Sadness and hope can live in the same room….

I’m okay.

I’m saying that a lot lately.

Sometimes I say it to other people. Sometimes to myself.

Of course there is sadness and disorientation and all the feelings I wrote about last week.

But in the midst of it, there are other feelings too. And those feelings are, dare I say, a little trickier to express right now.

Ever since I shared my last two essays, I’ve received so many kind, caring messages from people expressing sadness over my life change.

I so appreciate their care.

I know why people say “I’m so sorry.” I’ve said it to others in the past. It’s hard to know what else to say when someone’s life has cracked open in a way you can’t fully understand from the outside.

Sometimes in public, I sense people looking at me with pity. And when they talk to me, I hear the same words over and over:

Sad. Sorry. Sad. Sorry. Sad.

And while I know the intentions are good, sometimes those conversations leave me feeling heavier than I did before.

Because of course there is sadness. But it’s not only sad.

There is also hope.

And relief.

And little flickers of joy that show up in the middle of the hard. Sometimes within the same day. Sometimes within the same hour.

And I’ve been scared to admit that publicly.

Because I’m realizing many people are uncomfortable with any emotion besides sorrow in the story of divorce.

There’s a script society expects you to follow:

You’re allowed to be devastated.

You’re allowed to be angry.

You’re allowed to fight with your ex.

But relief?

Hope?

Wanting to get along as much as possible?

Admitting there isn’t much drama?

Those seem to confuse people more than the grief does.

And I’ve been met with a lot of deer-in-the-headlights stares when I say them out loud.

Even now, I’m nervous to publish these words. Because I know there are some who will think even an inkling of relief in the ending of a marriage is inappropriate. Or those who will assume that if I feel hopeful, I must not be taking this seriously.

But those people could not be more incorrect. Because grief and hope are not opposites. They surely can exist in the same space at the same time.

And right now, that space happens to be a new old house on a dirt road somewhere on the Wyoming prairie.

My last two essays have been heavy, so today, I want to share one of my recent joys.

The house.

My house.

Even typing that feels strange.

But before I go any further— I want to say this: I know I am deeply fortunate.

I know there are women leaving marriages who are facing terrifying financial realities. I know there are brave women who start over with almost nothing. I know there are women who don’t have the options I have right now.

I don’t take my situation for granted.

I am profoundly thankful that I’ve spent the last sixteen years building businesses that have provided me a way to walk through this chapter with an element of stability. That doesn’t erase the difficulty, but it does give me choices. And I am grateful for that.

Now to the house.

This house is not my other house.

It is not the homestead I built over the last decade-plus.

It is not the same land, the same kitchen, the same barn, the same view. It does not carry the familiar grooves my life had worn into that place.

So I need to say this gently but clearly: please don’t compare them for me.

I know what I left…

The gardens that ended up in photos all over the internet. The corrals that held my doe-eyed Brown Swiss calves. The kitchen featured in two cookbooks and national press articles and countless Youtube videos. The work that went into that soil, that barn, those pens. The memories layered into the walls.

I know it.

I feel it.

But somehow, in the middle of the things I left behind, this new place has provided other things I’ve always wanted but didn’t have there.

A quiet dirt road.

Productive apple trees.

A big red barn.

…with the most romantic hay loft.

An actual root cellar.

A house that felt cozy before I’d even made it mine.

The kitchen isn’t me yet.

But it will be.

Oh, it will be.

I have a hundred ideas. Paint colors. Wallpaper. Light fixtures. Little ways to bring warmth into the rooms. Places for cast iron and sourdough and stacks of cookbooks. Ways to breathe myself into the space like I do with every property I’ve ever touched.

It won’t happen all at once, but I trust that process more now than I ever have.

Because this is not my first time building a life. I’m not starting from scratch. This time, I’m starting from experience.

The first time I built a homestead, I was younger and scrappier… I didn’t know what I didn’t know, so I just learned it the hard way. I planted the wrong things. Bought the wrong equipment. Built fences in stupid places. Figured out what mattered by first figuring out what didn’t.

Those mistakes were excellent teachers.

They taught me what I want in a kitchen and what works for garden layouts and where gates should go.

They taught me that beauty matters, but so does function.

They taught me I can learn anything I put my mind to.

And they taught me that I am capable of taking forgotten places and making them beautiful and loved.

So yes, this place is new. But I am not new.

I’m older now. Slightly wiser. A little more bruised.

I know things I didn’t know before.

And this place?

This place holds me. I felt it the first time I walked through the door with the realtor.

It whispered, “Here. You can land here.”

My life has felt loud and harsh in the last few months. Loud with decisions. Loud with other people’s reactions and projections. Loud with logistics and paperwork and the endless tasks that come with untangling one life and beginning another.

But here, there is quiet. And a softness.

Not necessarily externally… There are unpacked boxes and paintbrushes and children running through and my ornery little red dog and countless lists and messes.

But underneath all that, there is steadiness. And peace. This place feels like it can hold the complexity of this new season.

It has enough space for me to be sad in the morning and excited by afternoon.

Because that’s the nuance I’m living in.

Two things can be true.

I am grieving. And I am hopeful.

I am sad. And I am excited.

I am tender. And I am capable.

I have lost things I loved. And I am building something beautiful.

Each does not cancel out the other.

So don’t worry— this isn’t me rushing ahead to the “thriving” or skipping over the ache.

It’s still there.

But so is the quiet knowing I can build again.

Because I’ve built before.

And because somehow, in the middle of all of this, I’m okay.

-Jill

P.S. Next week I’ll tell you more about my garden plans. Yes, it’s a big change to go from 20 raised beds and a monster greenhouse to what I have now. But I’m at peace with it (and even excited?!) to start over in a new growing space and I’ll explain why.

Recent Updates on My Life:

• A Hard and Honest Update
• Walking with a Limp
• The Cage Was Never Locked
• A Reintroduction, Of Sorts

The post The New Old House appeared first on The Prairie Homestead.

I thought I knew what community was.

I’ve talked about it a lot on my podcast. About building the soda fountain, rallying people in a sleepy Wyoming town, and showing up in a place where there aren’t a lot of people exactly like me.

But as it turns out? I didn’t understand it at all.

When it came to grasping the essence of real community, I was still in kindergarten. The last three weeks have made that painfully clear.

Ironically, these revelations came at the exact moment I feared losing my community altogether. Telling the world about my divorce felt so terrifying that the fear of it kept me stuck longer than I should have been.

Yet the very thing I feared most has left me speechless in the best of ways.

Which doesn’t mean every person has been lovely and gracious. There have certainly been some clunkers.

A few people have said ridiculous things. Some have offered patronizing advice that makes me want to punch a wall. A handful have pulled away.

All of that was expected.

But what I didn’t expect was how so many others in this tiny Wyoming town—and far beyond it—have shown up for me in ways I can’t even type about without crying.

Texts from people I haven’t talked to in years.

The local coffee guys sneaking into the kitchen at the soda fountain to check on me.

Quiet hugs and hands on my shoulder.

Women looking me straight in the eye and saying, “It gets easier. You will be okay.”

Multiple offers to help without demanding details first.

I’m well aware that people tend to appear out of the woodwork when there’s gossip or trouble. But these folks are different. They’re not offering help in that vague, performative way people sometimes do when things fall apart. They’ve shown up in ways that are real and deeply human.

And that’s the part that has undone me the most.

I’ve always prided myself on being strong. I’m good at being steady. I know how to be steady.

But right now?

I don’t feel steady.

There’s a specific kind of vulnerability that comes when life removes your ability to polish the edges. When the thing you’re walking through can’t be dressed up in fancy clothes or easy platitudes. It’s uncomfortable and humbling and disorienting.

But in the midst of that exposure, something in me has cracked wide open. The walls have come down and I’ve realized real community lives on the other side of those walls.

The messy, holy, take-your-breath-away kind of community.

I’ve had some of the most raw and healing conversations of my life the past few weeks. Most of them have been with people who have been in my periphery for years, but we’ve never really connected.

Now suddenly, something real has opened between us.

One honest thing cracked the surface.

Then another.

Then another.

As I have shared my vulnerabilities (with people who feel safe and have earned the right to hear my story, of course…) they, in turn, have shared their own innermost struggles, fears, and tender places with me.

Not because I am steady or wise or polished, but because I showed I was human. And somehow that gave them permission to admit their humanness, too.

There’s a Steinbeck line that keeps coming to mind:

“And now that you don’t have to be perfect, you can be good.”

I can’t stop thinking about it.

Back in my ultra-holy church-girl days, I prided myself on being one of those shiny, perfect people. That’s who we were trained to be. “Don’t ever make a mistake. Be a good witness. Never let your cracks show.”

And as a result, I preferred being around other shiny, perfect people too—the ones following the same formula as me, with the prescribed paths, tidy outcomes, and A + B = C lives.

We sang about grace on Sunday mornings but I surely didn’t understand it. The rules and formulas were what we actually lived and died by.

I’ve been untangling from that for over a decade and I’m not that person anymore. However as I’ve shared on my podcast, something began to shift in me even more deeply over the last eighteen months, thanks to the soda fountain.

Somewhere between the coffee refills and the back-room conversations and the stories folks tell me while I’m chopping onions, I started to realize my favorite people are rarely the shiny ones.

I’ve come to adore folks with scars.

The ones who have seen some things and lived some life.

The ones who haven’t always made the “right” choices or taken the prescribed path.

The ones who understand that this journey is never tidy or formulaic.

The ones who have been broken open enough to become gentle.

The ones who walk with a bit of a limp from life’s journey.

Perfection keeps us separate. It may make us impressive, but it does not make us known.

That’s the piece I missed before—that true community isn’t only about showing up for others. Sometimes it’s about doing the much harder thing:

To receive. To need. To stop being the steady one for a minute. To allow ourselves to be held. And I suspect that reciprocity is where the real magic happens.

And now, I suppose, I walk with a limp too.

Not the kind I would have chosen. (But when do we ever really choose our scars?)

Not the kind the old version of me would have approved of (16 year-old perfect Jill would be SO horrified right now…)

But the kind that says I’ve lived through some things and come out with a few scuffs.

And I welcome that. I suspect it will make me softer. More tender. More able to recognize the other limping people a little faster.

And maybe that is its own strange, full-circle kind of grace.

-Jill

P.S. I’m in the thick of moving and buried in boxes and chaos, but I’ll tell you more about my new little homestead next week. 

More of My Thoughts on Community:

• How to Cultivate Community While Homesteading
• The Inconvenient Truth About Building Community
• Building Old-Fashioned Community 
• How to Cultivate Community You Can Depend On When Times Get Tough
• How to Grow a Thriving Business in a Small Town 

The post Walking with a Limp appeared first on The Prairie Homestead.

I have some personal news to share, and for weeks, I’ve been trying to summon the courage to write these words.

Christian and I are separating.

I use that word because “divorce” still gets stuck in my throat when I speak it. It feels foreign to my fingers when they attempt to type the letters.

But there’s no easy way to say it. No way to wrap it in a tidy bow and make it feel less jarring than it is.

This is not a category I ever planned to fit into. That label was for faraway people whose lives looked nothing like mine.

And yet, here I am.

We have chosen this. Both of us. Consciously. With full awareness of the weight of it.

The decision was mutual.

We’ve been married for nineteen years. We have built homes, businesses, a family, and a life I could never begin to untangle in a blog post. And because of that, I know there will be questions.

I also know there is no way I can explain nineteen years of marriage in a few paragraphs.

Nor should I.

Some things belong between two people. Some things belong to our children. And some things simply do not belong on the internet.

So I want to say this clearly from the beginning:

You will not see me airing private details or disparaging comments about him here. This decision was not born from scandal or drama, but rather from a series of revelations and honest conversations that brought things to a slow, grinding halt.

That does not mean the story is simple. It just means the whole story is not public property.

I also want to say this: Christian and I have always been good business partners. That part was real. We have created many things together and I will always honor that.

I don’t regret our years together or what we’ve built. We plan to remain friends and will continue to be partners in raising our children. We are both committed to navigating this in a way that protects them as much as possible.

This decision did not come lightly. It was not flippant. It was not casual. It was not born from one bad day.

And if it doesn’t make sense to you, that’s fine.

You haven’t lived my life. You haven’t been inside our relationship.

I realize that’s blunt, but I don’t mean it cruelly. It’s simply the truth.

So yes, from the outside, this looks fast. But from the inside, it has been a long time coming.

You see, I was raised to NOT air marriage troubles. Maybe that was right. Maybe it was wrong. I’m still sorting through that (yes, I have a therapist…). But that is what I did. I protected the private places. I kept the struggles off the internet and out of the community. I did not perform my pain in public so people would be prepared for the ending.

And I’m not sorry for that.

Therefore, I know people are surprised. Some are confused. Some may even be miffed that they didn’t know sooner.

But the truth is, people were not owed earlier access to something I was still trying to understand myself.

One of the most jarring parts of this process has been realizing how quickly people throw their own fears, beliefs, theology, pain, assumptions, and expectations on me when I tell them the news.

I know many don’t realize they’re doing it. But still…

When you’re in the middle of the most disorienting life change you’ve ever experienced, it is absolutely exhausting to be fielding everyone else’s reactions on top of your own grief.

So I will say this gently, but firmly:

Please know I have already wrestled—and continue to wrestle— with all of the questions, concerns, and judgments you may be tempted to send my way.

The disappointment.

The fear of what people would say.

The fear of being misunderstood.

The fear of letting people down.

The fear of blowing up the version of my life everyone thought they knew.

It is everything I can do to keep showing up in my tiny community and not become a complete hermit until people stop whispering and speculating.

But I am no longer willing to live my life from a place of fear of what others will think.

That doesn’t mean this is easy.

It is not.

It is grief and fear and sadness. It is also relief and clarity and hope. And everything is tangled together in an impossible knot.

As for what this online space will look like moving forward, I’ll still be here. Probably even more than before.

Writing is how I make sense of my life, and this next chapter will give me plenty to untangle, rebuild, and understand.

I’ll still be cooking. Still riding. Still gardening. Still building (I’m keeping the Soda Fountain and nothing will change there). Still asking hard questions. Still chasing old ways in a world that seems hell-bent on making us forget them.

But some things will shift, because my life is shifting.

I’ll also be writing about starting over, solo homesteading, and creating a new home. (I’m closing on a new homestead this week, just a few miles from our current one. I’ll tell you more about that soon.) I won’t be sharing private details of my relationship, but I will share what it means for me to grieve, rebuild, start over, and become.

Some of my more personal pieces may live behind a paywall, because that feels safer to me right now. Not because I’m trying to be mysterious, but because there is a difference between being honest and handing the rawest parts of your life over to the entire internet to critique.

People will make of this what they will. Some will understand. Some won’t. Some will stay. Some will leave.

Some people have already fallen away. Others have shown up for me in ways I’ll never forget.

That has been one of the surprising gifts in the middle of all this. Pain clarifies.

It shows you what was real and what was performative. And it shows you who can sit beside you in the ashes without needing you to explain every flame.

So this is where I am.

I’m not fixed. Not polished. Not finished. I’ve cried in public more in the last month than I ever have before. I’m certainly not offering a five-step lesson from the other side.

I’m just here.

Starting over.

Grieving what was.

Feeling hopeful for the future.

And walking toward what comes next.

-Jill

P.S. If you are a personal friend and this is the first time you’re hearing this, I’m sorry. I’ve tried to directly tell as many people as I could, but these conversations are heavy, and I’m tired. I know I’ve unintentionally missed some people. Please know that wasn’t because you don’t matter.

The post A Hard and Honest Update appeared first on The Prairie Homestead.

“Jill, you’re up first.”

The second I hear the words, my stomach flops. My hands quiver as I pull my rope from the saddle and fumble through the coils, trying desperately to look competent while feeling the exact opposite.

You see, the movies have it all wrong.

They make you think when you finally do the thing you’ve wanted your whole life, it will feel heroic. Cue the epic soundtrack. Slow-motion victories. The triumphant moment where everything clicks into place.

But in real life, it feels more like a red face, pounding heart, and waves of nausea.

Sometimes the victory is hidden right in the middle of the most cringey, exposed, embarrassing moments your brain can conjure up.

Honestly, I think we need to talk about that more.

Learning to rope at age 40 has been humbling in every possible way. And not just privately humbling. Publicly humbling. The kind where you think, I cannot believe I just did that in front of actual people.

Missed shots. Dropped ropes. Bad swings. Lost dallies. Hitting my horse in the head with the rope. Hitting myself in the head with the rope. I’ve done it all, and then some.

And it does NOT feel good. It’s mortifying and horrifying and yet… I keep going back for more.

Now more than ever, I understand why it’s so hard for adults to learn new skills later in life.

It’s acceptable for a child to be a beginner. We expect it. We even cheer it on.

Adulthood is different. By the time you’ve built an identity and gathered some life experience, you’re used to moving through the world feeling somewhat capable. You know your lanes. You know how to protect your image and avoid looking like an idiot.

But when something new calls to you—or life demands a new stage of growth— just like that, you’re a beginner again.

And let me tell you: awkwardness hits a lot harder when you’re 40 than when you’re 14.

The humiliation is thick, man.

So lately, I’ve been repeating one phrase to myself over and over:

Embarrassment is the cost of entry.

I think one of the biggest reasons people stay stuck is not because they lack discipline, talent, or information. I think it’s because they cannot tolerate the feeling of looking foolish.

Because embarrassment rarely feels like a simple, harmless, Oh well, I messed up.

It feels more like: Oh no. I didn’t just mess up— I got exposed!!

And it burns. It burns right through the polish and performance and exposes the part of us that says we like growth—but only if said growth happens in a dignified, aesthetically pleasing way.

But my darling, that’s rarely how growth works.

Growth is awkward. Clumsy. Stretching. It kicks your ego square in the teeth.

But that is the cost of becoming. And it is worth every penny.

Because what is the alternative?

Whenever I feel scared of being seen in my fumbling beginner hood, I weigh the options. My conversations with myself go something like this:

Option A: Protect your ego. Stay in your lane. Keep up the appearance of competence. Avoid embarrassment. Avoid gossip. Avoid looking silly. But go to your grave never exploring the thing that tugged on your soul.

Option B: Go all in. Chase the dream. Ignore the peanut gallery. Let yourself be seen trying. Maybe look foolish. But actually live my one wild and precious life (thank you Mary Oliver.)

When I frame it that way, things get clear, fast. So I lean in.

Even when my face is red. Even when I feel like I’m drowning in self-consciousness. Even when I miss yet another calf with six cowboys watching.

Being a beginner has a way of stripping you down to the truth. It forces you to face yourself. It shows you how attached you were to that shiny image you’ve so carefully curated.

But if you can stay in that discomfort long enough, you eventually earn the greatest reward of all:

Real confidence.

Not the curated, surface kind. I mean the battle-tested kind. The kind that comes from walking straight through the fire, sticking with the thing, and coming out the other side with a few scars and a head held high.

That kind of confidence is life-changing.

And that’s why I keep putting myself in these wildly awkward situations.

Not just because they might eventually make me better, but because they’ve taught me I can trust myself.

And once you realize you can survive embarrassment, it loses some of its power.

That’s a superpower you’ll use for the rest of your life.

In starting a business.

In shifting your worldview.

In learning to cook, to ride, to lift, to lead, to make art, to build a life that actually fits you.

Even in leaving behind an old identity and fumbling your way toward a truer one.

So many people aren’t stuck because they’re incapable. They’re stuck because they are unwilling to be seen starting at ground zero.

So these days, when I feel the familiar flush of self-consciousness rise up… when I miss yet another calf… when I feel the weight of not being good yet… I try to remember:

This is not proof I’m failing.

This is proof I was brave enough to enter the arena. This is proof I have not arranged my whole life around protecting the illusion of competence.

And that feels like a worthwhile trade.

I doubt I’ll ever be a great roper, though I hope I get better eventually.

But I do know this:

Every time I pick up my rope and try again, I become someone I respect a little more.

And that is reason enough to keep going.

-Jill

P.S. My embarrassment mantra comes from this quote by Ed Latimore: “Embarrassment is the cost of entry. If you aren’t willing to look like a foolish beginner, you’ll never become a graceful master.”

P.S.S. These photos make me look way cooler than I am. Kudos to our amazing photographer, Kelly from Rugged Grace Photography.

The post Embarrassment is the Cost of Entry appeared first on The Prairie Homestead.