fare thee well

to everything a season

All images in this essay, Bernard Blommers, 1845-1914.

When the geese sounded their farewells last autumn, I felt a heaviness in me that could only be described as incongruence. I had been feeling restless in my indecision and confused by my lack of clarity. I thought and thought and then I gave up and prayed instead. That always works better for me, but I’m often stubborn in my acceptance of that surrender. It takes awhile for me to recognise that determination only gets me so far when I’m feeling rather flummoxed. Often, when big decisions must be made, I find God closest and most clear in my solitude, immersed in nature. I have taken some time off from writing here to allow those frequencies to strengthen without the static of distractions.

Many of my readers know how I’ve been feeling about being here, on this digital platform in a time when I feel truly concerned with the lightening speed with which AI is unfolding and how much of our lives we’re spending behind screens. Increasingly, I’ve been questioning my own participation. It seems normal for so many of us to be calling out the harms of these digital spaces on the digital space itself. It’s easy enough to explain why this is - it is our main source of reaching one another and all that jazz, but for me, deep in my heart, I feel a profound sense of my own diminishing integrity.

But what to do? I have a big and bountiful readership here. I have 88,000ish subscribers on Instagram that find me there and sometimes make their way here. Substack is how I make the bulk of my income. I have no real plans or a map of where I’m headed. But as I’ve written many times in many ways, I need not know the outcome or destination before I move. I just need to listen to the callings of my heart and act on that with faith. Those prayers I’ve been praying? They’ve been answered with concise clarity. It’s time for this chapter of my life to end.

I am genuinely grateful and forever moved by so many of you here. So many of you have taken the time and care to share your stories with us, too. By and large you have been tremendously supportive and kind. But there is a dark side to writing the true stories of a heart. Sometimes, people confuse writing with the totality of a person. They forget that what one writes is just a part of a bigger whole. And that bigger whole is the genuine person behind the shaped words - a person that is flawed, temperamental, unknowing, ignorant at times, and always, always so much more than what she/he chooses to write about.

I have no key, no answers for anyone. Those are for you to find for yourselves. It feels like a tremendous failing to me that some may have missed that message in my writing. I cannot control how people receive what I share. I understand that. But it’s my deepest desire that if what I’ve ever shared has illuminated anything, it’s that life is fleeting and precious and wildly beautiful and to come to that for yourself is the very meaning and work of your life. There is no person to lead you there. No guru or shaman or weekend workshop. It’s yours. You decide what to do with that in every moment you are here.

Over the last few years I have had a growing number of incidents of people reaching out to my family members and friends in order to be connected to me. Some of these attempts have superseded respectful norms and personal privacy. A few have been blatant harassment. My home is my sanctuary, not an attraction to seek out. My children are their own people, not conduits to me. My friends, frankly, have better things to do than field questions about me. If I come across as hard to get ahold of, that’s by design. I share what I have in my writing, but my solitude is essential, and my privacy defended. Ignoring this is wildly inappropriate and will not be tolerated.

These incidents of people infiltrating the peace and solace of my private life have only served as escorts to a most definitive message. My deep concerns with AI, of being on these digital platforms that blur the lines between human art and soulless machine offerings is not a place for me. There are things I am not willing to have in my life no matter what.

There are, as always, gifts in the turmoil. We must, as they say, be careful what we pray for. Sometimes our stubbornness requires a more insistent, consistent answer. Making decisions, especially ones that involve the dissolution of something we may have worked so hard for, is seldom without pain. That can’t be used as a marker of rightness lest we continue on doing something simply because it’s more comfortable to stay with the known and the comfortable. The time for Slowdown Farmstead has now reached its end. I’ve known it for months but tried to figure out ways around it. Now, in having made that decision, I feel only peace and great affection for the time I’ve had with you all.

But to move into this next era of my life is to return to a time when I enjoyed something without feeling the need to whip out my camera to record it. It’s choosing to listen to music that requires a breath of air to be blown across the vinyl record lest the needle accumulate dust. It’s resurrecting my old film camera and finally pulling my old sewing machine from the closet. I need the physical, analogue, real and tangible and I need to deprogram my mind. I need to just immerse myself in a moment without diluting it by capturing it.

The world, they say, is digital now, but I still have a say in my world. I don’t want to be the grandmother with a screen in her pocket. I want crumbs and dried leaves and maybe a sweet or two in mine. I want to be an example to my grandchildren and that requires me to practice my own personal values. I care not for the choices of others. We each have our own set of circumstances and realities. I just know there are layers of practices I’ve accumulated that were never accepted by conscious choice. I am making more conscious choices now. Better late than never, right?

What happens next with my writing I do not know. I will continue to write just as I always have. Maybe I will collect those writings and release them a couple of times a year in a little book. Maybe I will come up with a little newsletter that comes to you through the mail. Maybe I’ll just tuck them into a journal and leave them for my grandchildren in case they get terribly bored some rainy February afternoon. Whatever I write, it will be on paper and be held in hands, not contained in the blue light of a computer screen. I’m not going to be found there anymore. My Instagram account has been shuttered.

My Substack essays will be collected and printed into little book(s) of their own. If you would like to be notified when I have those available some day in the future, or if/when I decide to release some booklets with any new essays, you can join my email mailing list. If you’re a subscriber here, you’re already on it. If not, just sign up for a free account and you’ll be notified. Eventually, I might get a static web page that lists my physical offerings. I don’t know. We’ll see how all that goes. In the meantime, your free subscription here will ensure any updates will find their way to you. If you have no interest in any future analogue offerings I may come up with, you can simply unsubscribe and you’ll never hear a peep out of me again.

A bit of a logistical interlude, if you will:

A special note to my paid subscribers - a deep thank you for thinking my writing worthy of your hard earned dollars. Over the last many years, I have written over 400 long-form essays here on Substack and many of you have been here since day one. It has been a joy and a privilege to get to know some of you through your honest and heartfelt comments. You will be receiving refunds for any remaining time on your paid memberships. You should see your refund within a few days. Rest assured, your refund is prorated and you have not been charged for the time of my little break.

For those of you that participate and find value in the chat, I will be leaving it up for a few days. I figure that will give anyone who’s interested the opportunity to start a chat board of some type elsewhere. I looked into Discord which seemed like it would work, but I’m not willing to start, open or monitor the board. That would have to be one of you that takes that on. This would allow you to keep the connections you’ve made and continue to have a place to converse and ask questions as you’ve been doing on the Slowdown Farmstead chat here on Substack. If nobody takes the initiative, that’s completely fine, too. Either way, the chat board here will be collapsed on Wednesday, January 21st.

Troy and I are leaving for a time. We’ll be travelling and leaving our home in the competent hands of an old army pal and his family. They assure us that Bea will get her daily scratches and my home will be well loved. The wild places around me are too familiar now. I need to go further to access the unfamiliar parts of myself and this beautiful world of ours. We’re heading far up into the northern country for the solitude I so desperately need. And then? Further. We’re even planning on going back to the motherland where I plan to find the cemeteries of my ancestors and share a meal or two with the living strangers that share my blood. Maybe I’ll write about it.

To the vast majority of my readers that have been here supporting my writing and sharing with us all your kindness and goodness, thank you. I will miss you. I will think of you often and pray for love and meaning in your lives. I mean it. I will hold you all in my heart to the end.

The geese are gone now. I know, I know, always with the geese, Tara! But I simply can’t help it. I will watch for them until my dying day. They’ll be back and they will go again, long past my time. There is great reassurance in those noisy, winged formations. In the meantime, I dedicate myself to the role I’ve been given - a “human-keeper”, my greatest aspiration in this time of simulacra. I can think of no better use for me than reading a book with my grandchildren. Goofing around with my husband. Praying and being worthy of the sanctified guidance of an ever-loving God. Being silly with friends. Eating nourishing meals by candlelight on a snow covered earth. Tending. Loving. No more cellphone. No more screens.

I am tucking in Slowdown Farmstead with the greatest of gratitude and deepest of love. It has been a loyal friend and beautiful conduit to such rich and wonderful moments and exchanges in my life and, I know because you’ve told me, in many of yours. But it has lived its life and served its purpose. And now it is time to part. Tara just needs to be Tara again.

A true renaissance is brewing and it lives in the physical world. I can feel its heartbeat and I aim to match its cadence.

Happy Trails, dear hearts. My hope for you is that you hold tight to our solemn duty and great privilege of being human-keepers, all.

My book! Available everywhere.

Subscribing will keep you informed about any future analogue offerings.