Here are my insecurities...

the pieces that always kept me from belonging, until now

Friend,

I was the only one of my sisters who cared to keep a garden - my Mom kindly lending me one of hers to plant and tend to. I went on to work in a European garden house, tending to plants and flowers for over a decade. At 18, I left home to study Animal Science and began cooking en mass for hungry groups of cowboys and friends. After college, I began to work at a feedlot for beef cattle, only to leave for a backpacking trip to Europe later that year.

I rarely (if ever) felt like I truly belonged anywhere.

I left home for university in 2004. Sitting across from my advisor in college during orientation, he intently listened to my goals and ambitions of beginning a cow-calf operation, nodding his head in understanding. When I finally stopped speaking, he asked me if I’d been born into a cattle-ranching family. I had not. Did my family have land, he questioned. We did not.

Likely, he explained, that meant after graduation I’d been seeking a job in the broader beef industry and he encouraged me to focus my efforts on feedlot production or agriculture related pharmaceutical sales. Not what I had to mind.

My chest became heavy - dreams killed before they could even sprout - and my eyes filled with tears. “To be honest with you, Dr. Gaskins, I really just want to tend a home in the country with some animals and have lots of babies…” I said, the words leaving my mouth before I could think about their weight.