We were taught not to offer or invite aid, because, like it or not, helping is a messy, confused proposition; sometimes you get it right and sometimes you get it wrong, and sometimes you have no choic...
Over time, I discovered that learning new things doesn't always liberate you. Instead it makes you wonder if your pants are on backward or if the trees are holding the sky up - it makes you question a...
If more people understood how nice it is to have a sense of home that extends past our locked doors, past our neighbors' padlocks, to the local food co-op and library, the sidewalks busted up by old t...
I've never been good with asking for help; it seems risky, but at some point when things are really dicey, your stubbornness gives way to a certain form of humility that, after you get over yourself,...
Books had rescued me when i most needed saving... Books were smarter than me and words inspired me... to try something new, charge forward without a clear understanding of what would happen next, beca...
I felt like a champion because I was figuring shit out. I was a doer and a getter-doner, and it was okay to be identified by the neighbors as the little lady who had a dump truck of manure delivered,...
That obstinate sense of independence was the biggest challenge I face in building my little house (that, and not always knowing what I was doing). I was stubborn in the way I hated to ask for help. So...
Letting go of "stuff" allowed the world to collapse behind me as I moved, so I became nothing more or less than who I simply was: Me.
Over time, I realized I wasn't necessarily seeing people or things at their best or worst; instead, I was simply seeing things as they were.There didn't seem to be a moral high road to take in most si...
The library made me feel safe, as if every question had an answer and there was nothing to be afraid of, as long as I could sort through another volume.
The space reminded me of the small hay-bale clubhouses and scrap-wood tree forts that my brothers and I had made as kids - high up spaces where you could see things differently, where you could get yo...
Whose idea was it that we should all get jobs, work faster, work better, race from place to place with our brains stewing on tweets, blogs, and sound bites, on must-see movies, must-do experiences, mu...
Perhaps the current state of my health should have raised a bright red caution flag, but instead it fired me up. I wanted to do what I wanted. I didn't care if hefting plywood and climbing ladders wer...
The Internet is dumb. The Internet, with all its access to brain research, anthropology journals, social studies networks, and biographies and autobiographies, can't begin to map the complexity of our...
Sometimes the word 'gratitude' feels too thin to explain things.
For me, the idea of living small has always involved being curious - taking a look at how my day-to-day is connected to the larger world around me, and to the delicate universe that sits between my ea...
I went to Guatemala to help build a school but left wondering what "help" would really look like... I hadn't prepared myself for how humbled I'd feel, or how hard it would be to find my footing when w...
he had kidded with us that if we didn't let go at the proper moment, he would slap our hands with a stick, and we had all laughed because who would be silly enough to hang on when they should let go?
I thought: This is what the living do. And I swooned at the ordinary nature of the task and myself, at my chapped hands and square palms, at the way my wrists bent and fingers flexed inside this livin...
I never saw this coming - the little house was working its magic, connecting me to people and materials I never would have guessed would find their way into the picture.