Describe a smell, a sight, and a taste that made an impression on you this week.
Picture this:
It’s 85 and stunningly sunny. Clouds, or wisps of, rather, streak the sky.
As far as the eye can see, the Gulf of Mexico. Quite wild today – there are double red flags. But, that does not stop the wandering, golden hair girl from running with careless abandon straight into the green-tinged water, light feet sending sand flying behind her.
And then, you are the girl.
Floating, with arms, legs, stretched wide. One second, peace – the worries dissipate, carried outward by gentle waves. Then, rough, crashing around you.
S p u t t e r i n g.
But – one second more. Hold onto, and enter into the serenity the water provides.
Lest you be swept away, you emerge from the waves, saltwater dripping in rivulets off your body, into your eyes, nose, and mouth. The world careens and is slightly topsy turvy as you seek to reclaim the legs the tumultuous water stole from you.
But what’s more liberating than anything else is the slightly tangy smell of your sweat, mixed with touches of ocean saltiness and the cloying ‘beach’ essence of your now-needing-to-be-replaced Hawaiian Tropic Sheer {coconut} sunscreen.
And as you stumble up the sand toward your towel, your book, bask in the utter happiness and remarkable freedom found by embracing the authentic desire to remain
a wild child at heart.
And when you realize letting go is not giving up on you, or others, but is merely a move toward your own freedom and self-love,
They say there are five stages of grief:denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.
An individual may cycle through any of the various phases for a multitude of reasons. Over time, so they say, things will get better. I know you know that. I know I know that, but something else everyone knows? In those moments, when you are mourning, you simply don’t care.
Why?
Because grief and heartbreak are horrible things. Loss, broken dreams, and faded friendships, equally terrible. Painful. Raw. Unforgiving. All-consuming. Exhausting.
They are not simple. They are not easy. They are not kind.
Days come and go, filled with these emotions. Some are easier than others. On these easy days, life feels normal, and you may flashback to your old self. But on the hard days, you feel like a passive observer in that supposedly normal life – and you still remember your old self. The difference is that on the hard days, your emotions hold you completely and utterly hostage.
Every year, I purchase a bracelet from a company called MyIntent. Their aim is for you to choose one word you plan to live by for an entire year, a much more doable task than making a lengthy list of New Years’ Resolutions that, let’s be honest, you probably won’t keep. When I first wrote On Happiness, I had four – Smile, Farmer Jade, Greensboro, and Seek.
Smile
As I’ve mentioned throughout, I have always thought of myself – and been considered – a pretty happy person. I almost always have a smile on my face and aim to impart this to others. I have also always tried to look on the bright side. But at this point in my life, I don’t know if I have experienced a wild amount of trauma, so sometimes, I think I have it pretty easy. I know of others who just seem weighed down by life. I figure a smile is the easiest thing I can always give, something to show these people that while I might not always understand their pain, I see it, I see them. For myself, too, I wanted a simple reminder that at the very least, each day, I could give myself a smile. That even though the load on my plate appeared less in comparison, a smile could help me take on my life with a bit more enthusiasm and positivity.
Farmer Jade
The second bracelet I acquired was given to me by one of my best friends. I had just started farming that year, so it had become my nickname among my college friends. Truly, though, after my first day working on a farm, I was sold – I had discovered my passion and knew it was something that would be a part of my life for a very long time. My friends could see it, too, so that year, I lived by the intention of learning how to be a better farmer.
Greensboro
Queue Greensboro. Farmer Jade took me here. Well, okay, not exactly. Part of my job, while I was in Greensboro, was to be a farmer. As you know from the last chapter, I loved my job. When I was in Greensboro, I was in Greensboro. Though the position only lasted 13 months, and I made it my mission to fully exist within that community, I wanted a reminder to never waste an opportunity.
Seek
Seek has a bit of a different story – this is my bracelet for 2021. I initially thought my word for the year would be “teach,” because I had started my master’s program in agricultural education in August of 2020. In the five months since starting the program, I had come to realize teaching was really more about listening – listening to your students, to those around you, to the structures in place. Listening to the real situation at hand was a better premise for teaching, or so it seemed to me, so I became pretty gung-ho about “listen.”
But then I pivoted.
The word “seek” came me to one day. I had had an epiphany of sorts, and a couple of days later, another of my best friends shared her idea about wanting to start a podcast called Seek.
I won’t speak entirely for her, but in a way, we were both searching for something.
At the beginning of 2021, covid-19 was still pretty much in full swing, but personally, I had managed to separate myself from the emotions tied to the pandemic. I was struggling with something different: several months prior, I had had a pretty hard time leaving Alabama and some of the best friends I have ever had. (To be clear, I often talk about my best friends – I have a lot of them. I’m a state-hopping fiend, remember? They come from all walks of my life and I love them all dearly.) The pandemic had changed the end of our fellowship quite dramatically, and for the first time in my life, I had experienced a heartbreaking loss. I didn’t know you could be heartbroken over leaving a place – I suppose this is what they call homesick – but something I later realized was that I was well and truly heartbroken over leaving Greensboro. I suppose when you give literally everything you have, and then one day you just don’t have it anymore, feelings of loss, anguish, grief, and pain set in.
Beyond feeling a loss, I felt lost, but simultaneously as if I was seeking, searching, for something. For a while I was confused, too – was I still a happy person? I spent so much time in my own head wondering and worrying. Yet, so many people still told me how they appreciated my energy, my joy, my zest for life – because I was always on an adventure. In fact, I spent most weekends of that first fall semester at Georgia hiking different parts of the Appalachian mountains.
When I was little, I told people I wanted to go to college out east, solely because I wanted to hike these mountains. Then, when I first moved, I told myself, “Life is too short, I have a car, what are you waiting for?”
But you know what? I was running away: from grief, from loss. If I was moving (up a mountain at a breakneck speed) there wasn’t time to think. If I was always on an adventure, I could write it off as a bit of planned spontaneity, a zest for “life is too short!” and “no regrets!” It was an attempt to sweat out the feelings I think we are so often told to shove away – and then I wouldn’t even have to process them.
But I learned it doesn’t work like that.
In fact, running away certainly will not solve your problems, or at least, it didn’t for me, but it may help you find what you’re chasing, seeking, and yearning.
It’s interesting. When you leave a place – Greensboro – you can’t really do anything. When I left Alabama, my time there was just simply done. Sure, I could go back and visit, and I have, many times, but it wouldn’t be the same. My job was done. There was an element of finiteness to it. I had a reason for accepting the loss. But when a place is associated with a loss of the presence of friends and family, too, I think that hits a bit differently, harder. Phone calls, emails, and letters are certainly instant gratifiers, but friends and families tied to experiences so incredibly intertwined with the tangibility of fully living in the moment are difficult to leave behind.
In hindsight, I think my mountain escapades were dangerous. I never wanted to work through my emotions lest I lose the zeal I had for everyday life. For most of my life, I found it easy to offer up a smile – because I had not experienced any big sort of loss. Well and truly, I’m not sure the above is an earth-shattering loss, but that period in my life was fraught with more distress than I had previously handled. And it was hard. For a long time, I was hard on myself.
“Why can’t you just let go?”
Because emotions can be tiny monsters. They can also be an extraordinary gift, but they are also monstrous. They do not care who you normally are, that they are unfamiliar, that time – and not running away to the mountains – is really the only cure. You see, I think when we experience these things, the most dangerous thing we can do is to displace these emotions without a will to heal. Our world wreaks of messaging that tells us to suck it up and go. That if you just do this one thing, you’ll be great. That you shouldn’t show your pain.
I call bullshit.
Embrace those feelings. Love those feelings. Work through those feelings. Feel so entirely you, you begin to understand them. Fully and wholeheartedly. They will change, but if you aren’t there to catch the change, to see the change, to comprehend the change, you’re missing out.
I lived alone for most of this period I found myself missing Greensboro and my friends the most. Each day was full of people, classwork, and research, but when I came home, I was alone. I was also lonely. And if you haven’t heard, there’s a difference. I am talker and a sharer, but I found it hard to share the full extent of these feelings. I certainly talked about it at length with many of my friends, but I think the mountains saw more of the full spectrum of my emotions than anyone else. So I was lonely because I felt bound to my emotions, but I perpetuated them by chasing adventure alone.
Then, one day, I felt free, light, like those beautiful, puffy, white clouds lazing about the bright blue sky on a serene summer day. The sad days still came, but my mind was amazingly still – like when you get to the top of the less traveled mountain and gape in awe at the clarity and stillness that exists around you.
Once I finally found myself with this clear mind, I found my loneliness drifting away. There were many days when I still felt alone in my apartment – because I was – but that’s where it ended.
I started to reframe and rethink my aloneness. Being and living alone, especially as a young 20-something, was difficult. But it was invigorating. I, for once in my life, could be so entirely selfish and not care one whit. Because here’s the thing – there was never a need to feel selfish. There was no one waiting on me, expecting me, wondering about me. So, I had no reason to incur or stew in guilt about letting someone down, about not meeting someone’s, other than my own, expectations. It truly was a liberating lifestyle. I could do whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted. I learned that though I love, cherish, and am very grateful for people, I could live by myself if I needed. And that was an important lesson.
The day we give up on ourselves being the leader of our own life is a sad day.
I know some days can be really, really hard. And if you are reading this right now and thinking, “yes, yes I know,” then I know, too, and I empathize with you. And I won’t tell you time heals all – though it does – but I will tell you that I need you to never, ever give up on you. Because when you, too, find what it is you’re running after, and you remember all the beautiful things about life, it will be a good day.
In the meantime,
dance to the beat of your own music –
with wild and reckless abandon –
even if no one else is.
And when you feel well and truly alive, smile, just because.
When I lived in Alabama, I wrote a journal that I kept as a running Word document. I initially started it to keep in touch with the residents I had come to know and love from the waitressing job I worked while in undergrad. I wrote every week, and every Sunday, I sent this journal entry to what became quite an expansive list of friends and family members. By the end of my fellowship year, my journal was one of my most prized possessions, all 133 pages of it.
Shortly after the fellowship ended, I set out to read, edit, and dedicate this journal to all those whom I had met over the year. Some of my fellow fellows helped me write the dedication:
“So many times in life, we don’t realize the value of what we have until it’s gone. That’s not something I can say for my time in Greensboro. From the moment I arrived and was welcomed into this class of Fellows, I knew I was lucky. Lucky to be living, working, and adventuring with a group of such compassionate, intelligent, and inspired young people. Lucky to be welcomed into a community that cared for us so deeply and allowed us to serve and work with them. Lucky to gain a whole new set of experiences and perspectives which made me all the wiser. The people I met this past year are what made the year remarkable. To have the opportunity to meet everyone, I feel so incredibly lucky.”
This came from Sonya, one of my friends and yearlong housemates. Often, in looking back on this journal, I am sad. I remember being especially so when I first returned home after a year away and read over that journal. At that point, I had never experienced such a sense of loss from extraordinarily happy memories. Now, though, I look back, smile, and laugh – how lucky I was indeed.
When I first moved to Georgia, I quickly became known as “the girl who loves Alabama.” I told (and still tell) story after story that starts with the line, “you know that time when I lived in Alabama?” My friends and officemates thought I was crazy. But I am really not exaggerating when I say I miss Alabama. Everyday. I actually manage to visit relatively often, and when I do so, I grin from ear to ear the second I cross over the state line.
I will never fully be able to say exactly what it is about the place and the state that just gets to me – though I am sure I could list about 23 possible things – because even when I lived there, I could never seem to talk about it enough. I firmly believed Alabama truly was (and is) such a hidden gem, and I am unbelievably grateful to have been able to do what I loved. Every. Single. Day. Sure, the state definitely has a less than stellar history. At one point, we went to the theater to see Just Mercy, and it left me pretty unsettled. The movie, which took place near where I lived, depicted an ugly part of history filled with segregation, racism, and unjustness that existed (and quite frankly, still, unfortunately, does exist) in Alabama up until very recently.
For so long, I had described my experiences to my friends and family with an air of wonder and delight, but this movie challenged my viewpoint and left me feeling lost: was I being naïve, ignorant, or flippant toward its history? I wrangled with this and the structure of my work as well. Since I worked for a small nonprofit, the other fellows and I existed in a unique intersection of wealth, community history, viewpoints, and unspoken tension. Certainly, I found this challenging to make sense of at times, but I came to realize neither the events that had transpired in this state I had grown to love so wholeheartedly nor the contrast of people intertwined within the bounds of our work was an entirely unique concept. Sure, the circumstances of Project Horseshoe Farm vary tremendously from other similar entities. But the world will always present us with conflicting ideals, situations, and people. Nothing is set in stone, and hidden adventures, joy, and curiosity lie among the potholes of grief, shame, and embarrassment. Our job is to figure out what we need to make of these situations by practicing the perspective to be gained, pondering the lessons to be learned, and embracing the growth to be had.
I loved two very particular things about Alabama, beyond the novelties of my job and experiences.
1 Community.
Writing this now – as a young 20-something – I think back on and appreciate the impact community has had on my life: Friday nights at church with the soup ladies, summer days at the pool spent doing water aerobics with the retirees, school nights at the restaurant waitressing with my coworkers.
The other fellows and I lived in an incredibly small town. Everyone knew everyone – that type of small town. And I loved it – scratch that, I thrived on it. I loved going to church potlucks, playing ultimate frisbee with locals, tearing it up at trivia night, singing my heart out at karaoke, running errands or gardening for those in need, chatting with just about anyone in the grocery store, and being known as “the girl who is always smiling, the one who runs.”
2 Growth.
Yes, this sense of community brought me an incredible amount of joy, but the second thing I loved more than anything about Alabama was the sheer amount of growth I experienced. From day one, I learned to embrace flexibility; to build community through a smile; to find joy in the gift of good company; to seek out uncertainty; to overcome anxiety surrounding freedom and spontaneity; to let myself dream; to share my love for Alabama; to stay up till 3am just because; to make the best of dreary farm days; to celebrate my accomplishments; and to love unconditionally. Most of all, I learned a lot about myself: my emotions, values, and beliefs; my communication, delegation, and confrontation styles; my ability to adapt, empower, and overcome; my strengths and myweaknesses.
In short, my time in Alabama astounded me. For once in my entirely by-the-minute life, I lived spontaneously; I embraced a lot of what terrified me: uncertainty. I was in Alabama for a year to literally just live – it’s not as if I had other plans. I didn’t die. I didn’t fret. I definitely stressed, but much less so than at any other point in my life. I made lifelong friends and memories, and I learned so much along the way. By just living. And that was a pretty big deal to me.
If I haven’t yet convinced you (I am not a weirdo) of my love for Alabama, I’d like to impart just a few of my very best memories below. Maybe you, too, will smile, laugh, and understand a bit of what transpired
“when I lived in Alabama.”
6.15.19 The day I moved to Alabama! In typical Jade fashion, I arrived a little out of sorts – hair flying everywhere. I was ~slightly stressed~ because I was 99.3% certain my car was about to combust, but I was absolutely astounded by the beauty of the Alabama countryside. My worries soon faded when I showed up at the Marion rodeo and saw legitimate cowboys and then spent the night dancing away to live country music. If I wasn’t sure I had moved to the Middle-of-Nowhere, Alabama yet, this night fully convinced me of such, and I was 100% on board.
6.22.19 The beginning of our fellowship year coincided with the 10-year reunion and block party bash (I danced 11 miles that night and had an absolute blast getting to know so many community members)! I quickly learned Saturdays were for workdays – you could often find us hammering or shoveling away in the 100+ degree heat, but the sun-loving extrovert that I am, I relished any opportunity to get outside and meet someone new.
7.13.19 Before moving to Alabama, I had never spent a birthday away from my home and family. My 22nd did not disappoint, though. The night prior, my absolute star of a roommate, Catie, surprised me with carrot cake, and many of the Fellows paraded into our room singing “Happy Birthday!” On my actual birthday, I started off the day with a 6-mile run before a birthday breakfast at Mustang! Most of the Fellows came, and I devoured two of Mustang’s famously massive pancakes. Later, we went to Lake Nicol in Tuscaloosa for some cliff jumping! After, we all went to Mellow Mushroom, and if you know me, you know I am an absolute sucker for pizza (and pancakes, so clearly I had the best birthday).In all sincerity, though, in the days leading up to my birthday, I was uncertain how to feel – would I miss my family? Would people actually remember even if I wasn’t home? (Silly, I know, but you know, just a worry of mine.) This day showed me the memories you make with the people you surround yourself with are the best gift you could ever receive.
8.4.19 Jennifer and I took a spontaneous (accidental) trip to Florida! A year ago, we certainly kept this under wraps, but not now! We went to the bars in Mobile and met up with Reed later in the night, and the next day the two of us set off for Gulf Shores. Somewhere along the way, I accidentally took a wrong turn and we ended up in Florida – whoops – but we made it back into Alabama eventually and had an absolutely stellar day. I had never lived more spontaneously in my entire life. Truly one of the best weekends I had in Alabama.
11.2.19I thought I had never encountered a better state than Alabama. Until we all took a trip to Gatlinburg, TN. We arrived pretty late on a Friday night, and the next morning when I peered out the window, I whipped around and exclaimed to Catie (once a roommate, always a roommate, even at AirBnbs), “Oh, I am never leaving,” to which she appropriately responded, “Jade, you haven’t even been outside yet!” A fair point, Catie, but I am here to say that my initial reaction stayed with me the entire trip. We hiked a ~smol~ mountain, saw snow, ate lots of pasta and pancakes, (I) enjoyed iced Bailey’s in the hot tub, explored Gatlinburg, and a few of us even participated in a (guided) moonshine tasting! This trip made me realize I could live anywhere I wanted, so catch me living up my cabin/mountain dreams in Eastern Tennessee sometime in the near future.
11.28.19 An Alabama Thanksgiving – need I say more? My dad came and visited, which was a lot of fun! We had dinner at Jack and Georgia’s (I was hunched over in pain for three hours), explored Selma and Montgomery, and even went to the Iron Bowl in Auburn (WDE)!
12.31.19 Well, let’s just say what happens in Birmingham on NYE, stays in Birmingham on NYE. Just kidding. We had quite an adventure of a night, one that started with a full day of work and ended with a trip to Waffle House at approximately 3am. Being a pancake connoisseur, I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I will say that my buttery hot waffle did not disappoint. (I will also say – this feels like a million years ago.)
2.6.20Once upon a time, when I still worked at BDA, we had 13+ boxes of onions and leeks to plant. That might not seem like a lot, but take my word for it when I say, that’s a lot of onions and leeks. Especially when it is also pouring rain and 40ish degrees outside and Rojas is away in Mexico. Lucky for me, though, I – and all of my other farm coworkers, you’re welcome – had the pleasure of Lydia’s good company! Though we were soaked and freezing, we had a blast. Later that night after warming up, Catie made Chicken Enchilada Zucchini Boats – they were incredible.
2.21.20 Go Dawgs! Heyo – I got into the University of Georgia on this day! Though I was expecting the offer, I was ecstatic nonetheless! Later, we all went to a fun Mardi Gras party in Demopolis, courtesy of Kirk. Not every day do we get to dress up and do our makeup, so we all certainly had a fun time doing such and attending a ~ball,~ especially one that was BYOW(ine) and provided cheese + live music. Another fabulous day.
6.4.20 Friendship. I really feel I should elaborate, but never have I felt more supported and loved by my friends. I have never shed so many tears for so many people, and every single drop of water that left my eyeballs was because of the love, lessons, and memories I have for and with each and everyone I have met in Alabama.
By this point, I am certain I have taken up more than a sufficient amount of time convincing you why I love Alabama ( / you should also love Alabama). That’s okay – I am unashamed.
But I do have just one more thing left to say –
Do you also have a “when I lived in Alabama…” story?
Embrace it. Share it. Never forget it.
And if you need someone to listen, I’d love to hear it.
One of my most distinguishing -isms is my ability to tell (just about) anyone I have just met my entire life story within the first five minutes of meeting them, an ability I especially honed during my time in graduate school. I often took classes outside of my department, and with each first day came the obligatory, “And if you could share your name, degree, educational background…” request. Well, okay.
“Hey y’all, I’m Jade! I’m over in the Department of Agricultural Leadership, Education and Communication studying ag ed. I studied nutrition in my undergrad at TCU and I’d love to use my background to teach kids in rural communities about farming and nutrition.”
Inevitably someone would respond, “Ah, cool! So Texas? You from there? How’d you end up in Georgia?”
“Yeah, well, so, I lived in Alabama following undergrad! I fell in love with this South and didn’t want to leave.”
“Oh, cool! So you’re from Alabama, then?”
At this point, confusion seeps into their voice.
“Well, no, not really. I’m actually from Minnesota!”
Forget minor confused looks, absolute confusion ensues.
“I actually wanted to apply to Auburn because I loved Alabama so much (this will not be the first time these people here this come out of my mouth), but UGA’s graduate school deadline for assistantships was sooner, so I applied here, was offered a position, and the rest is, well, you know…”
“Sorry, um, well, huh…”
At this point, I’ve clearly lost them, so the only thing I can do is say, “Let me just start over.”
Hello, hello, my name is, in fact, Jade, and I am indeed from Minnesota. I grew up in Lino Lakes, a suburb 30 minutes north of the Twin Cities. I love/d Minnesota for many reasons:
The snow – I used to cross-country ski and I’m a huge of snowshoeing. By the end of winter, my bones were definitely frozen, but I never minded having a white Christmas!
The change in seasons – I was never much a fan of spring until my early 20s, but the changing seasons did mean the end of the school year and summer. 🙂
Summer days on the lake – replete with smells of sunscreen and probably ending with a bonfire, s’mores, and stargazing.
The smell of fall – my favorite season, the most perfect season for the colors of the changing leaves, corn mazes, and apple orchards. (Oh, and obviously pumpkin candles.)
Of course, other memories come to me as I write this:
ice skating on the pond in someone’s backyard, cackling as I fall – hard – on my butt;
long bike rides through the woods after being cooped up all winter;
hours and hours of soccer under the hot sun;
and Friday nights under the football lights playing in the marching band (yes, I was that band kid for all of my middle and high school years).
But the other, smaller, more personally defining moments surface, too: Friday nights helping the soup ladies at church, sitting at senior scholarship nights, summer days at the pool taking the water aerobics classes (you bet I was the youngest one there), baking in my grandma’s kitchen…
In high school, I did the exact same thing. Every day. I rolled out of bed at 4:47am, threw on some workout clothes, slapped myself in the face a bit to wake up, got in the car, and drove 3.8 minutes down the road to the gym. After working out, I rushed home to get ready for school, sprinted up the neighbor’s backyard hill to meet the school bus, pulled out my book as I sat down, and when we finally arrived, I went from class to class, the book still in hand with my eyes glued to the pages.
I was always reading. A spare minute here or there, between songs while in band class, at the lunch table.
One time, a cafeteria patrol asked if I was alright. Irritated because he disrupted me, I pleasantly told him I was fine. And then he kept bothering me and proceeded to sit down to chat.
Sir, I just want to read.
And if I wasn’t reading, I was doing homework.
When I got home from school, I went to work. And when I got home, I went to bed and did the same thing the next day. And the next. And the next.
Yes, I think I was an odd kid by my classmates’ definition. I was always reading, volunteering, working, riding my bike. I certainly had friends, don’t get me wrong, but I have opened up a lot since then.
When it came time to apply for college, I ended up choosing Texas Christian University, a smallish private school just outside of downtown Fort Worth.
Despite the monotony described above, I’d like to think I was a pretty independent child, albeit focused on learning and making money. I believe my ultimate rationale for choosing TCU was that it would cost the same amount to go there as the other college I liked near my home, so I decided it was time for an adventure. Boring me, I thought my life would operate exactly the same. (Okay, but who likes changes? Moving across the country was a big enough change in and of itself.)
You might be slightly less appalled to learn I woke up at 5:52am instead since the gym didn’t open until 6, but other than that, I lived similarly: gym, class, homework – you better believe I read every single page of those assigned textbook readings until halfway through my junior year of college – dinner, more reading, bed. Repeat. Well. That was all fine and dandy, but by my junior spring, I was a semester into my dietetic internship, I worked off-campus as a server (still to this day one of the best jobs I have ever had), and I actually made plans for the weekend. A year later, I stayed up late – by choice – because of all the aforementioned things, and I had fun. Like actual fun. And I drank coffee – I liked the taste, so why the heck not?
As my junior year ended, I was still a little uncertain about what direction my life was heading. Ever since I was about twelve, I knew I wanted a career in nutrition. I loved my undergraduate classwork and was enjoying my internship, which certainly validated me – I knew I was in the right field – but I was shocked to discover the extent to which one could practice nutrition.
I grew moderately panicked as my last summer as an undergrad and senior year approached and I still was not certain which direction to turn. I figured I would just go to graduate school, mostly because I did not feel competent enough at anything to be a real adult. I had particularly enjoyed the experiences in college where I taught kids about gardening and nutrition, but I didn’t actually know the first thing about gardening, or farming, so I decided to apply for a field hand position at a farm just down the road from my house.
Within days of starting at the farm, I was enthralled and began to fit my perception and interest of nutrition into this new, agricultural sphere.
In hindsight, absolutely nothing about the work we did my first day there screamed, “This is the coolest thing in the world!” In fact, we weeded row after row after row of corn. For six hours. The real magic occurred when I recognized the immense beauty – the sky impossibly blue, the birds utterly cheerful, and the sun-soaked farm absolutely glistening with undisturbed morning dew – and the sheer possibility, education and culinary alike, spreading before me.
Skip forward to the beginning of 2019: I was all set to move back up to the Midwest to start a Master’s in Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State University, and it all felt fine. I really wanted to get “farming 101” out of graduate school and thought this certainly had to be the answer. I had found out a few weeks prior on a recent visit this was not really the case about the program, but I was bound and determined to make it work.
But then (duh duh duh … just kidding this is a good thing), in March I got an email from the administrative assistant in the ~Department of Nutritional Sciences at TCU~ (ahhh I miss the days of studying nutrition – I lived in those offices) about some gap year fellowship at a place called Project Horseshoe Farm. The specific position was for the role of a Farming, Health, and Nutrition fellow, and I’ll tell you something – it was almost exactly what I was looking for. I would get to work on a farm for about half the time and the other half would be spent engaging in community health and nutrition education work; this fellowship position was seemingly perfect.
And then I learned it was in Alabama, which was not a problem, but I realized I knew absolutely nothing about Alabama. Zilch. I mean, I knew where it was located on the map, but my knowledge ended there. Well, I applied and as you’ll come to learn, I accepted the position with much joy (I LOVE Alabama).
I could on and on about my job and life in Alabama, but I’ll spare you – but only because I talk more about that in the next chapter.
For now, I’ll simply say
– to defend my crazy and confusing love for this state –
you know when people say if you love what you do you’ll never work a day in your life?
Well, if you know you know.
I loved my job.
I never, never worked and in fact often felt guilty because I enjoyed it so much.
There’s an odd feeling when your body and mind and the surrounding people and world around you feel so utterly and truly connected…if you have felt this before, well, that, for me, was Alabama. If you haven’t, I urge you to keep waiting. It will come and it will be the best thing that has ever happened to you.
“So, somehow you ended up in Georgia?”
Ah, yes, thanks for reminding me!
I would like to take this brief interlude to tell you, my fellow readers, I never give anyone this entire rundown in the first five minutes. Or ever really. (Unless prompted, which, now that I rethink about it, is semi-often.) I usually just hit the highlights. You’re lucky, though; you got it all.
My fellowship in Alabama was a 13-month position, so eventually I had to start thinking about what came next. I had fully decided on something in the agriculture field, and eventually wound up reapplying to graduate school, but for agricultural education programs. I meant to apply to a few different programs, namely Auburn and Georgia so I could stay in the region of the South I had so dearly fell in love with, but I ended up only applying to Georgia. The professor who would become my research professor, Dr. Jason Peake, called me out of the blue one day in December of 2019. We got to talking, and as they say, “the rest is history.”
Actually, what happened was, we talked, I visited, I applied, and then he offered me an assistantship. Shortly into my master’s program, he asked if I would like to be his doctoral research assistant.
I pondered
and worried
and stressed
and dreamed
and hoped,
and a few months later, I was accepted into the PhD program within my same major and department.
Life is crazy sometimes.
And that is the not-so-short story of how a Minnesota gal ended up in Georgia by way of Texas and Alabama. I always intended to move back to Minnesota after undergrad, but you know, sometimes when life wants to take you on a journey first, you just have to shake your head in laughing, hopeful wonderment and resignation, and say,
ON HAPPINESS 