We’ve been very intentional about choosing to live a more simple life.
The awareness that we wanted needed to live this way came to us in waves, over years, and through many trials. It didn’t happen all at once. It was gradual, slow, and entangled in our healing from oh so many things.
We both grew up living very different than homesteaders do, after all. But in 2020 it became an imperative to dive into the simple life we needed… head first.
We were done with any notion of living a “modern” or “mainstream” life. It didn’t fit us. It never had. But we had tried to make it fit for far too long.
No more, we decided.
No more living with eyeballs glued to screens.
No more listening to sirens, weedwackers, and leaf blowers at all hours of the day.
No more paying taxes to fund authorities who didn’t speak for us.
No more going into more debt.
No more buying goods from big box stores.
No more eating foods grown states away.
No more owning things we don’t really want or need.
No more outsourcing our child’s education to others.
No more working for other people.
No more soaking in media propaganda.
No more eating out constantly.
No more numbing out on social media superficiality.
No more superficial living… period.
We had been craving a change for some time. Honestly, Raleigh had never fit us well. And Michigan hadn’t fit us well either.
We weren’t sure where we were headed, but we knew it had to be somewhere else, somewhere new, somewhere free, somewhere simple.
We wanted to travel back in time. Back to a place where the values were: freedom, community, and faith.
Where people were tied to the land, and we could reconnect with her too.
Did such a place still exist?
We weren’t certain, but we were determined to find it.