Growing New Roots
I was not born in the country. When I arrived, I had already been uprooted seven times before. I was on my fifth family dynamic and sixth school. I was ten years old.
My father had always wanted a farm, and he and my step mom decided that life in a smaller community would be just the place for a child to grow up. And so I was transplanted.
Growing up on a farm gave me a safe place to roam the woods with several pets in tow. It gave me a small classroom, too small for me to remain the quiet “smart kid” in the corner. It gave me peace, and a sense of place — a feeling of belonging that seems to take its deepest hold in those who grow up in the country. You can wander across the world, and I have, but it never leaves, this sense of place. My roots.
