too, that neither urban nor city life is easy, but that the hardness of constant crushing noise in metropolitan areas really overpowers most else. I often wonder, too, if numbing or tuning out in city life is really just a survival or coping skill. I mean, it's too much simulation, all the time.
I've lived the reverse, grew up on a farm and have lived in the suburbs ever since. I'm sure that's part of what feeds my desire to hike regularly, the need for stillness and peace and quiet and birdsong. I regularly tell friends to slow down and just be. Thank you, Alex, wonderfully reflective writing as always. ✨
It’s interesting how the suburbs can be both noisy and numb at once. Maybe your hikes are your way of keeping aliveness close, of remembering that stillness isn’t a place so much as a way of paying attention.
"I was rooted down in a place I’d never fully chosen, bound by the life I’d built there." How powerful. "I was crying while building. Grieving while planting. Hurting while choosing." This is such an important post, Alexander. There is so much more wisdom here than these two powerful lines, but I believe they tease the depth of the message. It is not the world we are here to learn from, its our relationship to it and experience in it, from which we can learn so much if we dare to live that much. Thank you for daring to live that much and sharing it with us.
You named something beautiful there, that learning comes from how we experience life, not just what happens in it. It makes me wonder what the world might feel like if more of us practiced being in relationship with it instead of trying to control it.
This is a wonderfully, insightful piece of writing. Actually all of your writing is wonderful. I am glad that your physical location now matches more of what you've wanted out of life. This is so important.
I totally get your point: "I wasn’t waiting to be healed before I started living." Yes, all the self-help books -- or a lot of them, anyway -- tell us to grieve first, then heal, then live, but that's not really how it works. When I got divorced, I grieved a lot, but at the same time, I forced myself to have a social life with my friends. I kept busy, thankfully. I wasn't running away from the pain, which I felt a lot of and frequently. But I went on with life.
And that's what you are doing, too. You are a survivor. And an insightful one at that. Being a survivor doesn't mean you don't suffer . It just means that you endure what life has handed you.
Thank you for this, Beth. I sometimes joke that if we waited to be fully “healed” before living, we’d all be sitting in a waiting room forever. Maybe the trick is to start living right there, with the clipboard still in our hands. I'm glad you forced yourself, even though it was hard! It really does work to keep us moving forward. 🩵
For the most part, our culture prefers that we fit preconceived molds for healing. Trauma interrupts our lives, yes, but nonetheless, we need to hurry up, heal, and move on - preferably as new and improved versions of our former selves. If it appears we've moved on, it's perceived by many that we're doing a better job of handling things. Life is rarely that neat and tidy.
It's why these words really hit home for me:
"The cultural script says: heal first, then live. Get through the grief. Process the trauma. Do the work. And then, once properly put back together, you can start your new life." Ahh, that elusive "new normal" thing.
I move forward, rather than on, and yes, I take my baggage with me. Moving forward with my "stuff" feels far more doable. I continue to process and grieve while living and building. Life is a continuum, after all. Boths and Ands. That's who we are.
I'm happy you found contentment living in the countryside - that you fled and chose at the same time.
Thank you, Alex, for another wonderful piece that deeply resonates.
Nancy, this really moved me. That line — “I move forward, rather than on” — says so much about how healing actually feels. Less like arrival, more like carrying what’s true with us. I think that’s one of the hardest and most human parts of it, learning to live without needing to tidy the pain away first. What you wrote feels like an honest kind of wholeness, the kind that leaves room for both grief and growth at once. I’m grateful you shared this reflection. 🩵
Thank you for saying that. It feels good to know the tone of this shift comes through. There’s a kind of recalibration happening in me too, one that has less to do with achievement and more to do with noticing.
That line, “Right plant in right place,” is sticking with me. It’s such a simple truth with so many layers. Maybe that’s what we’re all trying to figure out... where we can actually bloom instead of just survive.
I live in the suburbs for 7 years. I’ve lived in the city for 65 years. I’m still not sure where I belong. Thank you sharing so deeply of yourself. Your writing is mesmerizing to me.
Thank you for saying that. It means a lot. I feel that uncertainty too, even after moving. Maybe belonging is less about finding the place and more about noticing where our body finally unclenches a little.
Alex, so many layers and beautiful takeaways in this piece. It resonated in a way that seemed as if you were peering inside of my brain. Thank you for sharing, for eloquently sharing your story, for being here. I like the softening, the being, the aliveness while healing. A new perspective. I’m here for it.
Thank you for reading so closely. That “being” you mentioned has been hard-won. I spent years trying to fix myself, and now I’m learning what it means to just let life touch me without bracing for it.
Dr Lovell, I have felt this kind of breaking and building back up so many times in my lifetime.
I feel that one day’s best is another day’s worst, and that’s ok.
Thank you for being such a sage and erudite voice for us all.
Kindest regards and respect
Carol Power
Johannesburg
South Africa
"I feel that one day’s best is another day’s worst, and that’s ok." Yes, it is okay. Let us normalize this. 🩵 Breaking and building up. A continual restrengthening. Thank you for being here and sharing.
I've fled and I've chosen, but never both together.
I live in the countryside on a third acre lot. I have finally managed to make my garden work this summer and have given away tomatoes. I have arrived!
I am so glad you have made your third-acre lot work! It can (and will) work! It just takes work 🩵
Yes! Our soil is predominantly windswept, decomposing pine needles mixed with sand and rocks, so our compost bins are doing a lot of the work.
And you have shown the world what birds, calm and the lake sound like if I'm not mistaken :)
Yes, it's lovely here in the early morning. This time of year when the sun is not rising at 0500 is wonderful in New Hampshire.
Such a wonderful post filled with lived out wisdom. Thank you for sharing it Alex. "I fled and chose at the same time. That’s not a contradiction. That’s just what choosing looks like when you’re honest about all of what’s moving you" That, mindset, the Geographic Cure: How when we struggle and then choose to move to a new location thinking our problems won't come with us. It's such an interesting idea that must in some ways be drawn into our DNA. Some form of a survival mechanism switched on in times of stress. Like some strange form of epigenetics tied to wanting to live a life less stressed out.
I really feel that instinct you named, like something in our DNA that says go. I wonder if that’s the body’s way of asking for space to metabolize what the mind can’t yet process. What do you think... is movement sometimes the only way we know how to listen?
Great question Alexander. I have found one of the hardest ways to listen to myself is when I get stressed and all the various ways I go about trying to do something about it. I begin to move in too many ways instead of chilling out and just breathing. I have to listen to the way I'm eating as I tend to use food as a coping mechanism. I have to train my mind to say hey it's okay - slow down - put that fork down and go for a walk around the block. After you are back from the walk, if you are still hungry you can have a little more. Not the rest of the plate.
“The city had taught me to consume. The countryside taught me to make do.” I remember being offended once when Genevieve Spackman asked me if I was from Idaho. Even though I grew up in the rural area of Lake Tahoe, I thought her question demeaning. Silly me!
It wasn’t until being on a motorcycle ride with my husband through the back parts of Idaho when my daughter asked him what Idaho is known for. In his wisdom, he replied “Idaho is a producing state, not a consuming state.“ That made all the difference in the world to me! I understand what it means to produce rather than consume.
I am, and forever will be, a country girl. I’m proud of it. I now value drives through Idaho and other rural areas; I identify more with the people, their values, and their lifestyles.
Thanks for writing from your gut Alex. You have my respect!
Haha, yes, I doubt Gen meant it in a demeaning way! But I can see what you mean. So often people do think and act in demeaning ways toward rural areas. If they only knew! I think there is a mutual misunderstanding from both rural and urban people!
I "fled" in my divorce. I left the city, not for the country, but for the road. I left groundedness in a home for freedom of travel. And eventually, I ended up back in the city. And, it was the both/and of those travel days...the grieving what I left behind, the running away from the pain...AND the moving forward into new directions, the running toward something new...it was years before I stopped feeling the pain of the scar on a daily basis. And now, I can barely remember what it felt like even when I rub the weathered skin of the emotional scars.
I think the both/and of running from and running toward, of feeling (even wallowing) in the grief at the same moment as dreaming and stepping into the future is the full aliveness of it all.
could aliveness be both the liminal space AND the crossover space? well duh, of course it is.
Teri, this is so rich. You put words to the exact tension I’ve been feeling, that both fleeing and choosing can be acts of truth at once. I love how you describe the road as its own kind of teacher, how movement held your grief and your dreaming in the same space. That image of the scar really got me too. There’s something so honest about admitting that healing doesn’t erase the mark, it just changes how we carry it.
I think you’re right about aliveness being both the liminal space and the crossover. Maybe the line between them is thinner than we imagine... maybe it’s all one long threshold that keeps moving with us. I think I said this once... we just live in liminality all the time. Haha!
This is beautiful, Alex. (But of course it would be.) First, the cedar garden beds--may I admit I am a wee bit jealous? Love them. The real comment starts here, though: I agree that living in a rural setting offers a much simpler life, room to breathe. I miss it more than I ever write about. The thing is, I was raised a city gal and never knew differently until my husband and I ended up in a small town (seriously like Mayberry) and started our life as newlyweds there.
It was at this country home where I brought home Felicity, then Sarah, and where I learned about homesteading. We had a vibrant vegetable garden, planted two Bartlett pear trees, pruned the existing grapevine, harvested herbs galore (mostly spearmint, which I made for tea). I had a clothes line for drying sheets in the spring breeze. It really was idyllic in so many ways, even though we lived on Main Street.
With one blinking stoplight, Felicity and I often strolled to the post office to pick up our mail (there was no mail delivery to homes), where Bruce and Greg, the postal workers, knew each of us by name and would chat about life (Bruce was a runner, Greg often showed us photos of his granddaughter named Arielle, named after the Little Mermaid).
Anyway, I miss it. We moved back to the city of my childhood because of my husband's job, but also to be closer to the majority of Sarah's doctors and specialists. And she has such an excellent team, really, but my heart misses the slower pace of rural living. I hate being in the thick of constant noise and "no chickens allowed" (because we were going to start a chicken coop) and impatient people everywhere.
So this is good you are nourishing yourself in more ways than one. So so good.
Jeannie, I felt every part of this: the post office, the spearmint tea, the single stoplight, the rhythm of a life where people actually knew your name. There’s a tenderness in what you described that feels almost endangered now.
I know what you mean about missing that pace, that room to breathe. Rural life seems to offer a kind of intimacy with the ordinary, where time slows down just enough for small moments to take root. It’s not that life is easier there, but the hardness has texture. You can see it, hold it, work with it. In cities, so much of that gets flattened into noise.
What really struck me was your line about nourishing yourself in more ways than one. That feels like the heart of it. The place isn’t just landscape, it’s relationship with the earth, with memory, with how we show up to the day. I think once you’ve known that kind of rhythm, it stays in your bones. Maybe you carry the countryside with you even now, in how you notice things, or how you love the people around you.
Thank you for sharing this. 🩵
Alex, I'm saving your comment, because it's so layered, and the language you use (“an endangered tenderness,” for one) really struck me as deep inner truth. I also hadn't thought about how maybe my 8 years of rural living really did make a lasting impression in my life, in the way I notice things and prefer to pause throughout my day.
You're right, too, that neither urban nor city life is easy, but that the hardness of constant crushing noise in metropolitan areas really overpowers most else. I often wonder, too, if numbing or tuning out in city life is really just a survival or coping skill. I mean, it's too much simulation, all the time.
Really great discussion here!
I've lived the reverse, grew up on a farm and have lived in the suburbs ever since. I'm sure that's part of what feeds my desire to hike regularly, the need for stillness and peace and quiet and birdsong. I regularly tell friends to slow down and just be. Thank you, Alex, wonderfully reflective writing as always. ✨
It’s interesting how the suburbs can be both noisy and numb at once. Maybe your hikes are your way of keeping aliveness close, of remembering that stillness isn’t a place so much as a way of paying attention.
"I was rooted down in a place I’d never fully chosen, bound by the life I’d built there." How powerful. "I was crying while building. Grieving while planting. Hurting while choosing." This is such an important post, Alexander. There is so much more wisdom here than these two powerful lines, but I believe they tease the depth of the message. It is not the world we are here to learn from, its our relationship to it and experience in it, from which we can learn so much if we dare to live that much. Thank you for daring to live that much and sharing it with us.
You named something beautiful there, that learning comes from how we experience life, not just what happens in it. It makes me wonder what the world might feel like if more of us practiced being in relationship with it instead of trying to control it.
We can aspire :)
All I will say today is I am very grateful that you are in my we world and life.Please keep shining dear one.♥️💚🌟
Thank you, Nancy. I am grateful YOU are in my world too. Thank YOU for being here, showing up, and sharing too. 🩵
Hi Alex,
This is a wonderfully, insightful piece of writing. Actually all of your writing is wonderful. I am glad that your physical location now matches more of what you've wanted out of life. This is so important.
I totally get your point: "I wasn’t waiting to be healed before I started living." Yes, all the self-help books -- or a lot of them, anyway -- tell us to grieve first, then heal, then live, but that's not really how it works. When I got divorced, I grieved a lot, but at the same time, I forced myself to have a social life with my friends. I kept busy, thankfully. I wasn't running away from the pain, which I felt a lot of and frequently. But I went on with life.
And that's what you are doing, too. You are a survivor. And an insightful one at that. Being a survivor doesn't mean you don't suffer . It just means that you endure what life has handed you.
Thank you, as always, for your candor.
Thank you for this, Beth. I sometimes joke that if we waited to be fully “healed” before living, we’d all be sitting in a waiting room forever. Maybe the trick is to start living right there, with the clipboard still in our hands. I'm glad you forced yourself, even though it was hard! It really does work to keep us moving forward. 🩵
Hi Alex,
For the most part, our culture prefers that we fit preconceived molds for healing. Trauma interrupts our lives, yes, but nonetheless, we need to hurry up, heal, and move on - preferably as new and improved versions of our former selves. If it appears we've moved on, it's perceived by many that we're doing a better job of handling things. Life is rarely that neat and tidy.
It's why these words really hit home for me:
"The cultural script says: heal first, then live. Get through the grief. Process the trauma. Do the work. And then, once properly put back together, you can start your new life." Ahh, that elusive "new normal" thing.
I move forward, rather than on, and yes, I take my baggage with me. Moving forward with my "stuff" feels far more doable. I continue to process and grieve while living and building. Life is a continuum, after all. Boths and Ands. That's who we are.
I'm happy you found contentment living in the countryside - that you fled and chose at the same time.
Thank you, Alex, for another wonderful piece that deeply resonates.
Nancy, this really moved me. That line — “I move forward, rather than on” — says so much about how healing actually feels. Less like arrival, more like carrying what’s true with us. I think that’s one of the hardest and most human parts of it, learning to live without needing to tidy the pain away first. What you wrote feels like an honest kind of wholeness, the kind that leaves room for both grief and growth at once. I’m grateful you shared this reflection. 🩵
Am loving this so much for you.. the quiet of the countryside, the relying on yourself, the more growing less consuming aspect of country living.
It’s a gentler way of being than the city.
It’s for me too.
Thank you for saying that. It feels good to know the tone of this shift comes through. There’s a kind of recalibration happening in me too, one that has less to do with achievement and more to do with noticing.
"Right plant in right place"
teach Master Gardeners for
optimal blooming.
That line, “Right plant in right place,” is sticking with me. It’s such a simple truth with so many layers. Maybe that’s what we’re all trying to figure out... where we can actually bloom instead of just survive.
I live in the suburbs for 7 years. I’ve lived in the city for 65 years. I’m still not sure where I belong. Thank you sharing so deeply of yourself. Your writing is mesmerizing to me.
Thank you for saying that. It means a lot. I feel that uncertainty too, even after moving. Maybe belonging is less about finding the place and more about noticing where our body finally unclenches a little.
Alex, so many layers and beautiful takeaways in this piece. It resonated in a way that seemed as if you were peering inside of my brain. Thank you for sharing, for eloquently sharing your story, for being here. I like the softening, the being, the aliveness while healing. A new perspective. I’m here for it.
Thank you for reading so closely. That “being” you mentioned has been hard-won. I spent years trying to fix myself, and now I’m learning what it means to just let life touch me without bracing for it.
Insightful....helpful...thankyou.
Thank you for reading and taking a moment to say that. I’m really glad it resonated. 🩵