Time to Start

Kendra playing with Cheyenne the Corgi, and Queenie the heeler in the pasture.

For my first post, I am compelled to revisit a blog post I wrote on October 8, 2011, entitled Time to Start. Things have come full circle since as I’ve published my memoir of our life on our two-and-a-half-acre piece of land thirty years ago. It was a really happy time in our lives, and one that I revisited often after the loss of my stepdaughter, Kendra.

The blog posts I wrote back then started in my voice, as I navigated her loss. It included reflections on our country life, including a life lesson for me regarding peacock feathers. About the best I could do was sit in silence and observe the animal families we shared our land with. I learned a lot, and they made me smile. They still do.

At some point, I began writing them from the viewpoint of nonhuman friends. The posts reflected real situations and how I imagined they might have thought about them. I chose to compile a selection of posts in my voice, and some in theirs, into a novella-length memoir after a dream my husband Steve had about a visit from our dog, Bandit.

It is my hope that readers will smile and enjoy the stories as much as we enjoyed living them.