The Prairie Homestead

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 ...Continue Reading

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 ...Continue Reading

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 ...Continue Reading

“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 ...Continue Reading